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Archive for the ‘Bowen Island’ Category

Making the house a home

Place enough distractions on the walls and maybe you won’t notice the brass!

That’s certainly one school of interior design.

With the aid of a hammer, hanging hooks and the farm-girl biceps of my trusty sister-in-law, I played with light, colour, sentiment and balance and hung some pictures around the house, bringing the familiar to a new home.

Nothing nailed is ever permanent — that’s my motto du jour.

A Lawren Harris print, Yellow Sky & Blue Spruce. Picked it up at a fundraiser to protect the Oakridges Moraine. I like how it parallels the outdoor landscape.

A close-up is needed to do this print justice but I love its Asian flavour. Courtesy of my friend Mary who was raising funds for a Vietnamese health organization.

B.C. artist Tony Onley died a few years ago. Picked this up at a fundraiser back in my B.C. gov’t days. Again, a close-up is needed but I love the serene grays and taupes and as it’s a print of Montague Bay, Galiano Island, it’s akin to looking out the window.

I met Samir Sammoun at a gallery in Kleinberg. I love this pic — bright red poppies on a hillside in Lebanon. Reminds me of a visit I paid to my friend (another) Mary in Jordan.

The 10′ x 11′ tapestry by Joanna Staniszkis will hang on that vacant wall. I expect the tapestry reds and yellows to be picked up by those in the Sammoun’s painting.

Don’t know anything about this fellow, Bagslan. Picked up the painting at another Oakridges Moraine fundraiser.

Douglas Edwards is an Ontario artist who shows at a gallery in Kleinberg. We acquired this painting when we first moved to King Township — reminded us of the Manitoba interlake.

Backpacked this beauty home when I was travelling through China. Classic through-the-window view of bamboo — at least that’s how I understand its traditional composition.

My mother’s painting of Hecla Island (about two hours north of Winnipeg), a Steve Repa lady-in-red over by the kitchen, and poor Nikola Bjeljac waiting patiently by the stairs.

Another Bjeljac in the bedroom and a beautiful Ukrainian girl by Repa outside the study. A stuffed ocelot, sleeping bag and other paintings strewn on the floor.

And a couple more waiting for their moment of destiny with the hammer.

When I first looked at this house I was certain — certain! — I would not find enough room for paintings, with all that gosh-darn glass in the way.

There’s still a stash waiting but most of the faves are up and enjoyed.

Thanks for the help, Margaret!

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In the summertime…

Peculiar song that came out in the late 1960s.

In the summertime

when the weather is high

you can stretch right up

and touch the sky

*some verses later*

We go fishing or go swimming in the sea

We’re always happy

Life’s for living, yeah, that’s our philosophy.

Sing along with us

dee-dee-dee-dee-dee

Da-da-da-da-da-, yeah, we’re hap-happy

Oh, come on, now!

Why am I singing by myself?

Doesn’t anybody else know this song?

Mungo Jerry?

It’s a classic!

Anyway, had a happy weekend with my brother, his lovely bride and their beautiful daughters.

The beach, the sun, the water, the freedom — more than a few perfect summer moments.

What I heard wafting upstairs when the children were singing on their own was “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” John Denver.

John’s great, but he’s no Jerry Mungo.

Other favourite summertime songs you remember?

Or am I singing on my own again?

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I’ve been living in this new domicile for 16 days now. Rather than where I hang my hat, the place feels like a dwelling to which I’ve won custody for a still-to-be-determined length of time.

I see wires running over and under the ground, I see pipes and electrical outlets and switches and I don’t know from which spot they emanate nor what magical path they follow nor howtheheck I’m going to manage when something goes sideways.

But each morning I look out the windows with a substantial degree of awe.

A pair of red-headed woodpeckers showed up the other day. The population of Stellar’s Jays has increased from three to five — clearly word of our superior brand of peanuts has travelled the far reaches of the woods. Two fawns with their mama crashed about below the deck one day — and the subsequent day the rhubarb had been noshed to the ground.

My friend Mary recently departed her home of several years, a century home closer to its second hundred than its first. She remarked more than once that the home had not been hers, but rather that she was its guest, its custodian for as long as she would be there.

It was not hers.

Just as our children are not ours.

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.

Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

I didn’t ever get what Kahil Gibran was talking about when I first read this poem — a poem which was taped for months to our back-porch freezer door in the early ’70s. At 13 I hadn’t resided in a house with windows devoted to an ever-inspiring view of the Pacific ocean, nor had I gleaned that parenthood would entrap me with all its romantic moments of hugs, tears, stubbed toes, ER visits, kisses and declarations of undying love.

So maybe that’s why this house takes me to a different place. It’s so far off the dream radar it doesn’t register. The joy of two children traipsing about is always good, even on the days it isn’t.

It’s about cherishing where we are and what we have because it’s all a for a very short time.

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Huh? Who me?

Intruder alert! Intruder alert!

No predators in the form of coyotes, cougars or bears means huge numbers of deer wander the island, munching on whatever tasty morsels they find. Gardens surrounded by six feet or more of fencing MAY be safe from the marauding herbivores.

What? Cute little me? I’d never harm a fly.

Lock up your cabbages, folks. Bambi’s in town.

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Help wanted

We have a theme going on in the new house.

It’s not glass.

It’s not wide open spaces.

It’s a wee decorating dilemma.

A decorating dilemma that involves just about every room in the new abode.

Are you catching the flavour of my fear?

I came of age in the 70s.

Wood was big. Wool too. Beards. Beads. Granola.

Pottery.

The 80s, mind you, were all about padded shoulders, rouged cheeks, Dallas and big, brassy personalities.

Did someone say “Brassy?”

Help me, Rhonda!

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