In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning

Friday Ramble - August Musics

Here I am, trying to describe something in the great wide world that is quite beyond description. I know it is so, but I carry on anyway, and I make a complete shambles of the exercise. To be clear, this morning's sumptuous sky has no need of a old hen with camera and notebook, but I have to say something. To let such a dazzling moment pass without saying anything or writing a word about it would be shameful.

Northern skies on middle-to-late August mornings are intense happenings, early sunlight burnishing clouds into brilliance and lighting up contrails against skies that often as not have a touch of violet in them. Sometimes, everything up there looks like stained glass. There are high fluffy streaks from horizon to horizon, strands of light touching everything with copper and oro pallido, the pale lustrous gold that only visits the world at the beginning of day (although Tuscan skies sometimes held such wonders in late afternoon when I was a student there many years ago).

One needs a large brush to paint such sweeping confetti colored expanses, lenses that can take in the great wide world from here to there. My camera carrying exercises are brief at the moment because of the heat and humidity (mostly the humidity)  but I am already thinking of acquiring another lens or two, of visiting my local art supply shop and purchasing more tubes of scarlet, gold and indigo for my paint box.

What a show the cosmos puts on when Beau and I go out to greet these August mornings together. Barefoot, I sip my tea and try to capture a few images. My companion looks up at the sky and all around, his eyes round in wonder and his expressive tail waving like a metronome.

At dawn, flocks of Canada geese fly up from their night on the river and out into farm fields to feed. There is wave upon wave of happy honking as they pass over our heads. Their joyous, almost symphonic presence is a clear indication that summer is waning. For all that, there is magic everywhere, and there is music.

Late summer mornings are full of light and texture and color and sound. This is the traditional music of August, "the music of what happens" as the season draws to a slow and honeyed close. How amazing it all is, how poignant and how fleeting. My image and little net of words are shamefully lacking, but they will have to do.

In the Great Blue Bowl of Morning

We awaken to skies that would make an impressionist painter feel like dancing, to Canada geese singing in unison as they fly up from the river and out into farm fields to feed. This year's progeny sing loudest up there in the great blue bowl of morning. Their pleasure in being alive and aloft mirrors my own as I watch them with a mug of tea, eyes shielded from the rising sun with a sleepy hand.

Unseen below the sweeping strokes of vibrant color painted across the eastern sky are trees, hydro poles, rooflines and village streets, trucks and cars in rumbling motion, early runners in the park, commuters with lunch bags, bento boxes and briefcases heading downtown to another day at their desks.

On our morning walk, we (Beau and I) paused by a neighbor's fish pond to watch the white and scarlet koi finning their way around in circles. While there, we noticed that the first fallen maple leaves of the season had already drifted into the pool, making eddies and swirls and perfect round spirals on the glossy surface. No need to panic, it's not an early autumn, just summer heat setting a few leaf people free to ramble.

I would be a happy camper if I could paint skies like these, but I can't and the camera will have to do. What my lens "sees" is absolutely sumptuous though, and I am contented with my morning opus. Sky blue, rose, gold, violet and scarlet lodge in my wandering thoughts, and on the way home, I find myself thinking about throwing a bunch of clay bowls and glazing them in perfect sunrise colors. Such exercises are beyond my old fingers these days, but the thought lingers.

Wordless Wednesday - Catching the Sun

Male Swift River Cruiser (Macromia illinoiensis)

Wordless Wednesday - The Music of Summer Mornings

Wordless Wednesday - This Perfect Light

Heart of Gold

Sequestered, 346 (CCCXLVI)

Chilly Morning, First Cuppa

Sequestered, week 343 (CCCXLIII)

Bunch of Gladness

The Way We Were

... and the way we will (hopefully) be again in the not so distant future. This morning I am feeling nostalgic and rather wistful. Fog drifting through the coves of the eastern Ontario highlands is lovely stuff.  Getting another foot of snow overnight was not.

Sequestered, week 341 (CCCXLI)

Morning Through the Fence

Wordless Wednesday - Morning, Suspended

Friday Ramble - Winter Mornings Are Made of This

I lurch awake before sunrise and make coffee, then lean against the counter and wait for the day to begin. As always, there is the ardent hope that there will be sunlight, that the sun's rays will reach the kitchen window, passing between the slats of the wooden fence on the east side of the garden in their journey. Sometimes there is sunlight on these winter mornings, but much of the time, there is not.

A few weeks ago, I purchased a decent pair of sun specs for myself as a birthday gift, so given the puckish (and often downright contrary) attitude of the weather deities about such doings, we may not see sunlight here until April.

On we go, or rather trudge. I inhale a lovely hot mug of caffeinated black stuff, bundle up in every warm garment I own and lurch outside to move snow from thresholds, verandas and walkways. With a little luck, the north wind will not turn up and put everything back where it was when I started. There has been a lot of wind here in recent days though, and it probably will.

In a week or so, our days will begin to stretch out languorously, but it will be a month or two before real change can be seen and felt in the sun's trajectory through old wooden fences, icy window panes and snow crowned shrubbery. The light is oro pallido this morning, pale buttery gold with a hint of mother-of-pearl.

Some mornings, skies are breathtaking at dawn, their deep blue shading gloriously to pink and gold and purple near the horizon, but the weather is wickedly cold for the most part. Thermometer readings of -30 degrees (Celsius) are not unusual around here in December. Whatever the thermometer says, there is a fine elusive old truth resting out there in the interstices between earth and sky at dawn, in the dance of light and shadow in the snowbound landscape.

On woodland rambles, I trace sharp lines of shadow in the white stuff with my eyes, measure the changes in their inclination from day to day. Warmer, brighter times are already on their way, but we have a very long way to go before they get here, and sometimes spring seems years away rather than months. Until it gets here, I have resolved to look for dancing motes of light in the world around me every time I go out. Perhaps I will encounter a few within myself too.

As we potter along, we (Beau and I) try to remember that deep within their dreaming roots, the trees in our beloved woodland cradle the light.

Rattle and Hum

It is still dark outside, and through the window comes the clatter of the wind skating across the roof with its freight of frozen twigs, the sound of small icicles crashing in shards on the deck, trees in the garden shaking their snow garments loose in a long slow dance. Light snow is falling, but the descending white stuff makes no sound, at least from in here. In the kitchen, there is the burble and hiss of the De'Longhi coffee machine, the rattle and hum of the old refrigerator in the corner.

By rights, there should be the sound of the toaster too, but it will be a while until I can even think about toast or waffles This is "bang up" weather for migraines, and I have awakened with one. I thought about doing prescription meds when I opened my eyes but have opted for a beaker of industrial strength espresso instead. Just holding it and breathing in its scent is comforting.

The stuff in my cup is as black as night and has the consistency of solid propellant rocket fuel. It could be dispatched with a fork. Steam rises in arty curls from the inky lagoon, and a splendid creamy froth floats on the surface. The fragrance of the freshly ground Logdriver Espresso from Bridgehead is ambrosial and so are the glossy beans in their canister. Headache or no, I consider drawing pictures in the foam.

Why is it my thoughts always turn to Paris when the weather is like this? With beaker in hand, I look through my collection of Cavallini rubber stamps, vintage postcards, stickers and notebooks - the little ones with maps of France, fleurs-de-lis, French postage stamps, the Arc de Triomphe, the Louvre museum, Notre-Dame Cathedral or the Eiffel Tower gracing their covers.

When the migraine has expired in my espresso sea, I will curl up in a corner and read something in French, perhaps the latest Fred Vargas. Yup, I can do this.

Frost and Morning Field

Early December days in this corner of the world are all too short, and they are cold. The wind is icy on our old bones, and they protest their ordeal.

One is grateful for small things in the dark days of the year.  The frozen grass is crunchy underfoot, and the frosted trees on the edge of the field are skeletal, but oh, the morning light. Everything sings and dances. Everything sparkles.

The Solstice is only a few weeks away, and thank the Old Wild Mother, daylight will return after that, little by little. We (Beau and I) reckon we can do this darkling stuff, and by golly, we will. There will be creaking and grumbling until then, but we will drink in the scant light of these dusky days as if it is a fine French brandy.

When December 21 arrives, we will be jubilant, and we will be downright silly. We will lurch about in wobbly gladness and try not to fall over.

Wordless Wednesday - First Light

Morning in the Park