Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
making November warm #2
From my childhood, I have considered November ‘the bleak month.’ The days are cold, without the mollifying effect of snow. Trees have lost their leaves and leaves on the ground have lost their colour. Days are short and nights are long. Christmas seems so far away.
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As an adult, I have battled ‘bleak November’ in various ways. #1 is to spend time with family and friends. #2 is to turn my creative impulses to sewing and making quilts, always a warming activity.
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I am not an expert seamstress by any definition. My stitches are long and uneven and my quilts are usually too short, rarely reaching from head to toe. But I love fabric designs and colours, and I love the feel of various fabrics.
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One of the quilts I grew up with was a butterfly quilt, made by my maternal grandmother. Somehow I acquired a couple of extra butterfly blocks she made. Perhaps she was intending to make another butterfly quilt. Her stitches are small and even, the envy of any serious quilter. The blocks are at least 65 years old, probably more.
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When I was going to yard sales regularly, I happened across three more butterfly panels and some cut-out butterflies, ready for the needle. Two of these blocks were not as well executed as those of my grandmother; one was very well done and quite charming (see the yellow block, below). Together they suggested a finished quilt.
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This fall I have finished appliquéing the cut-out butterflies to a top for the quilt. Rather than prepare blocks, I scattered them across a background of tiny blue flowers. Side by side, my appliquéd butterfly and one of my grandmother’s show you what a poor seamstress I really am.
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However, I finished the quilt top and in the first week of November, I have added the batt and lower side of the quilt. Last night I finished binding the quilt.
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I often make my quilts for someone I know or for a particular room in my house. This quilt is for me. I will use it all winter to keep the chills away and make my corner of the couch a little cosier. Be gone, ‘bleak November!’
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All my best wishes
for a cosy winter,
Jane
awash in wild flowers!!!!!
I just got a lovely gift for myself, ‘New Brunswick Wild Flowers,’ a colouring book produced by the Connell Memorial Herbarium at the University of New Brunswick. Created by Elizabeth Mills in 2021, this is a book to take you on an expedition throughout the province, month by month, season by season.
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Edited by Friends of the Herbarium, each page presents a wildflower in black and white, a brief description, and a small photo to help get the colours just right! The plants are presented by name as well, including names in English, French, Wolastoqiyik, Mi’kmaq and Latin.
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If you’d like a book of your own, just click here, and order one from Blurb.ca
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a flower just now in bloom
by the covered bridge
in Rusagonis!
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All my best as you hunt for wild flowers!!!
Jane
drawings of waterfalls
For me, a waterfall is the most beautiful expression of water on the landscape. The feeling of water droplets on your face, the sound of splashing water, the sight of sunlight on fast-moving water. I have tried to capture these in my collection of waterfall poems a glimpse of water fall. The book includes forty-four poems and twenty-three pencil drawings of waterfalls and other water scenes.
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We have many beautiful waterfalls here in New Brunswick. Over the years I have visited quite a few. In New Brunswick, we are lucky to have two great resources for lovers of waterfalls: a great guide by Nicholas Guitard (Waterfalls of New Brunswick: A Guide, now in its Second Edition, Goose Lane Publications), and a very active Facebook Group – Waterfalls of New Brunswick.
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My poetry book about waterfalls, ‘a glimpse of water fall,’ is now available from Westminster Books in Fredericton and from Amazon (click here). Enjoy!
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All my best,
Jane
garden escapes: starting a project
This summer, one of my main occupations will be to work on a collection of poems about garden escapes. Specifically, this means abandoned gardens, plants left behind when homes or communities are abandoned. This work is being supported by a Creations Grant from artsnb.
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I have a short mantra to refer to these abandoned plants: “die, thrive or escape.” In a way, the project theme can be used as a metaphor for any abandonment. For example, when someone abandons a relationship, the one left behind can languish, or pick up and start over, or just leave, find a place to start over. I will be watching for these metaphors throughout my project.
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For today, I have to arrange my materials and get started with a plan for my project.
- To start I have my grant application (outlines what I intend to do), a bit of reconnaissance work I did in 2018 to develop some ideas for the project, six blog posts from that time and eight older poems that fit the theme.
orange day-lilies, found in many of new Brunswick’s ditches, are escapes from older gardens
- To identify abandoned communities, I can refer to information sources and databases developed by others: the Facebook pages Abandoned New Brunswick and New Brunswick Upon Days Faded where interested people post photos and short anecdotes about abandoned houses and buildings; the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick website called Place Names of New Brunswick: Where is Home? New Brunswick Communities Past and Present https://archives.gnb.ca/Exhibits/Communities/Home.aspx?culture=en-CA; additional information on communities will be available in Census Records at https://www.ancestry.ca/; various maps including the New Brunswick Atlas (Second Edition); Google Earth and the associated Street View; maps posted in the Facebook page New Brunswick Upon Days Faded; the Walling Map of 1862 which I have used in other projects, F. Walling, Topographical Map of the Counties of St. John and Kings New Brunswick: From Actual Surveys under the direction of H. F. Walling (Publishers W.E. and A.A. Baker, New York, 1862); and, the Monograph about place-names in New Brunswick, Ganong, William F. A Monograph of the Place-Nomenclature of the Province of New Brunswick. Transactions of the Royal Society of Canada: Second Series 1896-97, Volume II, Section II. 1896.
a sample of the Walling Map for an area in Kings County, New Brunswick. The map shows individual buildings and houses from 1862.
- For anecdotal stories about the gardeners and their gardens, I plan to use the resources of the Provincial Archives of New Brunswick since often diaries and other documents contain amazing bits of information about New Brunswick history. Obtaining anecdotal information about abandoned gardens is tricky during the time of COVID-19 since social distancing means ordinary interviewing is not easy. I will use the websites above to obtain some information and, where possible, talk to people I encounter. I will create a Facebook Page called Abandoned New Brunswick Gardens to obtain some of these stories.
- For plant identification, I have my own skills as a botanist and my trusty guides: Harold R. Hinds, Flora of New Brunswick, Second Edition: A Manual for Identification of the Vascular Plants of New Brunswick, University of New Brunswick, 2000; A. E. Roland and E. C. Smith, The Flora of Nova Scotia, Nova Scotia Museum, 1969; Roger Tory Peterson and Margaret McKenny, A Field Guide to Flowers of Northeastern and North-central North America, 1968; and the website The Plant List: A Working List of all Plant Species (this is to verify plants names since I use older plant guides). http://www.theplantlist.org/
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My methodology is simple:
- identify possible abandoned homes and communities and create an efficient plan to visit these places
- drive to these locations and look for plant species that may be garden remnants
- photograph the sites and plants
- make notes about the sites, the plants encountered and various sensations encountered (sight, smell, taste, touch and sound)
- do pencil drawings of some plants and locations
- obtain any anecdotal or archived information about the former communities, their gardens and their gardeners
- write the poems using all the information collected
I am going to write mostly free verse but I will also use some poetic forms, for example the ghazal and the pantoum.
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Sounds like fun!
Viper’s bugloss (Echium vulgare) is an introduced plant in New Brunswick. These are plants found on the New Ireland Road in Albert County, New Brunswick. In 1866, there were 68 families in the community (Source: NB Archives); today all the houses are gone.
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I will keep you up to date on my adventures and show you some of the plants I find. If you know of any abandoned gardens in New Brunswick, or abandoned communities, please let me know! I will acknowledge you in my book!
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This work is supported by a Creation Grant from artsnb (the New Brunswick Arts Board)!
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All my best,
stay safe,
Jane
Pareidolia
pareidolia: the tendency to perceive a specific, often meaningful image in a random or ambiguous visual pattern
(Merriam-Webster Dictionary)
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When you look at marble, or at clouds in the sky, or bubbles in a glass of milk, do you see faces? Can you see The Man in the Moon? Pareidolia refers to the seeing of human faces or other images where they don’t exist. Pareidolia is a normal human tendency.
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I often see images in the marble patterns of our flooring. It can be quite entertaining. Mostly, I see animals. I think it is the biologist in me!
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Perhaps aliens also have pareidolia. In my upcoming book Meniscus: The Knife, I devote a chapter to this phenomenon. On planet Meniscus, there is a dirth of paper. One of my early characters, Ning, made paper from plant fibres for her girlfriend Kathryn, an artist. By Meniscus: The Knife, Book 8 in the series, (spoiler alert) only three sheets of Ning’s paper remain. Don-est, the alien child, wants to draw, so Kathryn shows her how to draw on the marble walls of the dwellings in the Village.
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Vicki sets her laundry
on the marble floor.
Tries to see
what Don’est is doing.
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As her eyes adjust
to smoky light,
she sees markings on the walls.
Drawings of bug-eyed evernells
and fuzzy elginards.
A slear-snake
with myriad eyes.
A cardoth moon,
slim sickle
of glowing white
in marble green.
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Don’est feels eyes on her.
Swivels her neck.
“What do you think
of my drawings?”
she says.
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“What are you doing?”
says Vicki.
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“I asked Kathryn for paper
but she has only a sheet or two
of the paper Ning made.
“So she showed me
an idea she had.
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“The marble walls,
you see,
have hidden secrets.
Lines and shadows
look like evernells
and Humans and slear-snakes
and grammid trees.”
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Vicki looks
at faint green lines on the walls.
Sees an old man in the pattern.
A thready waterfall.
A leaf-bare tree,
branches reaching for sky.
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“But what are you using to draw?”
she says.
“
Eyebrow pencil.
Kathryn and Ning
found it on a transport
long ago.”
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All my best,
staying at home,
drawing on the floors and walls,
Jane
ice
As I go over the many poems I have written over the years, I find a lot of poems about ice. Ice is very poem-worthy. It glitters and drips. It is cold and changes form. Icicles make great popsicles (if they are dripping from a clean surface). Ice can be a metaphor for emotion, life experience, change, danger, and so on.
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Today we had a high of 7 degrees C and all the snow and ice are melting. Not really sad to see them go this year.
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river ice
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builds in shallows
at the rim of river, incremental
embellishment to transparent sheets
of glass, ice envelopes winter
remnants, reeds and willows
thickness increased as frost
penetrates, sharp edges
cauterized by cold
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freezing rain
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trees, bare branches, wait
wood snaps in the stove
budgies peck at cuttle bone
pellets of rain, tossed
at the skylight
a second transparency
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bare twigs turn in wind
distribute their coating
in these last moments
before temperature turns
the snowpack on the picnic table
shrinks at the edges
shoves over, makes room
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branches gloss so gradually
candles dipped in a vat of wax
over and over, acquiring thickness
the sky, through the skylight
dimpled tile, rumpled mosaic
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rain stipples bark as narrative
appends to memory, pane here,
light there, layers of glass
cedar twigs turn downward
as fingers, ice builds
layers of skin
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All my best
(staying home!)
Jane
collections
In this age of “simplify, simplify” I cling to my collections. I collect paintings of poppies, tomatoware, botanical sculptures made of tin, books by various authors, and so on. I believe that collections are part of our identity; the things we collect explain elements of personality and history. Collections are probably a remnant of our ancient need to explore and understand our environment.
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I think other animals share this need to collect. Many rodents collect and hoard food and nesting materials. Some of this behavior is practical, ensuring plenty in lean times. However, I think some animals have a more frivolous need to collect.
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Recently, we moved the library in our house to another floor. Moving the contents of an entire room is a great opportunity to sort and clean. We have had mice in our house on at least three occasions in 40 years of our lives here. So I was not surprised to find a little mouse hoard in one hidden corner of the room.
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I was surprised at the contents of the hoard: one bright pink blood pressure pill, one pale pink cholesterol pill and one pale pink button. A mouse with a colour preference!
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all my best,
Jane
coming in March: next book in the Kaye Eliot Mystery Series
The next book in the Kaye Eliot Mystery Series will be released at the end of March. Something the Sundial Said continues the adventures of Kaye and her family, first seen in How Her Garden Grew. To catch up, get a copy of How Her Garden Grew (click here).
Something the Sundial Said:
“In 1995, Kaye and her young family attend a country auction, never dreaming the stone sundial in the garden is the site of a century-old murder. They end up buying the house and property but someone else buys the sundial. Then Kaye finds a diary written in 1880, chronicling the days leading up to the murder.
When Kaye reads the diary, she decides to search for the sundial and return it to the property. And she follows clues in the diary to discover who shot Rodney in the sundial garden.
At every corner, she is outmaneuvered by a local genealogist who is anxious to obtain the diary and keep information damaging to her family hidden. The woman will go to ridiculous lengths to obtain the diary, even stalking Katie, Kaye’s teenaged daughter. As Kaye discovers someone is entering her house at night to find the diary, she wonders who she can trust.”
Here is the cover art for Something the Sundial Said:
Cover art for How Her Garden Grew:
All my best,
Jane
nichepoetryandprose 