Welcome 2020!
The strength within that allows you to bend with circumstance is the same strength that keeps you from breaking.
Jozsef Gerencser, 1867-1919 (my great-grandfather)
Happy New Year! May 2020 bring you joy and strength within!
HOLIDAYS
Hello there!
As 2019 winds down, I would like to thank you for your loyalty and support this year. It means so much to me to read your comments and know that what I’m sending out is being received!
Heartfelt Christmas greetings to you and yours, no matter what you celebrate this time of year. My very best wishes for a healthy and joyful 2020. I will see you back here in January, with new poetry art, articles and posts that I hope you’ll enjoy.
As my final offering of 2019, I have for you one of my award-winning poems. Here’s Christmas Baking.
Love
Lee Ann
CHANGE IN THE AIR
Hello there!
Can you feel it yet? The change of season happened in my neighbourhood last Wednesday. I awoke to a difference in the air: a particular freshness, a unique clarity that characterizes autumn air, lighter than the least-humid day summer can provide.
Usually for me, this change during September marks a kind of new year, a leftover from my school days, of course. I remember the fragrance of new paper, binders and pencil crayons! Ahhh… 🙂
This year, I am delaying my “back to routine” until mid-month, after returning from a getaway to Fort McMurray and Canmore, Alberta. (Two places I insist every Canadian should visit – and I do tend to carry on emphatically about both places, just warning you!)
Once I do get back, I’ll be finishing three writing projects, which will take me through to the end of the year. And I can honestly say I have no idea what creative project(s) I’ll take on next. So many of my passionate pursuits have been completed in the last year or so!
Ever been in this situation? It’s not a first for me either. I know enough to know that something will grab my attention and I’ll be off again. Meantime, some reflection and some creative questioning are in order.
This month’s poem helped me express this “state of in between” where I currently find myself. It was inspired by a different kind of scene than I usually write from. I was in Niagara on the July 1 weekend when I spotted this and said to my sister, “Oh, that’s a poem!” Hope you enjoy “Sidewalk Ends.”
Lee Ann
INTERPRETATION
Hello there! I hope your summer has been sunny and relaxing so far.
I’ve assigned myself some rest and rejuvenation time this season, with an eye to the writing projects I have on deck for the fall and winter. So for now, I’m reading and re-reading some Canadian historical fiction (more on that soon) and generally allowing a pace of life that gives me plenty of time to take in the sky, the backyard view, and a few local events.
Ah, summer!
Meanwhile, at the owaa gallery where I display some of my artwork, is an exhibition that I’m particularly excited about. It’s called “Interpretations,” where members were invited to interpret a photograph of Blakeney Rapids by owaa President John Edkins. You can see that photo on the main page of John’s website.
The resulting interpretations (for those members who took up the challenge) are fabulous in all their variations. I’d like to invite you to have a look, either in person at the CardelRec Recreation Complex in Stittsville, or virtually via the owaa website. Please consider this an opportunity to relax for a few moments and see what one piece of art can spark in other people. Who knows – maybe this will trigger some latent creativity in you!
My take on John’s photo can be seen at the gallery, or here.
I’ll be back here next month. Hope you will too!
Lee Ann
YEAR OF THE TROLLIUS
Hello there!
Hope all is well in your neighbourhood. Ottawa’s spring has been slow to arrive, cold and very wet. Today is the third day IN A ROW without any rain (well, maybe a thunderstorm later today…) People have been grumbling, but one result in local gardens is a remarkable showing of Trollius. Known as globeflower, this perennial gem has been a resident in my back yard for at least a decade. It usually flowers, but not in the showstopping way it has this year: bright yellow lollipop blooms perch atop four-foot high stems, little beacons of colour beside the fading Alliums. Give it just the right conditions: new space in the garden where a tree used to overshadow it, lots of moisture, cool temps, and WOW.
Makes me think about how we all have our moments in life, when conditions are just right for us to shine. Do you know what these conditions are for you? Is this your season, your phase, your moment? What are the ingredients, the situations, the elements, that make things just right for you?
For me it’s important to be creating new things: garden designs, stories, articles, poems, photographs. This is what feeds me. Nature is a key ingredient, as those of you who follow this blog already know. So is history, particularly of the places that are meaningful to me: like Niagara Falls, where I was born and lived for the first 12 years of my life. On a recent weekend there, I was once again inspired by the mighty Niagara River (sorry, Ottawa and Rideau, you’re not quite at the same level of spectacular!)
I hope you can find or make for yourself the conditions that feed and inspire you! Meanwhile, here’s the latest poem with photo, called “If You Fall.”
Lee Ann
THE TWO FACES OF SPRING 2019
Hello there!
After many false starts and a cruel false promise that the snow-pack would melt slowly, Spring unleashed ferocious flooding in both Ottawa and Muskoka, my two home places. Our own properties are dry and safe, but many people endured evacuations during the past couple of weeks and now face despairing restorations of their homes and cottages.
So I begin this season – typically my favourite of the year – with mixed emotions. Sadness and helplessness stirred together with hope, as Nature starts to offer gentle, warm days and that gorgeous new green of unfurling leaves. Bitter-sweet this year.
This month’s poem has that same mix of emotion, which I thought was fitting for the kind of spring we are having in my neighbourhoods.
May you always find hope emerging!
Here’s Minds and Hearts.
Lee Ann