After the Rain

The day had been hot and muggy. Then - a sudden downpour!

When it stopped raining, we headed home.

As we drove down Bronson Avenue, the buildings were bathed in pink light.

Construction sites looked like burned-out buildings.

Driving down Prince of Wales Drive, through the experimental farm, I turned this way and that, snapping pictures with my phone, trying to capture the best view.

But it was impossible!.

They were all amazing!

Tiny Yard Ornaments

My daughter, who lives in south-western Ontario, often goes running in her neighborhood... Rushing down the street, she admires the lovely old homes but doesn't notice tiny details...

Recently, as she was walking down these same city streets, her attention was drawn to tinier things - yard ornaments at the foot of trees...

Fairy gardens!













What tiny creatures live here?!!

What a fun way to decorate a garden!

After googling the term “fairy gardens” I came across this cute idea... A garden in a teacup!

So cute! It would even fit on an indoor window sill.

Enjoying... Cars

I'm not a "car person," - but I do enjoy looking at old cars that I remember from my childhood.

One of our neighbors is into restoring antique cars... He often parks them in his driveway...

But they are painted brighter colors than the black ones of my childhood...

Very occasionally I see a modern car that I really like...

I have no idea what kind of car this is - but it oozes power and determination!

Terry and I followed it along the highway for a while - until it left us behind!

Now that is a beautiful car!

Appreciation!

Twenty years ago - at the turn of the century (and the millennium!) - this was the front page of our newspaper in Ottawa... I came across it in a pile of basement keepsakes...

Thank you for this beautiful world! the cover reads...

Twenty years later, I totally agree!

Unusual Log Cabin Quilt Design

One of the first quilts I ever made was a log cabin quilt... long, thin "log" strips of fabric sewn around a central square "chimney." Traditionally, two sides of each square have darker colored "logs" than the other two lighter colored ones. Like a "log cabin" in the sunlight - two sides are in the light and two are in the shade. These light-dark "log cabin" squares can be placed in interesting patterns to make a lovely quilt.

I was surprised, however, when I saw a totally different kind of "log cabin" on the cover of this book... Modern Log Cabin Quilting by Susan Beal: How were these "log cabin" crosses created?! 

Fortunately our public library had the book and I was able to borrow it... It turns out that each cross is made of four identical log cabin squares... placed in such a way that they form a cross. Really different!

A second log cabin design really intrigued me: This blue and yellow pillow: Yellow "chimney" squares surrounded by strips of blue.

These are two patterns I'd really like to try!

What could it be?!

I was browsing in a gift shop when I saw a display of these little guys, in various colors... (To get a sense of size, he's perched on the edge of my laptop.)

What could it be?

A cute ornament made of rubber...?

Propped on the edge of a bowl of cherry tomatoes, he looks like he's diving in!

When I was told that they're kitchen tools meant to prop lids open, I just had to have one!

I don't really need one... (I've been propping lids open all these years without one...)

But they're so cute!

Maybe I should have bought a few more as gifts!

Enthusiasm for Life!

My mother left a pile of diaries, daily logs noting what she did each day.

As I look through them, deciding what to keep or discard, I'm struck by her enthusiasm for life!

Enthusiasm makes everything so much more fun...

Is it a gift? Or a choice? I wonder...

Hmmm. Probably a little of both...

Was it because she never mentioned what was annoying her or how her day was going? Just what she did...

(Unlike her, I sometimes use daily journaling for venting!!)

I think my mother tried to make the best of every situation - and made a point of looking on the bright side of life...

Red Sky at Night...

Sunsets seem to come from the north, rather than the west, these days!

Here is one I captured as we were driving along a major east-west road, near Ottawa's Experimental Farm.

Red sunsets always remind me of the traditional sailors' rhyme:

Red sky at night, 
Sailors delight.

I like to think that sailors know their weather, so I can trust that tomorrow will be another lovely day.

Beautiful Sky!

I'm so thankful that the chair I sit in as I type up my blog posts is directly opposite a west-facing window...

Often, looking up from my computer, I catch sight of an astonishingly beautiful sky...

Where are my paints when I need them?! Maybe I should have a permanent easel set up facing the window... But could I do the scene justice? Could I paint fast enough?!

If I ever had time to create another blog (and I don't!) I'd be tempted to do wordless posts -  featuring only photographs of the sky!

Wooden Statue

Strange to be driving down the highway...

... and suddenly see a person (or a realistic statue) standing on the back of a pickup truck!

I wonder where he is heading - and who made him!

(It would be interesting to come across him again in his new home!)

The World: A Different Point of View

I have never had any interest in space travel, but the views must be amazing! I was recently sent this link to a NASA film - " a series of time lapse sequences photographed by the Expedition 30 crew aboard the International Space Station." It gives a taste of what astronauts see when they orbit around the world, The first time I viewed it, I was struck by the amazing sights.Then I noticed the names of the places I was seeing in the bottom left hand corner...

How could one look at scenes like that through the window day after day and not begin to see the world in an entirely different way?!

ELEGANT... at 100!

My daughter forwarded me this You Tube clip - a photographer she admires taking pictures of a beautiful woman... who just turned 100!

(I'd love to look that good right now!)

Gnomes Having Fun

Garden gnomes have been around for a long time. A while back, I read about one that had traveled the world...


















Ours hasn't led such an adventuresome life, never having been outdoors. (It sits on a bedroom shelf.)














It appears that gnomes are as popular as ever... Just today I saw this gnome T-shirt: "Chillin' with my gnomies."

Gnomes still capture the imagination!

After Rain

We've had a hot, dry summer, so the rain of the past few days is very welcome...

This evening, just as I was planning to go out for a little stroll, a shower passed by, then came a break in the clouds!














Here and there, the light shone through...














Awe-inspiring!














And to think - I'd have missed it if I'd stayed indoors!

No Two Snowflakes the Same?

I've heard that no two snowflakes are exactly the same... an amazing thought, considering the number of snowflakes that fall in any given snowstorm, let alone any given winter! This is one of those ideas that can't be proven - and I know skeptics exist...

When I was teaching, one of the articles my students and I enjoyed discussing explained the difference between snow and hail... From my students, I learned that - although snow is unknown in many warm countries - even hot climates experience hail. Hail apparently even falls in Saudi Arabian deserts.

The article we read in class mentioned that snow forms around a tiny speck of dust which absorbs water as it moves up and down at various altitudes in a cloud, absorbing more moisture (and changing shape) until it falls. Hail has similar origins. And since no two snowflakes (or hailstones) experience exactly the same journey - and form under different conditions, even within the same cloud - none turn out to be exactly the same as any other.














I really don't know who is right in this "Are-no-two-snowflakes-the-same?" debate - the skeptics or the believers - but I side with the believers. Not because I have any special scientific knowledge that makes me an expert on snowflakes - even though I do see a lot of them every winter! But because God - in nature - doesn't duplicate anything! Our genetic make-up and our experiences combine to make each of us completely unique. (We would, in fact, be amazed to encounter someone exactly like us anywhere! It would be news around the world if we did!)

Isn't this the same for all animals and plants?... No two dogs, cats, trees are ever exactly the same - even when they come from the same parents (or in the case of the trees grow from seeds from the same parent-tree). Variety is everywhere...

One of the areas I find most fascinating in creative variety is music. You'd think that music styles would stay the same - or at least recycle - over the ages, but as I listen to medieval Gregorian Chants - and contemporary Christian music (to choose a small segment of the vast musical spectrum), I am amazed at how music evolves... No re-runs here!

Creativity creates unique creations... not cookie-cutter copies.

That is my awesome thought for the day!

Awesome Things

One of the blogs I follow is entitled 1000 Awesome Things. It's fun to turn to and see what "awesome" detail the young Toronto man who authors this blog focuses on every day - in appreciation of the many joys of life!

I have had a few awesome things happen to me over the past few days... and I have the internet to thank for them! One was reconnecting with two old friends - from my Israel days - via Facebook. I had been the maid of honor at the wedding of one friend 40 years ago! Hearing how they were doing after all this time was truly awesome!

The second awesome thing happened to me the other evening while I was checking my gmail (email) account and reading an interesting online article my daughter had forwarded to me... Suddenly a chat box popped up. (It is possible for two people with gmail accounts to type messages back and forth and "chat" if they happen to be online at the same time.)

There was my son - the traveler - in Geneva... "Hi Mom, Are you there...?" So for the next half hour we "chatted" back and forth, typing questions and answers to each other... It was 5 pm in Ottawa and 11 pm in Geneva - we were 6053 kilometers / 3761 miles apart - yet the text kept popping up with hardly any time lapse between - so fast! It was truly awesome!

Bridging time and distance - connecting me with people from my past (in Israel) and my son (an ocean and a continent away) - the internet is truly awesome!

PS - And if you want to calculate distances between places anywhere in the world, here is a website that is awesome too!!