The mild month of May is over...
It was a lovely month.
June is a blank page!
It's hard to fit everything I want to remember into my daily rectangle.
I now wish I had added sketches of flowers in bloom in our garden. Should I start now? Or wait till next spring?!
Do I even have room for one more thing?!
Decisions!
March 2026 - for me was a month of WAITING...
Waiting for Easter, as I moved through the 40 days of Lent...
Waiting for MORE Hours of DAYLIGHT - and MORE WARM WEATHER.
Squirrels appear here and there on my calendar - and there was one early morning rabbit spotting. But no green buds appeared on trees.
Hopefully they'll appear on April's blank page!
I think I've found my style...
I especially enjoyed trying to capture the colour of each day's sky.
Next month's daily squares will have to be smaller - since there will be an extra half week!
Noticing and noting help me remember!
(And, of course, the weather!)
Now - a year later...
... as I look at other phenology wheels I find online...
... I wonder if there's anything else I'd like to include...
The weather remains my main preoccupation, probably because it affects my mood and my energy level. And it's always there.
But I might also like to note the colour of the sky! And the length of our daylight hours... Not sure how I'd do that - on one tiny segment of paper - but to me, they're real mood boosters.
I truly admire those who paint - or embroider - beautiful detailed pictures. But I don't think I could do that... every day!
So I plan to play around with different formats for a while. I don't want to stop entirely. I would also like to make a colourful depiction.
I realize that the more I take note of the world around me, the more aware of it I become. And I don't want to lose that awareness!
I finally completed my phenology calendar for November 2025.
As I coloured in the month's daily temperatures, I realized that they didn't fluctuate all that much, hovering around the freezing mark, sometimes a few degrees above, sometimes a few degrees below.
Fewer, if any, animal sightings are noted.
There were fewer sunny days in November than in October. It was a cloudy grey month.
Looking back at my first phenology calendar, January, 2025, I was astounded by the many colours that jumped out at me!
Did I have more enthusiasm back then?! I wonder! Or did I just use more colourful pens and crayons?
Anne - who introduced me to phenology calendars - has shared her July one with me.
So beautiful! A work of art! A mix of animal, insect and plant life she encountered last month - as well as temperatures and weather.
I didn't see as many bugs - or animals - as Anne did last month. Apart from daily black squirrel sightings, occasional small red ones and mostly female cardinals, I did see a solitary skunk wander through our yard early one morning. Terry also pointed out a young rabbit one evening.
Insect-wise, two moths - one very large, one small, clung to our screens but didn't get into the house. I also saw a few 🐝 bees in our flower beds... Then there was the wasp nest Terry got rid of.
Most notable to me this month were the sunny days and the hot weather! It rained a few times, but only once was it cloudy all day. We had heat warnings and tornado warnings - but I only began to note those mid-month.
All in all, it was a beautiful month - hardly any smoke in the air from distant forest fires. But it was hot! I definitely appreciated our air conditioner!
How much of all this did I get on my calendar?! Not enough! But... I did get some. And I am so thankful to be surrounded by nature, even here in a city of a million people!
June ended so quickly this year. I must have been busy... - then suddenly we were in July!
I finished my June phenology calendar a few days later...
My observations: This year, in Ottawa, June was very hot and sunny. In fact, a little too hot on some days!
The "longest day" wasn't simply June 21, which some call the first day of summer. The "longest day" here in Ottawa was June 23 when there was 15 hours and 41 minutes between sunrise and sunset. But for 15 days, from June 14-28, there wasn't much change. Some days, none.
I marked with yellow the 15 day period when the daylight hours didn't change much - moving from 15 hours and 39 minutes to 15 hours and 41 minutes and back again over a 2-week period.
(Before long, we'll be losing 2 and 3 minutes of daylight a day!)
In those early summer days, it sometimes felt as if time were standing still!
I've been going through photos I took this winter - and it occurs to me that I've been BUSY! (In any event, I took a lot of pictures.)
BUT ... there's so much I often do in winter - like pottery and painting - and for some reason, I was busy without them!
Now that speing is here, I'm a little disappointed there is so much on my "to-do" list that I DIDN'T ACCOMPLISH: things like tidying, quilting, reading, knitting...
What did I do?! I did go walking for an hour or so most days. I did participate in a weekly Lenten study group for a month and a half. (That took about an hour a week.) I did spend half an hour at the gym once or twice a week. I did visit with family and friends - but not THAT much - not daily or even weekly... unless I count phone calls...
Did I spend too much time following the news?! Did I spend too much time playing Wordle and solitaire?!
What happened?!! Am I just wasting my time?? Or... am I "slowing down"?!
How was your week, Mom? My younger son asked me on Friday evening.
I tried to think...But I couldn't remember...
Finally I said: I don't know. It was busy... (But it was embarrassing, not remembering ANYTHING!!)
Later, I began to think about his question, annoyed that a whole week had passed and nothing had jumped to mind! The whole week was a blur.
Maybe I should jot down notes, like my mother used to do, to remind myself of what I do every day. I come across my mother's little notebook diaries when I go through her things. No personal thoughts - just what she did, the people she talked to.
The Jesuits make a daily practice of remembering what they spend their time doing, pausing to ask themselves if it was a "consolation" or a "desolation." In other words, did it draw them nearer to God or farther from Him?
Would having a daily habit like that enhance my memory?
Finally, I did remember a few things. Most days I walked for an hour at the mall. I also managed to get to the gym several times.
I read the news about fires in Maui, remembering the island and some of the people we met when we were there, wondering how they are.
Later in the week, the fires in Kelowna were on my mind. I thought about my relatives who live there and contacted some of them, to find out how they were doing. Fortunately all were safe.
One of my cousins shared this photo of the view from her house. No surprise she isn't sleeping well! Seeing it makes the situation so real.
Other less important things gradually came to mind: I wondered whether to sign up for a pottery session in fall. I checked the courses listed online but there was a technical glitch in the online registration system so I didn't sign up.
I spent some time on my two current yarn projects...
And I began a new book about Canadian knitting, entitled "Untangling Canada."
I didn't do much cooking or cleaning.
Glad I remembered A FEW things I'd done! I was a little worried!
I don't remember where I saw this - a few months ago. (Tap on it to enlarge it.)
It made me smile!
I guess there are times when we're ALL too busy!
A few days ago, I woke up at 3 am. Unable to sleep, I got up to read for a while. Then I went back to bed.
When I woke up again at 8 am, sunlight was streaming in through the windows. How wonderful! A sunny day!
But when I tried to lift myself up to get out of bed, I could barely move. My neck was stiff and hurt every time I turned my head!
What to do?! First I looked online for some exercises to ease the pain. It was there that I found these two lists of injuries - childhood and adult.
There it was, on the top of the list of adult injuries: Slept wrong!
Day one: I attempted to live my normal life. Did my normal hour-long walk at the mall - at a slightly slower pace - but tried to keep moving. I read somewhere that it's better to keep the body moving than to sit still.
The next day, the pain was worse. I decided to do the exact opposite: just move a little, wrapped up in my warmest indoor clothing. From time to time, I'd do a few neck stretches - slowly turn my head left or right and try to look at my armpit.
Day three: a slight improvement. Maybe rest is a better way to heal. Maybe naps - with a hot water bottle warming my sore spots - is what I need.
Day four: Happily back to normal again.
I’ll list them here, in case anyone would like to reflect on them as well.
Most of my life, I was a student ... or a teacher, so the end of August - to me - signals summer’s end.
Looking back at my summer photos brings back so many memories. Flowers that have come and gone...
All too brief family visits...
Ice cream!
Surprise visitors in the garden...
Two trips to Toronto and Guelph... So thankful for it all!
The book, the Artist’s Way, is a self-described “course in discovering and recovering your creative self.”
I first read through the book - and did its exercises - a few months after I retired in 2008. Not long afterwards, I started to write my daily blog... (Is that a coincidence or did the book really spark my creativity?!)
I’ve recently begun to read the book again... and do some of the exercises. One I did recently was to list 20 things I enjoy doing.
After completing my list, I had the sudden urge to compare it to the one I had made in 2008. It took a bit of hunting to find my old notebook, but I did. Comparing my lists, I saw that nothing had really changed!
I still enjoy eating, travelling and baking... to name a few. The one thing I didn’t mention this time was music... Have I replaced my love of music with an appreciation for silence?!
Later I asked Terry to tell me 20 things he enjoys doing. We had a lot of similarities - though he enjoys watching TV and I don’t... the news and documentaries - as well as many televised competitive sports.
But we both enjoy travelling - and look forward to doing that again once the pandemic is over.
I think the goal of the exercise was to put us in touch with our fun-loving selves that often get overwhelmed with the problems of the day!
Like many people, I’m not very good at waiting!
These days, I’m waiting for warm spring weather so that I can get out and walk again on roads that aren’t covered in snow.
I’m also waiting for my Covid-19 vaccine shot, which I may not get until April or May.
One of my sons has reminded me that, once I get it, I’ll still have to wait...
It takes 3-4 weeks for the body to build up immunity. Then, before I can hug my grandchildren, I’ll still have to wait till more people in our community are vaccinated - and our communal rate of infection goes down.
Lots of waiting ahead of me!
