Thin Air Festival Featuring Concrete, Believe It or Not
It may sound like an oxymoron, but concrete in North America frequently contains up to 6 per cent air. Why, is something I talk about in Concrete: From Ancient Origins…
Mary Soderstrom
Saturday Photo: Cosmos, the Flower That Keeps on Giving…
If you wait long enough, that is. Cosmos are wonderful flowers that reseed themselves and change sunny places to corners of cosmic delight. I’ve never had much luck with them…
Saturday Photo: Good Crop of Umbrellas This Summer
Well, it rained a lot here in August, so obviously these folks were on the case. The umbrella stayed there for a couple of weeks, during the worst of the…
Saturday Photo: Reclaiming the City…
One of the up-sides of this Plague Year is the way people and cities are rethinking public spaces. Around here a number of neighborhoods have widened sidewalks by allowing terraces…
Saturday Photo: March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The work is far from done, alas! Fifty-seven years ago I was there, having hitched a ride with a friend with parishioners from a church in Indianapolis. We had been…
Saturday Photo: Goldenrod and Badminton, the Resilience of the Former, the Lure of the Latter
Here you have the remains of a badminton court on which a generation or two of nuns played on summer afternoons. Part of the convent’s grounds was sold to a…
Saturday Photo: Black Lives Matter in Outremont
The part of Montreal where we live was designed more than 100 years ago as a garden suburb, sort of. Today it is home to a mixed population that includes…
Saturday Photo: Closest I Get to Religion…
Had an interesting conversation this week with one of my Hassidic neighbours about life, death, and Covid 19. She lost a brother, 62, to the disease early on in the…
Saturday Photo: Wake-up Call?
In this difficult time I’ve been on the look out for things that make one smile. That’s whey I was delighted when a friend brought over sunflowers last weekend: everytime…
Satruday Photo: Not a Trojan Horse, but More Whimsy
Because we all need a little whimsy these days, here’s what I found in an alley not far from me. Couldn’t do much carpentry on this saw horse, but kudos…
Saturday Photo: Concrete, Not the Rock of Ages…Nor Is the US
The photo was taken last summer in front of a house that was being renovated. Probably built in the early 1900s, it obviously had a lot of details that were…
Saturday Photo: Whimsy and Covid 19
Everybody was getting a little squirrely this spring, as we tried to out dance Covid 19 by staying at home. It helped some that March, April and the first of…
Saturday Photo: The Up-side of Drought…
It must be the sun, and maybe the cool, wet spring, but even though it rained very little in May and June the roses here have been spectacular. The ones…
Saturday Photo: Fleur de lys or Iris…
We are half way through the week of summer’s first holidays around here. Quebec’s Fête nationale was last Wednesday and next Wednesday will be Canada Day. Such a strange time!…
Saturday Photo: Water Games and Rainbows…
The kids around here early in this crazy pandemic time began making rainbows to put in windows with the legend Ça va bien aller” which means It’s going to be…
Saturday Photo: April in Paris, June in Montreal…
The song says that the chestnuts bloom in April in Paris, and usually they bloom in Montreal in May. But this eyar, when the temperature has gone up and down,…
Saturday Photo: Just What the Doctor Ordered…
I think I’ve used this photo before, but it deserves another look. Dandelions are supposed to be weeds, and I must admit that I try to keep them out of…
Saturday Photo: The Flowers of the Week…and Thoughts on the Circle of Time
Hot weather arrived with a vengeance this week, and the tulips faded rapidly. But on the other hand some of the other late spring flowers burst into loveliness. Among them…
Saturday Photo: The Fountain across the Street…
Early in the morning when I go out I hear two things: the wind in the leaves, and water burbling in our neighbor’s fountain across the street. The leaves on…
Saturday Photo: The Gift of Tulips
Last year about this time our neighbour, the horticulturalist, brought home several hundred tulip bulbs that he’d saved from being thrown out. They’d been used to decorate the hall for…