Now there is one thing I can tell you: you will enjoy certain pleasures you would not fathom now. When you still had your mother you often thought of the days when you would have her no longer. Now you will often think of days past when you had her. When you are used to this horrible thing that they will forever be cast into the past, then you will gently feel her revive, returning to take her place, her entire place, beside you. At the present time, this is not yet possible. Let yourself be inert, wait till the incomprehensible power … that has broken you restores you a little, I say a little, for henceforth you will always keep something broken about you. Tell yourself this, too, for it is a kind of pleasure to know that you will never love less, that you will never be consoled, that you will constantly remember more and more.
May Day came in with a blast this weekend wiping away the last weeks of on again off again weather with pure sunshine. The festival season began in our town on Saturday, restaurant terraces are open and the garden center parking lots were full (we were there). I’m caught up in the feeling of energy and change with a number of new projects – probably more ideas than I’ll every get around to.
This past week I bought a painting literally off the easel of a local artist. I was in The Old Schoolhouse Art Centre where I’m taking another 6-week drawing class and ran into Jacqueline Smith, who I’d met socially some time ago, and had been following her work. Joining her in her studio for a chat, I was mesmerized by the piece she was just finishing, a 24×24 poured acrylic abstract inspired by Qualicum Falls, a place close to her heart, and before too long I decided it needed to be part of our collection. This has prompted me to move forward on something I’ve been thinking of for some time – with a few exceptions, I’m going to move around every piece of artwork in the house to new locations – new spot, new eyes, new appreciation.
The fuchsias are out of The GreenHouse now and over to the Summer GreenHouse where they will begin flowering over the next 6 weeks. The GreenHouse is due for a major cleaning once that’s done – I’ll remove everything to scrub and recaulk inside and out. It would be nice if my enthusiasm for spring cleaning extended to the house as well, but that’s highly unlikely. There are limits.
Besides the ongoing gardening, painting and taking pictures, there are other things in the pipeline and I’m not looking forward to all of them.
When I retired from the world of gainful employment some 8 years ago now, I removed my watch, changed the font, and bought an Apple computer. The watch is gone for good, the font change became a metaphor for exploring the creative and the new operating system took me about a year to get used to (I had used Windows for work and the personal forever). I started writing tales about what I was seeing on my traveling adventures to accompany the photos that I was taking in a big way. I used the Apple product Aperture to edit, sort and store my photos, the more pro version of their iPhoto software. I have over 20,000 images on this program, so that’s a lot of use, a lot of time and effort invested.
That’s gone now.
Apple has now abandoned Aperture and has released a replacement software that by all accounts comes up short. Professional photographers are leaving in droves. Apple’s focus is now on social media and interconnection of (their) devices via The Cloud. Apple wants you to use The Cloud. But of course. 5G of “free” storage runs out quickly (my photos alone are 20G) and then the monthly charges begin. I do not see any point in storing my stuff on some company’s server just to fuel the beast. The Apple operating system is morphing towards the look and feel of mobile devices. Meh. I’ve always been completely underwhelmed by the iPad. For me it is an overpriced magazine reader and YouTube viewer – preferably from a prone position on the couch. As for social media, forget it. Too noisy.
So it would seem at some point I have many hours ahead in front of the computer wrestling with a new photography program (along with new operating system). Oh joy.
I’ve never been a rabid Apple v. Windows advocate or fan but it seems to me that Scott Bourne, a professional photographer commenting on where Apple has been heading these past few years, may very well be on the money when he says
For those of you hanging on to the dream – It’s time to face the facts folks. Apple Computer is gone. When Steve Jobs died, so did the company that made high-end hardware and software for photo geeks. Now Apple is in the watch business. It’s a shame, but that is the way it is.
I woke Saturday morning to the news of the day – a devastating earthquake in Nepal and Bruce Jenner is a woman. At 7.8 the Nepalese earthquake was huge with much loss of life, unlike two others felt elsewhere the previous day, one further up the BC coast from us and the other near my fave rave town of Nelson in New Zealand. As a matter of fact there were 667 earthquakes on our planet in the past 7 days according to one of my geo geek sites – Earthquake Track. As for Bruce Jenner – well that was certainly not earthshaking news to those of us who keep track of current affairs by scanning the covers of the tabloids while waiting to check out at the grocery store. I checked in again last night for the expected update on the earthquake – sadly seems it is most often the case that natural disaster strikes those least able to cope with it.
So head back in the shell, I once again do my best to ignore the Rest of World and split my time between The Bunkie Studio and the garden which is looking glorious. The fuchsias, about 45 pots of them, are fully leafed out and The GreenHouse is packed. Very soon it will be time to bring them all outside and hang them up, where they will soon start to flower.. The brugmansia is blooming in there as well. In the perennial beds everything is growing like crazy and we’re getting rid of a lot of the lawn this year to expand them. I’ve planted everbearing strawberries in pots, more blue poppies, planted seeds on a heat mat under lights, planted pots and pots of Tigridia bulbs in memory of the trip to New Zealand, acquired another Full Moon Japanese Maple, divided the King Kong Canna in a pot to create 3 of them, planted sweet peas in 2 huge pots with an obalisk, thought about weeding, edged what remains of lawn. I’ve bought new cushions for the garden furniture, had a motorized awning installed to shade the patio outside the main house, divided perennials, enjoyed the dozens of pots of daffodils I planted last fall, spread compost, pitched underperformers and all in all have been having a Real Fine Time.
Back in The Bunkie Studio where I spend the other part of my days, I’m still painting. I’ve become intrigued by the way Malcolm Gladwell’s observation (in the book Outliers) that it takes 10,000 hours of practice to become good at anything shows up everywhere, as though it is some kind of magic formula. Let’s see. Suppose I paint on average 4 hours a day – (cue to sound of calculator firing up). That would be 2500 days. But I don’t paint every single day so suppose I paint on average 4 days a week. That would be 625 weeks. Or roughly 12 more years. My math may be off, no surprise there, but all of a sudden this starts to sound like work, which is something I don’t do anymore. Thanks Malcolm. So forget all that – my advice to myself is just to keep on doing something fun every day, and forget about getting “good” at it.
Back to the news of a more local nature. Last week at Columbia Beach, down the road from us, local residents found a seriously injured seal lying on the beach. They contacted the wildlife people and kept their eyes on it (fortunately the beaches are closed to dogs this month as migrating birds stop here at this time for a little R&R). Eventually the Vancouver Aquarium sent over staff to attempt a rescue. Big drama, wrestling this 300 pound animal off the beach and away to some kind of safety over on the mainland. In the end, all for nought, as the animal didn’t make it. The Aquarium folks have been over a few times this season, trying to catch and help the huge sea lions that hang out around here, that often become entangled in human debris – ropes, nets and such. Saving an animal like that is always a feel good story but the sea lions have other concerns as well. Like The Bikers of Georgia Strait…
One day last month when I was in town I heard that Orcas, the so-called killer whales, had been spotted the previous day off our beach in very shallow waters. “Maybe they are after the herring that have been spawning around here recently”, someone suggested. Yes, and maybe they’re after the animals that have been feasting on the herring. Which turned out to be exactly the case.
I am usually down at the beach at least a couple times a week – always with my bag with camera and binoculars, always scanning the waters for whatever’s out there especially whales, but unfortunately missed these ones. I had thought that this bay of ours, at Qualicum Beach, may be too shallow, but I guess not.
These particular whales are the transients that show up in Georgia Strait from time to time and these ones are “killers” that feed on sea mammals. They don’t travel in family groups, rather they are usually seen in 2’s and 3’s and occasionally just a solitary male. In contrast the resident whales, who live here for much of the year, eat salmon and other fish (they don’t eat seals or sea lions, and so don’t compete with the transients) and stay together in family groups – pods they refer to them as – as in J- or K- and L- pods of these Salish seas. Adult sons and daughters stay with their clans all their lives following Mom or Grandma on their journeys through these waters. This year the matriarch of JPod “Granny”, died at a very old age, estimated to be over 100 years old. But 4 new babies have appeared this year too, to the delight of their fans, so the cycle continues.
I see sea lions around here often – off our beach at this time of year during herring season, or beached on the float off Fanny Bay up the coast. They are huge, sprawled and ungainly (though at the same time powerful and beautiful) on the floats, out in the air, but fast and sleek underwater when they have to motor. The day after the transient Orcas were spotted off our beach, they were captured on video by a guy in a kayak (yikes) hunting sea lions (the whales that is) from a large group hanging out on the rocks up the coast off Hornby Island. The video, picked up by a number of news sites, shows just how immense and powerful these animals are, overwhelming these, what I used to think of as large, sea lions. In scale, think a cat and a mouse. (Although Dennis doesn’t eat the mice, just plays with them to death – then looks puzzled, wondering why they won’t wake up and “play” some more). I don’t think these guys were playing cat and mouse, they look like they were seriously after some lunch.
The still shot above of the breaching Orca was taken by Howard a couple of years ago from our landlord’s boat in Victoria – another group of 3 transients hunting seal sausages off the rocks. An unforgettable experience to watch from such a close vantage point.
