oh my ... the sky

the sky last night outside my office window

Clouds come floating into my life,
no longer to carry rain or usher a storm,
but to add colour to my sunset sky.

Rabindranath Tagore

Bubbles and darkness ... the moon is softened by clouds this early morning and the stars are all hiding. We plan to get an early start to this brand new day and Miss D and I will stroll around this little village under the streetlights.

we love ...

a sunny Autumn Sunday

Lots of raking, chopping, clipping and sweeping - the jungle was beginning to win • I hacked away a wide path through the overgrowth and to our front door • I cleared off the front porch and rearranged the barely fading big pots of bright red and pink annuals (mostly impatience) in a wide showy circle around Nessie's pillow topped old white wicker chair - his snoozing perch most of the daylight hours • we walked around this little village in crisp sunshine, Miss D, Deb, Maggy Sue and I and later I lolled for a few hours on the guest room bed in the chocolate brown room, tucked under a quilt with Winnie, Bleet & Oliver curled up beside me and we all basked there in a huge big patch of afternoon sunshine • I drank English Breakfast tea and I finished another book in the bedside pile. A lovely lazy day.

We love Sundays

creeper

Virginia creeper

Any day now huge flocks of Starlings will land on this side of the house to eat the berries (like small grapes) from our Virginia Creeper vine, ... sending Gussie & Oliver, who will crouch hidden on the other side of the window, into a mad, crazed kitten frenzy.

This red ... just sends me.

Off to walk with Miss D. it's fleece headband and glove weather this morning, there's a cold wind blowing in off the harbour and it sure feels like Autumn.

10am - what began as a chilly morning has turned into an absolutely glorious cloudless, blue sky, sunny fall day. I'll putter around outside this morning and after lunch our (Missy D & my) best girlfriends Deb & Maggie Sue will arrive for our weekly Sunday afternoon stroll around this little village. I watched Drain the Ocean on the Discovery Channel last night (previously taped on my combo VCR/DVD player) - a 2 hour documentary with amazing computer animation of what the ocean floor would look like if we could drain away the water - Wow ! and by drastic contrast my new favourite TV guilty pleasure show ... King of the Crown - Bizarre !

a magical place

this magical place

steady rain and no wind
warm temperatures and open windows
perfect coffee and scented bubbles
inky blackness, still
a big weekend plan always
brilliant red leaves climb this old brick house
chestnuts scatter along our driveway
and the skies carry hundreds of geese on their travels
their constant honking is both haunting and beautiful

It's a long weekend (it's Canadian Thanksgiving), which actually doesn't really mean anything different to me - the life of the self employed designer gal - you work when there's work and lately I've been very busy, which is fantastic ! I have quite a variety of design projects on the go plus I'm slowly (and fairly leisurely) getting this old house ready for another winter. I still have chimney sweeps to call, boiler maintenance to organize, a big sunporch to ready for stacks and stacks of firewood. Leaves to shuffle through, terracotta pots full of annuals to say goodbye to and to tuck securely into the shed until spring again. Pears and apples to eat. Squash and pumpkins to cook. Beaches to walk on ... I do love this time of year.

relaxin'

autumn collections - from the 29 Black Street photo archives

I had a massage last night. A lovely paid for perk included with my new extended self employed health care package. I'm allowed 8 massages a year and you can bet I'm not goin' miss a one. I take my own music CD with me to listen to during the massage 'cause it really helps me to relax - come to find out relaxing is not something that comes naturally to me. Oh I fool myself all the time - I can seem relaxed, I have no problem lying horizontally tucked snug into the nest of down & flannel with a book and a cat or two - but that head of mine, that mind is always spinning - thoughts are zippin' around constantly. It's just a waste (I think) to have a massage with a busy mind so ... listening to a CD of favourite slow songs seems to do the trick.

This Blue Rodeo song from 5 Days in July (an amazing album) is one of those songs.

those hearts

A Tiny Life No. 3 avec black velvet chickelit

A repeat image, a collagey illustration from my etsy shop - this original sold tres quickly (hooray!) and we have upcoming plans to have a few giclee prints of this item in the shop in time for Christmas - which looms so close on the horizon. I have a wee break in the Teak Toppin' It action today and I'll spend that time puttering and tidying, organizing and filing and getting les office ready for the next busy round which begins again full force on Monday. Next up - my big annual graphic design project, a 12 page newsletter for a local hospital foundation. A giant 12 page jigsaw puzzle of photos and text that must magically and tres pleasingly (to the eye) fit together. It's a definite get your finicky meticulous In Design groove on, very different then the product design sketching with pencil and kneaded eraser that I do most of the time.

It's dark, windy, raining and messy this early morning. Another reason I felt like we needed a jolt of colour here today on this blog. I'm going to bundle up in rain gear and Miss D and I will have a very quick walk down to the park and back ... just so we can say we did ...

Hey ! Have you checked out the blog of the week cat ladder too sweet ! and brought to us by cat mad Slow Lane Life

Things have been very good here at 29 Black Street and even more good things are a comin' ...
we're just gonna keep on pumpin' out those hearts ... and see what happens.

The greatest treasures are those invisible to the eye but found by the heart

Unknown

sweet as can be

Mrs Pokey Poke, Sweet As Can Be ... Noodlette more terms of endearment

Miss Winnie Dixon my other photography assistant
Seaweed and sea grass exposed at low tide, yesterday's early morning walk

hello new day

asters

love and doubt have never been on speaking terms

Kahil Gibran

A big round moon sits high up in a navy blue sky • patchouli bubbles wait patiently • Miss D snoozes in her bed under my desk • a car cuts our silence with it's passing • our windows are open to the fresh morning air • Oliver rests on his windowsill pillow • the leaves on the trees nearby are perfectly still and quiet • our little village is just beginning to wake up • hello new day

seascapes

some scenes from this past week's evening walks along the harbour's edge

It's raining ... steady, hard, straight down rain. The air outside is warm enough to have the windows open still which is lovely. Silence and rain. It's too wet to go walking just yet. Miss D doesn't like to walk in the rain, she needs a hat and coat. She doesn't like getting rain in her eyes or getting her beautiful scraggly black fur wet. I don't blame her.

So instead we'll curl back up in the nest of flannel and cotton and we'll listen to the rain and we'll watch the sky brighten. I'll have another cup of coffee, tucked in my bed and we'll enjoy this new day's beginning.

crab cakes

snow crab

All summer long, every Friday afternoon, a local fisherman parked his refrigerated truck full of fresh and frozen seafood in a parking lot near one of this little villages busiest corners - across from both the grocery store and the liquor store and near the road that leads out to beach and cottage country. I bought these snow crab legs frozen a few weeks ago and promptly stuck them in my freezer and took them out yesterday morning to thaw.

A hammer, a wooden skewer, lots of newspaper and rather slow and meticulous work resulted in about 8 ounces of crab meat - and crab cakes were on my mind - even if it was only a crab cake - I had decided that's what I'd make with my rare crab bounty.

crab cakes

8 ounces of crab meat
1 cup of fresh bread crumbs (reserve half to coat cakes)
half a stalk of celery finely minced
2-3 tbsps. red pepper (for colour) finely minced
2-3 tbsps. finely minced onion or green onion
a few tbsps. mayonnaise (Hellman's preferred)
a bit of flat leaf parsley finely chopped
a few good shakes of Old Bay Seasoning (imported from B Shamu - merci !)
salt & pepper
squirt of fresh lemon juice
canola oil

Delicately stir ingredients together (reserving 1/2 cup of bread crumbs for coating) adding just enough mayonnaise so that the mixture will just hold together in loose patties or cakes (this recipe made 4 small cakes). Heat 1/4 cup canola oil in a frying pan. Coat cakes in reserved bread crumbs. Carefully fry 3-5 mins. per side on med-low heat until outside is crispy and golden. Serve with a wedge of lemon and garnish with more flat leaf parsley.

Share crab cakes with one fat black velvet chicelet who is a connoisseur of the finest seafood.

A little more this and a little more that planned for today ... and my favourite Sunday afternoon loll about and nap and read. Uh Huh ! Hooray. We love Sundays.

happiness

yesterday's early morning walk

Winnie Dixon along the crescent beach, the beginning of a glorious new morning

The sky is just beginning to lighten, the song birds and gulls have begun and earlier we watched a giant golden and nearly full moon fall over the harbour and dip below the horizon.

I have a few days of design-project free life and if truth be told I'm actually a bit disappointed because I don't know what to do with myself when I don't have a mad rush of work on the go. The reason I'm not sure what to do is because the list of possibilities always looms so enormously large over me it's difficult to focus my attention and to not become overwhelmed.

That's my task for this weekend - to chop away at the items at the top of that list. Housekeeping and garden chores - fall/winter preparations. And I've already scheduled in some pure pleasure events as well - the key to my ultimate success - the pot of gold at the end of my travels. I am also practicing mindfullness - whatever task or delight I may be doing - to remind myself to be there completely, in that moment, whatever it may be - doing the dishes, raking the leaves, walking along the crescent beach or eating a crisp autumn apple. It's not easy, at all - this being in the moment, for this mind loves to wander and travel high and low, rushing along on some busy freeway of thoughts - though I am convinced to live in the now will be the secret, not only of my success, but to my ultimate happiness and contentment.

Happy weekend !

chapters

beautiful book jacket

Now if this book jacket doesn't make you want to read this book ... well I don't know what would. Check out more great book design here and here.

The Missing by Tim Gautreaux. I picked this book up at the library yesterday - the story is set
in New Orleans just after World War I - not exactly my favourite time period or setting I tend to prefer contemporary stories but in this instance I find the cover so compelling (and the reviews on the back cover of his previous novel The Clearing so glowing) that I will dive in after I've tackled Dismantled by Jennifer Mcmahon my next book up in the bedside queue.

Both books have relatively short chapters which I confess I totally love (and books with no chapters at all - what's up with that ?). I'm a bedtime reader only and the act of reading can often lull me to sleep nearly instantaneously - it's the main reason my "books read in 2009" list
is so short. I do love moving my bookmark each night, forward to the next attainable goal, preferable a dozen or so pages into the future of a story as I try to encourage myself ...
just one more chapter.

Also in the bedside pile The Case of the Missing Servant by Tarquin Hall
What are you reading these days ? We'd love to know.

crush

nasturtiums

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown,
for going out, I found, was really going in

John Muir

I've been watching The National Parks on PBS, which no surprise is amazing - another Ken Burns spectacular documentary and I've gotta school girl's crush on John Muir I'll admit I'd heard the name before but I didn't know anything about him. I just ordered his biography A Passion for Nature: The Life of John Muir from the online Nova Scotia library system. He wrote many books about his adventures and observations of nature and of the unspoiled wilderness - previews of his books are available here.

in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks

John Muir

15 things

hydrangea

1. sweet
2. for a cat
3. for a dog
4. useful
5. old fashioned
6. scented
7. gardening
8. paper/card
9. delicious
10. salty
11. green
12. culinary
13. natural
14. sparkly
15. soft

Well ... we Oliver and I took all the 9 names and wrote them out on little scraps of paper put them in a cup and Oliver drew names one by one and we put the folded pieces in a line. 1st gives to the 2nd, 2nd gives to the 3rd etc... and the last gives to the 1st. and the list is as follows

Moose's Mom gives to Joni
Joni gives to Alice in England
Alice in England give to Pamela
Pamela gives to Alice in Paris
Alice in Paris gives to Chickory
Chickory gives to me
I give to B. Shamu
B. Shamu gives to Leenda
Leenda gives to Moose's Mom

past swapping examples including packages I've received can be found here
Deadline for mailing package is November 1 - I do love a sensible deadline ;-)
Contact your recipient to get a mailing address ... any problems just let me know.