I didn't even have to turn my head just a moment ago to know that the blue jays had arrived at the feeder.  We call them "the teenagers" because they are usually in a group, everybody trying to talk louder than the others.  The first blue jay I ever set eyes on was sitting on a branch outside the bathroom window.  I was about seven and had only seen a picture of one in my bird book.  To this day I can remember nothing else about that bathroom except what I saw that day.  I just stood there gob-smacked that they were even more beautiful than advertised.

I probably tried to draw one with crayons, but with no luck.  The only blue jay I ever got to study closely was one we babysat for the wildlife sanctuary.  This one was no beauty:  he was the runt of the nest and didn't fly well enough to find food so some well-meaning soul must have brought him in.  We called him "Peanut" because he squawked until we gave him one.  Again and again and again.  He may have been short but he was full-weight.  

I did paint Peanut in watercolour but diligent searching has failed to produce the evidence;  I'll post it if and when I come across it. It's notable only because of what I learned about blue jays.  Only when you go to paint one does the subtlety of the colouration emerge.  Close observation shows that the shoulders and back are largely grey - admittedly blue-grey, but grey.  The blues strengthen as you move down the wings and the tail, adding white and black accents to complete the effect.  A blue jay tail or wing feather is a treasure to be found and I have set a prized one in the moss garden terrarium in our living room.

Although they grow up to turn heads, even jays go through an ugly-duckling stage.  Every summer we see what appear to be bald ones.  They can fly perfectly well, but their skinny pink heads and necks emerge from the feathered bodies, making them look like punk vultures.  We've stopped worrying about it, because by fall they are fashion-runway-ready again.  Moulting?  Any ideas, Reuven (my go-to birder excellente)?

Soon we will say a wistful goodbye to the blue jays as they head further south, as will the Toronto Blue Jays, who have in their own way consumed our attention and admiration.  On the other hand, we have our lives back again and I might even have time to paint.

It's like the Wild West around here lately.  While I was mistaken about winter having arrived (for the last few weeks have been glorious), I must have convinced the squirrels, who gallop everywhere (remember Leacock's military man who climbed on his horse and "rode off in all directions"?), frantically burying treasure.  To their credit, I remember reading that squirrels actually do retrieve about 70% of what they have buried, doing it in the winter without the aid of smell and simply using their memories;  maybe they could be trained to find car keys and the like, although I suppose this theoretical model would involve their having put the car keys there in the first place.  In this, the pre-season, they saunter in front of the car, dash over the roof, tight-rope walk across electrical lines, and even careen off the swinging squirrel-guard-protected bird feeder, having launched from an old rhododendron six feet away.  Right now, a black morph has managed to thread himself into the caged sunflower seed tube, encircling it to dine like a Roman emperor.  Noticing that it's mid-morning already, another has plunked herself down on the stone ledge of our front steps with her back to the open door and blithely gnaws on a nut.  If I were a cat, she would be a treat herself.

Chipmunks, it seems at first, leave nothing to chance:  they create an underground larder and stuff it -- all in one place, sign on the door.  I've always admired them for this.  Imagine my horror when we watched a brilliant nature show which filmed one chippie plunder another's store, leaving the homeowner to starve over the winter.  I had to leave the room;  apparently, Jon assured me later, the victim went and stole his acorns back, but it wasn't looking hopeful when I fled.  Now that I think of it, there have been some legendary furious chases in our own garden.

I'm out there almost as much as the other mammals.  Yesterday was the day to cut back the hostas and take clippings from the Annabelle hydrangeas;  their huge duck-green flowerheads dry beautifully, even if they are messy to move around.  The one painful loss this year was that of the corkscrew hazel, which I loved beyond words.  The  littler-man-next-door  commented that he thinks the older clipped branches look spooky in their living room branch pot.  I prefer to think of them as oriental and asymmetrical and elegant, and something similar will be the fate of the dying bush too.

But the berries!  The inspiration for this painting of mountain ash was the combination of yellow leaves and red fruit.  Sometimes the berries themselves steal the show.  I do love the bittersweet's orange berries tangling within its ropes of vines,  but the clear winner is the native spindle-tree (euonymus atropurpureus);  it is also know as the Eastern wahoo, a name which surely describes the scream of delight elicited by its flashy seed pod.  Square like the stem, the hot pink four-lobed husk of the fruit opens to reveal a marmalade-orange berry, the whole effect being captured in its name: Heart Bursting with Love.  I have a great closeup of it which I must find the time to paint.  Spindle-tree is quite rare now perhaps because, as I have noticed in our garden, eastern tent caterpillars adore it. If you would like some and don't mind murdering whole families in the spring,  I have lots of seeds.  

​Don't eat them yourself, though, unless you want something else to burst. 

This morning my neighbour remarked to me that winter was here.  I was about to agree when it struck me that somehow we had skipped autumn.  The trees are still green but we've all turned our furnaces on and I'm making soup.

In particular, beet soup.  Beets were ten pounds for $1.44 this week so I hauled a bag home.  My hopes of roasting them evaporated when I realized that there were only five;  each one was roughly the size of Rhode Island and as such would take hours to roast.  Necessity being a mother, I peeled one, sliced it, and am going the microwave route.  If that approach fails to sweeten them sufficiently, it will be borscht in Jon's lunch for the foreseeable future.  If it works, however, I'm going back to the store.

Or I suppose I could dye anything that isn't already magenta.  Yes, I believe that beets are more blue red than autumn's cadmium red.  I noticed that first at age 10, when I lost control of a cooked beet at a Sunday dinner and rolled it across my aunt's white damask table cloth.  The room went silent.  My mother and I  imitated a beet.  It's the only root vegetable that still scares me a little.  But beets occupy two moments in my history.  The second memory is of the sweet smell of sugar beets being processed quite some distance from our home;  walking back to school after lunch in the autumn, we were wrapped in the aroma of what smelled like cookies and forever after, whenever I smell cookies baking, I am a young teenager again on my way to school in the fall.  

​But this year it may be necessary to find red on the plate.  And even if I have to rely on old paintings of a satisfactory technicolor autumn to find those cadmium reds,  but at least beet red has reported for duty in person.  I have the pink teeth to prove it.
​

Yesterday a tiny perfect moment occurred.  Finally deciding that he could safely accept an almond from my hand, Mr. Chips reached forward with his wee paws and ever so gently took it from me, each of us thinking that we had completed the taming process.  I was surprised that his touch was so soft;  I had been expecting sharp claws, as you feel when a dandelion fluff of a chickadee lands in your palm.  Today I  hope that we can repeat the ritual.

My willingness to be trained  by an animal is not new.  Although I have only had two dogs, I still miss them dearly.  The only photo I have of Fudgie, a collie cocker mix who was one of the great loves of my life, was taken in the backyard after school. My Grade Five self is wearing the navy  tunic which Mom despaired of because, as usual,  long-white-haired Fudge is lying on my lap on the grass.  His head is lolling back as we gaze at each other in mutual adoration.  The tunic is probably white with his hair.  Jewell's hair was even longer and even now, almost two years after her death, I find the odd reminder of her life with us and well up with love.  

It got me thinking about the sacrament of touch, which unites two living beings in a moment of pure grace.  We reach for touch, we yearn for touch, we are strengthened by touch.  Because it is shorthand for love, a "touching" scene tugs at our heartstrings.  Baptism places it where it belongs -- at the centre.  And when we say that someone has "the touch" we mean that that person somehow breathes life/love into someone or even something (like a tenor sax, for which my dad had a touch).  When we say somebody is a bit "touched,"  I think we mean that they are so open to the world that it overwhelms them.  One theory about autism and the discomfort with being touched is that the sensation is simply overwhelming.  

Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel centres its theme on the touch God bestows upon Adam;  it is understood that everything good flows from that gift.  Conversely,  if the world is full of pain and fear, perhaps it is because we are not quick enough or willing enough to touch one another in some way.  Though my beloved father was very shy and dignified, whenever I flew home for a visit, he and Mom would be standing at the bottom of the elevator and he would be the first to envelope me in his long arms.  



​My life has been rich in touch and I am so grateful.  As a result, I understand that I'm a soft touch.  Let's all stay in touch.