While I am an unabashed lover of spring and fall, summer brings its own delights.  Our habitat garden above the river valley night-blooms with the flirty winks of fireflies.  Waking up at about the same time as our little brown bats, they fill my secret garden with floating beacons which flash anywhere from canopy to the ground cover.  The word “magical” doesn’t do justice to the experience.  If I go missing after dark, Jon knows to find me.

Until this year I had never seen a firefly in its civvies. Then Pam, my dear fellow nature lover, and I signed up for the BioBlitz at our nearby conservation area. There were actually more different species than minutes to photograph them, and we were both heady with the abundance of life forms. Had Pam not, I would never have spotted this small and unassuming insect.  In fact, I had reflexively started to key out the leaf so, when Pam drew my attention to its passenger and identified it as a firefly, I was gobsmacked.  Talk about cleaning up well and getting all diddied up for a night out!!

​

These little beetles have acquired bioluminescence as an aid to mate selection.  The males advertise their desirability as a suitor by means of robust flashing,  each species utilizing its own unique semaphore. This advertisement on wings watches below him for a reply -- a single flash after a species-specific pause.  Repeating this exact exchange allows the male to locate the willing female and finally mate. This is in fact the preferred order of things for many insects:  mate and then die -  of happiness, one presumes.  

Cheaters being the mouse dropping in every bowl of porridge, in fireflies the proof of someone gaming the system takes the form of the “femme fatale” photurus.   She is not unilingual like most anglophones but cunningly bilingual;  i.e. she is fluent in female photinus, reproducing the exact pause followed by the appropriate flash.  Pity poor Harry the Photinus who thinks he's found the love of his life and Miss FF's just ordering supper.  Fatal Attraction in the back garden.

Lest you think that male fireflies are a tad over-eager and haven't even googled apotential love interest, do consider the year or two spent underground or in the leaf litter as larvae, only to be subsequently locked up in a pupal stage just when one’s hormones are on the tear;   one can hardly blame a guy for the occasional lapse of judgment.  If he is lucky enough to locate an eager but benign female, then pheromones kick into play and “The game’s afoot!”  All of this drama takes place within several meters of the home turf over a few days, as fireflies are homebodies.  

By now you’re dying to know whether you can attract fireflies to your own garden.  Unless you are in the vicinity of  a water way or a marsh, it’s tougher, but encouraging native bushes, grasses and trees and a source of water certainly gives you a fighting chance.  Prior to re-foresting our tableland, I don’t recall ever having fireflies up here, though we certainly saw them down nearer the river.  It’s a joy to see them now but  knowing how much fireflies depend on moisture, I was afraid this year that 2022’s 17- week drought in our little paradise would have wiped out this recent local population.  Thankfully not.

All of this begs the question “Have you painted the fireflies in your garden?”  No.  Not that I haven’t tried.  As I muse in the summer darkness, I am obsessing over  “How on earth do I paint this???”  Can’t get a decent picture, for one.  And there’s the issue of colour.  Almost every photograph I’ve seen shows the light as a trailing green.  Now for me colour is king and my brain had always registered these flashes as warm white.  I don’t think I could bear to paint neon greens (although this yellow below is on the right track). Then it’s fair to ask if I can even pull off a decent night scene in oil.  Well, no.  So don’t hold your breath waiting. 

Wish I had taken this picture.

As it turns out, my whole right hand is pretty much M.I.A.  I even hadn’t factored in  the voluminous wrap of elasticized wrap on top of that nasty little splint.  Having one enormous finger is less “handy” than you might have guessed.  When Flopsy and I met, I was mainly focused on the loss of spring gardening, painting and writing.   Well, didn’t these simple passions turn out to be the tip of the iceberg.   

For the sake of brevity, I shall just mention a few daily jobs I can no longer perform:


Feed myself
Clean myself 
Clean the house 

​It turns out that, as the realtors trumpet, it’s a matter of "Location, location, location" Had Flopsy been spared and her mirror image sister taken the hit, I would hardly have noticed.   I mean, who but ambidextrous lefties like Jon and Mom really uses a left hand much? The whole situation feels like a capriciously cruel and unusual punishment for not having been dropped, as they had,  on my head as a child.  

My own left hand has never been anything more that a a place to park my wedding ring.  My trusty right hand now hurts if I try to use the second finger, which I guess is the point.  To add insult to injury it also takes up three times the space it used to.  

Trying and failing to convey food to my mouth with that  hand was the first hint of the gaping holes in my life preparations.  Let’s just say that there’ve been lots of laundry.   While I did manage to finish a crossword with my left hand, I made the mistake of showing it to Jon.  He was unimpressed.  An  artist friend suggested that I try painting with my left hand.  I referred her to Jon.




BTW:  Don’t believe those who would assure you that rubber gloves solve anything in these circumstances.    I now have a substantial collection of such, none of which will accept the fat finger.  Or if they do, trying to remove the glove threatens to take the cursed splint with it.   On the other hand, if you’re planning to inseminate a mare, I have a charming red pair which reaches almost to the elbow, bears the inscription “Not just a scrubber!” and features a rhinestone.  Just ask.

Forget about the grotto. I've had bigger fish to fry.  But now that I can (it being August, for heaven's sake, I am writing this and back-dating it.  I know that’s cheating.  Let me explain:

Where to start?  Early April.

Luckily Jon was standing two feet away when IT happened.  The pop.  We both heard it.  It seemed to come from my right hand, second finger when all I was doing was lightly tucking the dog blanket back under the loose back cushions of the couch.  I retracted the hand, where the finger had already begun to swell.  Jon, who is generally right about such things, said “Oh, you’ve just dislocated your finger” and he reached over to give it a pull.  Ouch.  By now it was becoming clear that the last joint of the injured finger (hereafter identified as “Flopsy”) was out of my (and Jon’s) control.  It hung uselessly.  I briefly thought that while I had never given anyone the finger, I most certainly had now missed my chance to exercise this option in the future
To be clear, I am greatly indebted to Ontario Healthcare:  from start to finish, Flopsy had first-class care.    Dr. Banwatt the Wonderful  pronounced her a “mallet finger” and set about getting me help.  The tiny tendon hadn’t really snapped;  it had torn itself away from the bone and would need to be reattached.  The Acute Hand Care unit of Trillium looked at my X-rays, confirmed the diagnosis and then issued diire warnings about how the 12 - 16 week splinting process could fail at any point necessitating a reset back at Day 1  Wait…..  Thought I hear 12 - 16 week…..plus an infinite series of failed tries….Shoot!!!

They revived me and I pulled myself together, insofar.  Okay, it’s just a finger I can’t use.  I can do this.

Not so easy, Cowboy.  “Can’t Use” turns out to refer to the whole hand.  Apparently our four fingers are “wired together,” so to speak.  

Flopsy and I knew resistance was futile when we met Catherine, my physiotherapist, and I  tried arguing that I had a beloved habitat garden in its second year and that I had moral obligation to help it save the world.  I think I was pretty convincing, but no dice.  “NO gardening.”  She was firm;   Catherine and Jon immediately bonded. and for the next four months they tag-teamed my marching orders (A mixed metaphor walked into a bar…)    I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that they had formed a Facebook Page.  Catherine allowed that I could “direct”  someone else;  she looked straight at Jon.  I laughed bitterly, knowing better.

I tried for permission to paint.  No.  Handwrite?  No  Word-process?  It went about the same.  
Just shoot me. 

I have heard it said that every girl wants a rock on her finger.  That never appealed to me because it’s thinking too small.  I have always wanted a grotto.

I know just what you’re thinking:  “Gosh I wish I had a grotto too!”  For one thing, they are easily maintained:  leaving it outside in rain and snow simply improves the look.  Now show me a diamond and gold ring which gets better like that;  its best promise is to freeze time, not enhance it.  Remember, even gold wears out:  the band on my mom’s  engagement ring gradually disappeared over a mere fifty years, and  my own silver ring engraved with Haida designs has lost all of its intricate carving in a decade.   Come to think of it, a copper ring might be more interesting.  My favourite building as a kid was the Fort Garry Hotel, largely because of its elegant copper verdigris roof.  Again, you’d have to wait decades for that patina to form and probably have to be buried with it….but I digress.

As far as geologic time goes, we are of no interest to a rock, whose sole interest is its own hard heart.  Luckily for us, most rock surfaces are come pre-decorated,  already gloriously rich with colour and line,  as well as permanent at least when viewed from the perspective of our tiny lifespans.  I am drawn to their stillness as I write or paint, my eye often going to rest on the Credit Valley limestone which lines my studio and robes the house.  All the important buildings in Winnipeg were gorgeous slab-cut  pale Tyndall stone and even as a toddler I would fall under the spell of the multitudinous fossils they revealed.  Carol Shields refers to it in perfectly titled novel, The Stone Diaries, which won the Pulitzer  in 1995 .That our Credit Valley limestone cannot compete doesn’t mean I don’t search for fossils whenever I need a visual break.

(There - just caught myself doing that)

But a grotto is a different order of wonderful.  The rocks are often softened in shape from eons of erosion by water in a marriage of form and function.  Often sacred, grottos celebrate the long relationship that human beings have had with these natural caves, which functioned as both physical and spiritual  sanctuaries.  I am sitting in mine right now, as I write this, although the only water in the studio is in the large bowls of fertilized water in which last year’s geraniums are slowly being reborn.  The large easel to my left holds the grotto from the Nahanni which occupies my visual cortex currently.  In its final glazes, but nowhere close to being finished, “Grotto”’s small size, 16 x 20, betrays its status as a study for a much larger painting.  Just like the first the chapter of a book, a study is only a date;  If, and only if, I find myself in love with this study will I then commit to the massive work and hopefulness every long marriage entails.

Though I might change the title.  Thinking of “Rock Concert.”  Our home may be our sanctuary but noise-cancelling earphones are a food group

So here is the progress of the underpainting.  Not much to love yet.  Oh well.

​

I had a passionate affair with a library book last week.  Overwhelmed and hopelessly in love.  It was kismet that we met at all.

Timing is everything in life, isn’t it.   You see, not only  was I  dating another book,  some minor literary flirtation BUT I had  completely forgotten why I had requested Bewilderment in the first place many months ago. It was 20 days into its 21 day borrowing period when I finally gave it my attention.

Reconciled to placing another hold, I idly started to read.

Of my goodness, Richard Powers: you had me at page 1.  This novel is pure gold - erudite, beautiful, wise. It checked every box — character, plot, big ideas, style:  the kind of book which felt like it was written for you and you alone. BUT it was 11 pm  - Yikes!!!! -  I only had 25 hours before the ebook would vanish into the ether….  Like John Cleese’s parrot, it would be thoroughly dead, at least to me.  Were I to try to read it all in 24 hours, my talent for skimming would be of no use.  Every sentence was going to demand my attention.

Fell asleep reading.  Woke up and started reading.  Walked the dogs at a trot.  Ate while reading.  Skipped Tai Chi.  And 5:20 the next day, it was finished — over too soon. 

If I were a smoker, I would have had a cigarette.

Thank you, libraries of the world.  I can’t own every book I’ve read, at least not in this house.  Only books I have already fallen for get to be purchased and come home to their forever bookshelf.  You are matchmakers par excellence.

The narrator in the novel said it the best:

My son loved the library.  He loved putting books on hold online and having them waiting, bundled up with his name, when he came for them.  He loved the benevolence that the stacks held out, their map of the known world.  He loved the all-you-can-eat buffet of borrowing.  He loved the lending histories stamped into the front of each book, the record of strangers who checked them out before him.  The library was the  best dungeon crawl imaginable:  free loot for the finding combined with the joy of levelling up.

Thank you, thank you.
BTW 
​A great book has the effect of inspiring me to paint.  Go figure.

The painter Francis Barry  ( aka my dear friend Frank, whom I met at Tai Chi and who died ten years later at 100) told me of the British Academy shows which were hung ceiling to floor and the scene of much professional competition.  Apparently, just hours before the show would start,  the galleries were still full of ladders occupied by artists wielding paintbrushes and doing final touchups.

Later in the 20th century, Winston Churchill’s last day in office included having the Rubens taken down so that he could improve upon a hazy mouse. 

Same or different?

Churchill, an artist himself, would have known the unwritten law that forbids one artist from touching another artists’s canvas with a wet brush even if help had been requested.  Analyze, point, comment, but DON’T TOUCH.  If possible, honour Thumper’s mother’s dictum:  if you can’t say something nice, don’t say nothing at all.”  That said, I understand completely that said mousey had been a bur under Winston’s saddle for years and and for heaven’s sake, the painting is entitled “The Lion and the Mouse.”  Lord Mountbatten described this act as the supreme example of courage.  

But then again, Rubens was dead at the time.  Real courage would have been to try that with Rubens on site.  I suspect that he would have slapped Churchill silly.  I guess Winston’s cardinal mistake was to tell Lord Mountbatten, who simply didn’t understand the poor man’s imperative to fix the problem while he still could. Given that the mouse is actually the moral compass in the fable and the star, she IS, quite honestly rather hard to locate even if you know the painting's title.

People who love art are happy hostages to its addiction.  I often lose track of the plot in a show if a wonderful piece of art in the background hogs my attention as I soak it all in.  Churchill had a long time in office to stew about the mouse.

Speaking of soaking and stewing,  while in the bathtub last week,  I was idly staring at one of my own paintings and thinking for the umpteenth time thatthose two white pansies should have been sitting on one of two of the focal points instead of falling off the edge and taking the viewer’s interest with them.   Guess I had a Winston moment.  The offending pansies  are finally now sitting on my easel and about to be tweaked, perhaps for the last time.  Or perhaps not.  It’s my painting and I get to decide.  Until I’m dead.  More awkward, of course, is being confronted by a poor decision in one of my own paintings which is no longer mine.  I hate that.

I do admit to deliberately “hazing a mouse” in some of my big paintings.  The bottom right quadrant of “The Ancients” #4, for example, or the upper right in “The Ancients #5 both use suggestion rather than delineation as a way of keeping the focus on the firmly rooted tree.  Jon unsuccessfully argued  both decisions but they felt right to me and I left them.  

Note to self:  don’t hang either of them near the tub because Jon knows where I keep my brushes and paints.  If, on the other hand, Rubens materializes in the bathroom with a burning urge to fix those paintings, knock yourself out, Peter Paul!

BTW -- Don't you wish that somewhere on the web there would be a visual comparison of Before and After?  And which one is this?  I think it is the new and improved version. Painters try to put their darkest dark and their lightest light together at their focal point.  I suspect that the Honourable Winston was doing just that.  And one more thing:  if you are googling "Rubens lion,"  do take a moment to look at the red conte sketch.  Rubens was definitely a cat fancier.

There has  been almost no sun since Christmas and it has set me to thinking about the course collisions between weather and painting.  I would go so far as to argue that, unless you have banks of full-spectrum lights in your studio, what is happening outside your studio window drives your painting more than we imagine.

This reference photo makes me think of the mood of November in The Rockies :   more about values than colour.  (Driving through the mountains registered as a complete absence of colour - or of warmth — or possibly  of life.   I could almost feel the weight of solid rock above me.  It must be genetic:   my grandmother, a Prairie kid if there ever was one, experienced the same deprivation of colour in Summerland’s lack of lingering sunsets when they retired there.  They almost moved back to Saskatchewan.)  I took the original photo because I absolutely loved the broken field of rock and evidence of continental drift in its tipped angularity.  But it was too dark for me.  


So I cheated.   I poured cadmium reds and Burnt Sienna into the cliffs and covered the lower rocks with mosses;  phew.  Only the sea honestly remained true to the overcast sky.  

So when there was a splendid snowstorm here yesterday, and everything was a black-and-white photo,  I began to think again about the absence of colour and concocted a small experiment to perform on my long walk.  The only equipment needed was a pair of sunglasses and the only preparation was to put them on.  Sure enough, my surroundings warmed slightly due to the addition of transparent brown overlays  ( you will remember that brown is made from red+yellow+blue).   I presume that full-spectrum lights achieve the same thing by containing the wave lengths of all three primaries so that even the act of viewing a reference photo or that of mixing pigments remains true to the original inspiration.  Otherwise, nothing feels quite alive.  In tacit recognition of that observation, I often tweak a good photo by raising its colour saturation in order to restore its “sunglasses” feel.  Sometimes I have to do push the envelope more than that.  I admit it.

I do this in the service of my gratitude for our exquisite blue planet, she who sings in a universe of black and white.  

Christmas around here goes to the dogs.  Our neighbourhood is full of them.

After  the arrival of Jewell in 2002, we started to exchange familiarities with our four-footed neighbours.   When one dog meets another, protocol demands only a modicum of civility in the form of a tail wag and  a deep sniff.  Jewell  knew  quickly whom she liked, whom she didn’t, and who made her go pit-a-pat.  When Canyon, the hottie golden, lost his girlfriend to a family move, he told Jewell right away and there followed rainbows and unicorns.   She had a string of admirers ranging from Alfie the pit bull to Mooscue the homely but passionate indeterminent with an underbite.  Canyon was unknowingly merely acquired as a Spare, as Harry would say.

And it was of course their names that we learned first.  It was often months before the human beings exchanged even first names but an obvious connection with a dog functions as character reference;  there was a silent consensus to ignore Jewell’s insistence on intimate sniffs as the gold standard for vetting.  Brisk walks turned into friendly meanders punctuated with laughter and vet ratings. So friendships grew.  And during the Pandemic, these friendships became a lifeline to sanity.

Last Christmas as Omicron crested  was a river too far, however.  I needed to feel communal.  Thus was born the Waggy Drop-off.  Theodore and I combed the Internet for great recipes and finally settled on one we dubbed Hard-Tack for Canines.  The only ingredients were applesauce, whole wheat flour and peanut butter. Theodore tried to help but all he did was eat the organic peanut butter, so I  pounded the very thick  dough into submission, applied the bone-shaped cookie-cutters, baked and dehydrated the cookies.    Then on Christmas Day all three of us delivered the dehydrated treats throughout the neighbourhood.  Jon dressed our two in their seasonal sweaters and we could almost imagine a Bing Crosby Christmas.   Happiness all around.  And Theodore received some really messy thank-you kisses of ap-woof-al.

Christmas 2022 was more pandemic-relaxed but in the complete absence of snow on the ground, food gifts further lift the spirit.  So this year we began to pack treats for the humans too. Jon has developed a delicious very dark chocolate bark filled with roasted almonds and dried cranberries.  Pleased to report that all of the recipients-  waggers or smilers - were most appreciative  and not one of us had a coronary.  

(Dog-World also lived on in my studio.   Here is a dainty girl, whose portrait may or may not be finished.  I’m liking the value study but I shall leave it to Gracie’s beloved Judy to direct me either to stop  here or to proceed to the colour foundation.  Either way, I'm in love with her gloriously limpid eyes!)

-
Speaking of which, a return to reading. Hope so, at least.  

Unfortunately, things have been crazy-busy around here, what with fall chores -  the usual, cleaning and oiling tools, emptying hoses, cleaning gutters, raking.   As always, life includes some erratics, like those stones picked up by glaciers and then dropped here and there a thousand miles away.  Didn’t expect to be side-swiped, for example (and I will never forget that sound).  The other driver was most apologetic about hitting me and most importantly  no human beings were injured;  just makes busy busier. 

Let’s get to the books, even if I don’t have time to crack one for a few days.  We celebrated a 40th anniversary in August.  Wow.  No-one is more surprised than we two, who aren’t possibly old enough (well, at least Jon isn’t).  We’re telling folks that we were betrothed in the crib.  We had a special dinner al fresco and a perfect evening with another couple — dear dear friends — who were celebrating fifty!  Good grief.  So we called it Our High Ninety and a good time was had by all.  Luckily we have a deep back garden so no neighbours succumbed to that flying cork.

Getting back to the point, Jon’s gift to me was the arrival monthly of a book about environmental gardening.  Here is my current haul:


A Garden for the Rusty-Patched Bumblebee by Lorraine Johnson

Nature’s Best Hope by Douglas Tallamy

The Nature of Oaks   by Douglas Tallamy

Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer

The Trees in my Forest by Bernd Heinrich

I had already read three of them but on library e-loans, which rendered me unable to add marginalia and expired too quickly.  Such happiness to see them on my bookcase!  I pat them every time I pass.

No time to paint lately.  This is what I have.  Pretty much complete, it is drying and I am looking and thinking.  Once the reflection dies down, I can begin to correct what doesn't work.  Another item on my TO-DO list is to update the gallery (zannekeele.com).  It is woefully outdated and I am suitably embarrassed.  Give me a few days and then have a peek.

As the woodland becomes more and more established in our back garden,  we are renewing old friendships and creating new.  

2022’s sentimental favourite is Peach, whom we call Melissa for short.  She is a large and regal American toad who shows up here and there, but seems particularly drawn to the old stone steps at the front door.  Let it never be said that Melissa lacks grit.  Literally.  She methodically removed six linear inches of mortar to make herself a little cave, which proved less comfortable than predicted and was promptly abandoned.  She is phlegmatic, except for a marked dislike of Skye terriers, and quietly allows herself to be carried to a safer location if we deem her at risk of death by tire or tooth.  We are fond of the old girl.

It is harder to love cherish Barn Door, the garter snake who lives on the other side of the garden.  I am generally fond of snakes but this guy is a pot-smoking recluse who spends most of his time on-line.  You wouldn’t take him for alt-right, given his pot-smoking habit but Barn Door dabbles in politics even if he draws the line at political pins over an inch wide.  Just don’t get him started on mask mandates and vaccines.  If he were a mammal he would be a hot-head.  We sincerely hope that he and Melissa never meet.

There’s also a green darner flitting around from time to time. I admire the elegance of her composite-eyed helicoptered grace, reminding myself that dragonflies are one of the markers of a healthy environment.  Our absolutely favourite insect, however, is  an annual visitor who shows up  in late autumn.  Looking like a piece of modern sculpture in need of a good meal, Fats the Walking Stick seems to park in or about the garage;  as much as we love the old stone structure, it’s not much use for parking anything post-millennially automotive so she’s welcome to couch-surf with us.

Today's pleasant surprise was the arrival of two young bucks, who ate maple leaves and could be overheard brain-storming about how to interest a female.  Jon and I agreed that their diet was less than optimal for hopeful suitors:  the drought has made food scarce and the deer herd has already finished off our hostas and started on the euonymus, which normally doesn’t get stripped until March.  Unfortunately we can't help much;  our venture into supplying food went south the year we bought them a bale, realizing too late on the way home that we both have classic hay fever.   

But the prize for comedy has to go to the coyote pack behind us in the river valley.  This week the adults were initiating the teenagers into choral singing.  Those kids have a long way to go.  Far from here I hope.  My hair stood on end.  Let's just say that nobody's Met material this year.

Farewell gorgeous autumn!  Hello home-comforts-winter!