a slice for you

corn bread is simple and delicious. especially served warm, right out of the oven. i use the recipe from mark bittman's vegetarian cookbook and i recommend it for ease of instruction and variation suggestions.

both a square tin or a frying pan will work to cook the cornbread but only the frying pan will make it look like pacman.

now there's a good idea.

a rat by any other name

we have some new tenants in our apartment. we invited them to live with us after we heard of their rather perilous previous living conditions and thought we could offer them a very good life. there are three in total but the sum of them fit snugly in jeremy’s housecoat pocket so they’re really not much bother. they like climbing and chewing and licking yogurt from a spoon. one is brave and one is shy and one loves napping best of all.


i made them a mobile that they ate and a quilt that they hide under and a hammock that they pile in to sleep away the afternoon.


they’re curious and clever and every time i peak in at them they’re always doing something interesting like makings nests from newspapers or discussing the rich, crisp writing style of beatrix potter.


they just love that ‘tale of two bad mice’. though i worry they’re getting some naughty ideas.

i like the colour of your lab coat

have you ever dissected an owl pellet? i recommend that you do. we found whole skeletons of little creatures in this one. like skulls and tiny teeth even.

we're scientists! or weirdos. maybe both.

aw jeremy, look!

it's our january picnic from last year! let's do it again tomorrow night. i'll whip us up some lemonade.

let me see, here

this is a funny time of year isn't it? i always feel so melancholy. and not in an 'oh boy get me out of here way' but in a very self indulgent, hibernating under blankets with jeremy way. it's too cold to be outside and anyway the snow would be over my boots in spots. best to stay in and ponder life.

where the railroad ends

maple sap

i love pancakes. and i don't think i always did before but i really do now especially the banana ones jeremy makes me on the weekends those are my absolute favourite.

i bet mel makes a good pancake. one time she brought a homemade chai tea to my desk and i wondered if we could run away together. the journey to our hearts is through our stomachs! when jeremy and i were first dating we would bake creme brulees in the afternoon and i remember it seeming so decadent and rich - like the feeling of finding each other.

edie enchanted

"...she's the most elusive and the most difficult to capture, and i was in her presence masses of times, but i'm left with a visceral impression, not a vocal one that i can communicate because she changed lives of anyone she knew back then with her shimmering presence. it is like taking something ineffible. you know, tinkerbell is always represented just by a light on stage and a little tympani in the orchestra. there's no person in there. it's just a little baby spot that goes around."

rene ricard

the beautiful eyes of the beholder

i’m loving the paintings from charles burchfields late period. i’m also loving that when you’re an artist you get to separate your life into periods of time like civilizations or empires. am i in the early period of my life? i’d like to think so. it gives me time to work up some neuroses for my middle to late period when i’ll start making giant sculptures with the neighborhood hedgerows.


charles' paintings, inspired by nature, evoke a very mystical quality for me like he’s capturing the essence of what you experience when not just out in nature but attempting to be one with it.


i also think he paints an awesome dandelion fluff.

life is what happens when you're doing the dishes

i am in love with the etsy featured seller posts. maybe even more than the etsy shopping pages which is a Rather Big Statement i realize. it’s just so inspiring reading about people who are living their dreams, making things. i read their loves and interests and passions and think ME TOO ME TOO as though i’m connecting with a friend i haven’t met yet. listening to people describe their creative process and how they start their day completely office free, seamlessly incorporating errands and art is dreamlike and compelling, like the description of the book i just read.


the more i ponder on errands the more i believe they’re a part of your process. it isn’t holistic to separate the time for to-do’s and the time for creativity but is holistic to open yourself up to the possibility of the two intermingling. constantly. i’ve thought of some pretty awesome ideas doing some pretty mundane tasks and i can’t help but think that while my busy mind was quieted by the circular motion of the warm wet cloth on the plate, my ideas were free to find their way to me.


read the posts! they are spirited with such wonderful affirmations for the creative soul.

then do the dishes! and welcome the ideas that trickle in like the tap water.

cry like a rainstorm, howl like the wind.

you're gonna wanna watch this. it's a pretty amazing account of the wolves howling at the zoo. have you heard that before? it's almost harrowing. it also sent everyone within a 500 metre radius into a video taping frenzy.

watch for the special moment when i join in.

zoobamafoo

we haven’t been to the zoo in years, two years to be exact, and in that time there’s been a few changes but mostly it’s the same neat place to visit (even neater in the winter when the crowds are sparse and you can park up front like some kind of zoo vip).



zoos are funny beasts aren’t they? while i’m not sure the sea horses care if they're in an ocean or a tank i do wonder about the quality of zoo-life for polar bears or wolves or most any predator animal whose life is based on roaming vast lands for meals and the heck of it. the toronto zoo seems to be dedicated to education and conservation and compared with places lacking that critical mandate(marineland marineland marineland), this is an important distinction.



but i wonder what we’re really learning from looking at animals up close. that they’re cool? that they’re a little like us? are we to feel humbled that these creatures exist in spite of us? or accomplished that we’ve mastered them in the capturing?




if the mission is to educate, but the reality is children pulling parents from one exhibit to the next feeling dismay when the animals aren’t ‘doing anything’, i wonder if that mission is an accurate reflection of truth, or a hopeful aspiration for one day.


i listened to a podcast recently about a trend in the states of public zoo feedings where they offer predators live animals to satiate their need to not only feed, but hunt. zoo guest feedback has been mostly positive and the feedings have created this interesting dialogue around the often times disassociated realms of eating meat, and killing it. education becomes real through direct observation and the discussion it sparks.



in my opinion zoos at their best show us how just how diverse the animal kingdom is, and how small the human slice is in the pie of life. we are capable of doing mammoth-sized damages to the earth and its inhabitants, but we can also be innovative and courageous in our strategies to right the wrongs we’ve done. the responsible zoo’s task then becomes ensuring that they’re always soliciting for the latter, not the former.

peek

i see you world,
from warm inside our ice tent.
we'll come out soon enough,
(maybe spring?)
until then.

did i tell you about the pineapple?

the littlest one in the world?

jeremy put it in my christmas stocking and i paired it with a mandarin to make the littlest fruit salad.

he's always doing things like this, you know. finding extraordinary examples of ordinary things. probably because he's extraordinary. probably because they've been waiting for him.

but the fire is sure delightful

after christmas we drove to a log cabin to spend some holiday time with the wilderness and jeremy’s side of the family.



just over the imaginary line separating our province from quebec’s, we turned on to a snowy logging road and drove into the woods. the evergreens were laden with the kind of snow that looks light falling but ends up sitting heavy, in large mounded piles, on their arms of green.




and i went ice fishing! it was neat. i laced up my snow boots and walked out on the ice, slowly at first, then with gusto like an explorer. in the morning we sat in the hut and by the afternoon we were out on the open ice.

the quiet lay like a blanket over the lake.



jeremy caught a lake trout and we fried it up for supper. i caught some sun and a windblown hair-doo.



we got home new years eve with enough time to unpack and settle into the couch with our glasses of bubbly. watching the pictures of our adventure on the tv screen, and smiling smugly to ourselves we thought, what a season.