Photos – Page 11 – follow your nose

Details of the Squash Takeover

July 17, 2016July 17, 2016 Katharine Asals17 Comments

Mornings on the patio…
Last year, in the borders out here on the patio, I planted a few tomatoes, some peppers, perennials.
This year, not so much, but our new-ish neighbour to the left, after a few tentative tomatoes last year, suddenly decided to go all in.
She has a much larger section of dirt and less patio, so rows were created in the earth, sections for various kinds of tomatoes, beans, herbs, squash, and the tall corn…
For weeks she’s been out there watering her plants every morning, though when you ask her there is a shrug of doubt – she’s an urban girl from Nigeria, she tells me, and her friends back home tease her that she’s come to Canada to become a farmer.
It’s all so new, she says, she herself doesn’t believe the plants will grow.

June and so far July have been full of long dry sunny days.
Mornings have the rustle of people in pyjamas out watering and tending the flowers, the vegetables – weeks ago the grass dwindled to a shrivelled pale yellow.
But then after so many dry hot days, for a glorious 24 hours it rains…

And the next day I am out again in the morning sun, and am a bit confused at the huge leaves over on the left.
A massive plant has started growing through the fence from my neighbour’s side…

It has already crowded out the little instalments of parsley and coriander I had growing over in that corner.

She comes around to see it – she can’t believe it!
That her gardening has been so successful the plants are bursting through the fence, seeking out more space to blossom and flourish!

I lift up a leaf to show her one squash that’s already an astonishing size.
Her eyes widen – the miracle of it!
She tells me I must use not only what is growing on my side, but help myself to her side as well, as she has more vegetables than she knows what to do with. That I must show her how I cook it, as she doesn’t even know anything about this kind of squash.

So, practicing my recipes, this morning for breakfast, I had flor de calabaza with salsa verde… yummmm…

Weekly Photo Challenge – Details

Looking back

July 12, 2016January 4, 2017 Katharine Asals13 Comments

I was in Ottawa visiting friends from back in the day, back in Montreal, and as if out of some random pocket of a time warp, my friend pulled out some tiny forgotten paintings I’d done on tiles – tiny still lives of the charming funky place we lived in together so many years ago…

And my gosh, it was a revelation to me – most of all, that I had more or less managed with, more or less made my way around oil paints a couple of decades ago.
I’ve been struggling with oil paints the last few months – torn between the more recent experience of a fast drying acrylic paint, the possibility of fast endless layers, and the faint memory of a rich buttery wet wet paint I was able to negotiate to some degree some decades ago…

Now, trapped in work deadlines, I am fetishizing the time ahead in the studio…how glorious it is sure to be with this new-found half-remembered confidence…

Happy happy summer all…

Weekly Photo Challenge – Looking Up

The Great Curve

June 19, 2016June 19, 2016 Katharine Asals5 Comments

Sometimes the world has a load of questions
Seems like the world knows nothing at all
The world is near but it’s out of reach
Some people touch it…but they can’t hold on.

She is moving to describe the world
(Night must fall, darker, darker)
(She has got to move the world, to move the world, to move the world)
She has messages for everyone
(Night must fall, darker, darker)
(She has got to move the world, to move the world, to move the world)
She is moving by remote control
(Night must fall, darker, darker)
(She has got to move the world, to move the world, to move the world)
Hands that move her are invisible
(Night must fall, darker, darker)
(She has got to move the world, to move the world, to move the world)

The world has a way of looking at people
Sometimes we feel that the world is wrong
She loves the world, and all the people in it
She shakes ’em up when she start to walk

The world moves on a woman’s hips
The world moves and it swivels and bops
The world moves on a woman’s hips
The world moves and it bounces and hops

Weekly Photo Challenge – Curve