Mary Soderstrom's Blog

Don't know why this should be, but it seems to me that we get some glorious sunsets in early November.  Here's an example of one from a couple of years ago.

Would be nice to think that somehow the sky is reflecting the trees that blaze this time of year in this climate.  

I do know that the day that Leonard Cohen was buried ten years ago, the sky blazed. His death on Nov. 7, 2016 had not been announced, but as it happened I drove past the cemetery on Mount Royal where he is buried late that afternoon.  When his family announced the news of his death, I couldn't help applaud the coincidence of his demise and the glory in the sky.  
 

Even though our kids are long grown-up and their kids are busy with other things, I like to do the Halloween thing.  Pumpkin, candy, front porch light on invitingly.

But this year I put off buying a pumpkin until too late:  the only ones in our immediate neighbourhood were huge, or from California so I decided to do something different.

Luckily we have a nice glass front door on which we've often displayed artwork.  So I got a sheet of poster board and cut out a pumpkin.  Looks rather nice, I think, but it remains to be seen whether the kids (and there are far fewer than formerly, kids grow up and move away) stop by to see what we're offering.

 Doesn't look bad, though, does it? 

The colours have passed their peak but the beauty continues.

This photo was taken at sunrise a couple of years ago, but I'm using it again because I think it captures the pared-down glory of the after-Autumn.
 

 Still about two weeks to go before Halloween but  a lot of folks have started celebrating.  This stack of lovely pumpkins and gourds is outside a small resto in the neighbourhood.  I wonder how long it will last...

This photo of windfall apples spaks to the abundance of fruits and vegetables available to many of us during this harvest season.

Thank goodness!  We are so lucky to have more than enough to eat, to go to sleep in a warm, clean place, and, frequently, to be loved.

So even if you are not a believer, I think it is good to pause occasionally and take stock of all we have.  Gratitude is not a dirty word.
 

 Saw these flowers this week.  Growing between paving stones on a busy street can't be easy, but nevertheless they have succeeded.  A lesson for us all when it seems the odds are stacked against us, perhaps.

 September is the time of change, when the landscape can change overnight to be something quite different from what you'd been enjoying for weeks.  These sumac leaves are a harbinger of what is to come.  The first flames of fall....

 This is what you go through when you take Montreal's REM trains, the Réseau express métropolitain.  Well, you don't magically find yourself transported through solid rock, but you do travel through a tunnel cut through the rock that forms the bones of Mount Royal.

 

The REM designers wisely left a window on the rock at the level before the level of trains in the Edouard Montpetit station.  When I took the train downtown the other day, I was wisked 20 storeys down from the brilliant fall sunshine to the bones of the earth in seconds by one of the elevators.  The experience is a little unsettling if you stop to think about it, but if you're in a hurry, all you can think about is the speed with which you can get one place to another.

 The REM has had/is having problems at various times, but it is an excellent addition to public transport when it runs.  

This is a great time of year for anyone who loves fresh food.  The Marché Jean Talon in Montreal's Piccola Italia is full of tomatoes, basil, lettuce, corn, garlic, ontions, not to mention the first apples and pears, nectarines and grapes from Ontario.

I love to go there and I love even more coming back home to eat what I've bought.  Next up today: finding some new recipe for the eggplant I bought.  
 

This is a great time of year for anyone who loves fresh food.  The Marché Jean Talon in Montreal's Piccola Italia is full of tomatoes, basil, lettuce, corn, garlic, ontions, not to mention the first apples and pears, nectarines and grapes from Ontario.

I love to go there and I love even more coming back home to eat what I've bought.  Next up today: finding some new recipe for the eggplant I bought.