garden – TOpoet

Recap May 2023

June 2, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

City of Valleys 21 sections, about 43,000 words posted so far with 88,000 approx yet to be edited then posted.

Among the movies I watched in May are: All About My Mother (1999) Pedro Almodóvar’s glossy, soap-opera tribute to All About Eve & A Street Car Named Desire. Colourful, soulful & I was happy to see it again. One of those movies in which no one has just one problem – she’s a nun, she’s pregnant, she is HIV+.

Simu Liu heads up the cast in Marvel’s Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings. I’m not a fan of cgi battles so the ones here were perfect for fast forward. I enjoyed the the cultural mix of legend & super hero. Simu is a perfect photogenic hero though a bit banal as a performer. Moves so fat you don’t really care about the plot. Is his Dad really dead?

red turns to green after a few weeks of sun

Man of LaMancha was flop way back 1972. I may have seen it then but I had no memory of it so watching it recently I rather enjoyed it though it did go on & on. The music is passable. The performances are okay, Sophia Loren was the best of the lot.

Read Gerald Hannon’s memoir “Immoral, Indecent, and Scurrilous: The Making of an Unrepentant Sex Radical.” I remember his ‘troublesome’ article & the fuss it created. The book is an easy, almost chatty read, that takes one through the Toronto lgbt scene from the 70’s to the 2000’s. He is frank, direct & funny. Highly recommended.

Finished La Terre (The Earth) another in Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series. Detailed, emotionally over-wrought & great fun. Zola is Charles Dickens with sex. I loved it & was amazed that I could easily follow the lives of over 100 characters & their farm life struggles.

Re-read Gordon Merrick’s The Lord Won’t Mind (1970). I first read in back in the early 70’s & my recollection of it was limited, to say the least. It is unapologetically & frankly gay/queer. Not overly complex & clearly a romantic fiction. A gay male Harlequin romance with explicit sex. I have an edition of the three novels & this is a fun start to it. Gay life before disco or even cell phones – how did they manage!

Garden annuals planted, perennials all doing well & the recent heat wave has sped things along. All we need is rain to turn it into tropical forest. Health remains good – the meds have the hypertension under control, plus some dietary changes have helped keep it down.

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Buds and Blossoms

May 14, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

A stroll through my garden Monday May 8,2023

April Flowers and Leaf Buds

April 23, 2023April 24, 2023 topoetLeave a comment

A set of photos taken Monday, April 17 of burgeoning perennials in my back garden.

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Glory Glory

October 16, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

some of the other morning glory variations in my garden – pictures taken over the past couple of months. Heavenly blues still blooming in October

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UFO Landing

October 1, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

I have several varies of morning glory climbing the walls of my house. These are called UFO. I first saw them several years ago on columns outside the Festival Theatre in Stratford. I can’t recall if they were labelled or if I google them but I tracked them down, found seeds & planted them the next year. This year I planted them to climb above the back door. I use twine for them to climb. They are late bloomers – first blossoms were in mid-August & will continue until the first frost. Some mornings there are 10 or more in bloom.

Moonflowers

September 25, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

This summer I had success with moonflower morning glory. Last summer I had them along the back porch which proved to too sunny for them. So this year I planted them in a shadier part of the backyard. They bloom late in the day, stay open overnight & last till about 10 the next morning. Less than 12 hours – which is true of most morning glories.

moonflower vines growing out of coleus planter

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Garden Glance

August 9, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

Thanks to sunny days & persistent watering my garden is doing nicely this year. I rarely post pictures of it as so many people do better flower pictures no one needs a stunning rose with a single raindrop on a petal picture from me 🙂 So there’ll be nothing of that sort in this glimpse. Beside the soil in the yard, thanks to the towering fir tree, is too acidic for roses.

On my back steps I have herbs along with standard petunias, marigolds & several varieties of morning glory. As you see by the photo I’ve been ‘training’ the vines to grow along the eaves. These will be mainly heavenly blue. They are climbing string that I’ve put up for the, they do need to be reminded to follow the string though.

Along the shady side the back porch I have moonflower vines being trained in the same way. The twine loops across the window so I hope to enjoy themwhen This is the first year these here. Moonflower blooms at night & too much sunlight slows them down! In the basket with them are some coleus, which also prefer shade & they are doing very well here.

Not everything in the garden was planted by me, or anyone else! These petunias self-seeded along the back steps – the seeds are from the ones I had in a planter box last summer. The morning glories beside them are also self-seeded from last year. There’s even one, at the top of the photo, growing out of a crack in the steps. The will to live.

I ordered my elephant ear bulbs (Colocasia) on line as I didn’t find a nursery that had the bulbs. I’ve had them in the past but digging them up every fall was too much work. These I put in a pot about eight weeks ago. Once sprouted they grew quickly & will continue to grow to about 6 ft with huge ears. It’ll winter inside & next spring I’ll consider planting in the ground to see if I can get them to their full height & size.

This is only a portion of the garden. The rest can be seen by appointment only lol.

Recap May 2022

June 2, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

The TOpoet.ca following blog grew to ! The WP map does show my hits have come from countries around the world. That Canada tops the list is unusual. That Poland (Witaj Polsko) & Ecuador (Hola lectores en ecuador) are in the top 10 is a surprise. Hello to my fans in Morocco (مرحباً أيها القراء في المغرب)!

Picture Perfect -119 sections, about 169,000 words posted so far with 20,000 approx to be edited then posted. These last sections took a fair amount editing, fresh writing & even some minor side plot development as I inch closer to the final big scenes now that the remains of the abducted children have been found.

Watched an amazing documentary ‘Firestarter – The Story of Bangarra’ which starts as history of the Australian aboriginal dance company & becomes a powerful mediation on the cost of creativity. The dancing is stunning, the music is incredible & the cost of creativity is heartbreaking. A must see that is streaming on TVO.

Watched Midsommar, bound to be come a season favourite. The depth of research was gratifying & the ritual aspects of the story were spot on & thought totally imaginary felt authentic. When I watch it again I will skip to when they arrive in Sweden as the first act is dreary & quickly drained my sympathy for any of the characters. By the time they got to the commune I was happy with all of them dying.

The extras on our edition of the DVD were banal though I was surprised that only one, of all the leads was American, as I assumed they all were until I heard their actual accents: Irish, Scottish, & that weird accent that is sort of Manx-African-Aussie. Sadly the soundtrack lp contains none of the Swedish chanting – so I didn’t buy it.

Read an excellent set of short stories: 13 Views of the Suicide Woods by Bracken MacLeod. Eerie, scary, inventive well-written tales that are Twilight Zone extreme with explicit gore & violence. Highly recommended for any horror fans.

May has been a month full of of activity, of breaking routines & getting dirty. Dirty digging in the dirt to get my garden ready for the summer. Some hostas were split & halves replanted else where in the garden. All the perennials returned, some worse for winter wear mind you. Loads of annuals planted – asters, alyssum, begonia, marigolds, snap dragons, impatiens, daisies, pansies, petunias, coleus, plus seeds are sprouting for four kinds of morning glory. It will a colourful garden for sure.

a side & b side 🙂 bluer than they appear here

Getting back to my roots by adding some Stonehenge Preseli bluestone to my rock/crystal collection. Part of Stonehenge is a ring of standing stones made of bluestone that is only found is & was quarried from Preseli, Wales. I did an esty search & ordered some.

Coming up in June is a day trip to Stratford to see Hamlet – after the excellent Richard III we saw in May I’m looking forward to this season’s take on Hamlet.

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Richard III

Stratford the People’s Choice

Stratford Big Rig

Best Buds

April 10, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

What’s up? Tiger lilies & more in my front & back gardens. The first four are in my back yard, the fifth is of tiger lilies in the backlane. The last three are in my front yard.

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2021 Recap

January 6, 2022 topoetLeave a comment

Over the past year by TOpoet.ca following blog grew from 445 to 468! Doesn’t sound like much but I did a cull of followers who are no longer active on WordPress. The WordPress map show my hits have come from over 70 countries around the world. USA still tops the list but that China & Bangladesh are in the top 10 is a surprise. Nigeria in the top 20 – but behind Malawi! Kazakhstan! Still no hits from North Korea 😦 My Tumblr is at 346 followers. 229 Twitter followers.

My top ten posts of the year include 2 out of the archives! Born To Be Blown – from 2014 – https://topoet.ca/2014/01/24/born-to-be-blown/; & Sydney Academy 2 from 2019 https://topoet.ca/2019/08/12/sydney-academy-2/.

I made a few changes in my blogging routine to give me more time for actual writing 🙂 At the start of the pandemic blogging daily was an excellent way to get through the lockdown. Then it became work I had to keep up with & was no longer fun, so I cut way back.

In 2020 I did 322 posts; in 2021 I only 260 blog posts – of course having no live poetry readings or Stratford show to review reduced the quantity. Though on of the highlights of 21 was seeing Three Tall Women on stage in Stratford. Martha Henry’s tour de force final production.

Picture Perfect: Picture Perfect: 98 sections, about 142,000 words posted so far with approximately 45,000 to be edited then posted. I’ve been enjoying the slow process of edits & have made some major cuts in the final set of rough drafts. As usual my biggest issue is keeping names straight – what did I call that rcmp constable a hundred pages ago? I’m really enjoying creating the weekly graphic for each section. I do have an endless supply of frame & paintings that people have thrown out.

Like many people I’m weary of the pandemic, of people’s reactions, of the roller-coaster of restrictions, & now the paranoia. Is it allergies? A cold or covid? How ‘sick’ does one have to be to get tested? Who pays for it? By the time you get tested, have the results, early onset treatment is too late. How long before neo-citron markets a neo-covid hot lemon drink?

Highlights of the year: contributing a forward to Philip Cairns book Hollywood Poems; having some pieces of mine included in Pandemic Poetry. Extensive work on my garden. Deep house cleaning in a lock-down pandemic purge of the house top to bottom, in particular a basement full of stuff – some not touched since we moved into the house some 40 years ago.

I did get used to zoom recovery meetings & now seriously doubt if I’ll go back to face-to-face. I do meet up with fellow recoveries for face-to-face conversations & sharing. Going up to my room for a zoom is much easier than getting ready an hour or so in advance to get there with the hope the TTC hasn’t shut down.

What am I looking forward to in 2022? Good question. Travel out of the country is out of the question. Even for travel within Canada testing rules can change while I am landing so I might never get off the plane or end up living in a tent on the runway until I can get an appointment for the right test. But I am considering another week or so in Cape Breton if pandemic travel rules loosen up enough. Stratford has a tentative season with a couple of shows we’re interested in seeing but will it end up a repeat of last season’s open air productions?