behindtheax

Butterfly Bush

One of my better gardening purchases this year. 

posted by mary j. @ 9:41 AM 0 Comments

fall

There was a cool wind yesterday. Cool enough to wish for a sweater. Fall begins again and with the first traces of it in the air, I start to feel melancholy. The start of every new season brings me this feeling. It makes me think too long on my past and it makes me a little apprehensive for the future. This is not how I wish to feel. I should be concentrating on the here and now and my many, many blessings – I think I will make an apple pie today. See if that helps.

posted by mary j. @ 9:36 AM 0 Comments

Marsh 

posted by mary j. @ 6:36 PM 0 Comments

Cinder 

posted by mary j. @ 6:34 PM 0 Comments

what was I thinking?

Day three with puppies. I have bags under my eyes. When they sleep I want to sleep. The only constant question I seem to keep in my head is, “what are the puppies into?” However when I took ten minutes this morning to show Erin how to do a math question, I managed to forget that one important puppy question until it was too late. Monica was the one to call me to the back door. “Mom, you better come quick.” I have this half barrel full of flowers in the corner of the garden and when I stepped outside, the dogs raised their heads, their completely dirt covered heads, from the hole they created in this big planter where not one flower was left standing. The flowers and dirt were spread across the lawn and onto the patio. Ten Minutes!!
I would have done anything to have my camera at that moment. Of course seeing me they leaped from the hole they dug and came barreling over to the back door, tails wagging. Mornings are a little tough but once the girls go to school, I take these new girls for a run in the park. And I run with them until they are good and tired. Once again they are sleeping and I can think for a moment. I have a crate but I only put them in there at night so they don’t eat our dry wall.

They came with their names, which are Cinnamon and Marshmallow but we decided we would shorten them to Cinder and Marsh. I like the name Cinnamon but I’m not crazy about the name Marshmallow. Their personalities are so different. Both are smart I think but Marshmallow might be a little smarter. She is the bigger of the two and has a sharper nose. Cinnamon has the face of an angel but she is the main mischief-maker. They both are very friendly and I believe very trainable. I love going for walks with them. I haven’t had this much social interaction in years. Everyone has advice for me and it’s funny because one person’s advice will contradict the next person’s advice. One woman, who I have seen often in the past year or so walking her two dogs, stopped and talked to me today for the first time ever. Told me about the dog park and what dogs to avoid. I guess there is a real troublemaker there everyday at around nine thirty but she says he only stays for about ten minutes. I forgot all about this doggy culture -- after Annie turned 12 we didn’t take her to the dog park very often because she got snappy with the younger dogs—she would play good naturedly with them until she ran out of steam but then would get grumpy if they kept wanting to play. Anyway it does feel good to have a dog (s) again but at some point I will have to find away to get some work done.

posted by mary j. @ 4:50 PM 0 Comments

sleeping

Day one with puppies (they are four months old) was very exciting and a little overwhelming. They are sleeping now so I thought I would write. Greg is in Niagara Falls at a conference and won’t be back until Wednesday. I hope to have a routine in place by then. Right now I don’t even trust them in the back yard by themselves. Walks are fun – people love puppies. Everyone was making conversation but all I could concentrate on was not getting their leases tangled up again. I had a kind offer from a neighbour, who said she would pet sit if we vacation. Erin and Monica went off to school today with incomplete homework because they had played with these dogs from four o’clock until ten o’clock and even when the dogs were sleeping, Monica and Erin sat on the kitchen floor and watched them sleep. The cat is not happy but she will come around. The puppies have been really good around her during their few encounters, however she wants nothing to do with them. Hope to have pictures up shortly.

posted by mary j. @ 10:39 AM 0 Comments

nature's will 

posted by mary j. @ 11:06 AM 0 Comments

pitter patter

Oh my gosh!! They’re ours. I just got a call from the woman who runs the shelter and she is dropping them off tomorrow afternoon. We have two new family members. Two young sisters, who are part husky and (the shelter thinks) part lab. Greg is still shaking his head. I swear I was always only set on finding one dog but this shelter wanted these two sisters to stay together. They do love each other very much and what could I do? I was not about to separate sisters. Now I must go speak to our cat. give her the news gently.

posted by mary j. @ 9:05 PM 1 Comments

here we go again

I think I might have just started a ball rolling that I may live to regret but I won’t give any details until it all happens or doesn’t happen. It looks like rain today. We have friends (New Brunswick friends) stopping by at around two today. They are in town for U2.
Things are starting to take shape around here. One of Greg’s ideas is actually starting to materialize into something very possible and I’m getting excited about it. I know I am being very vague about everything but in due course. I think I mentioned before how Greg has been coming to me constantly with his grand schemes and ideas for the past twenty years and because we had come close, but no cigar many times (Sorry, I’M like the worst one for using cliché) I do tend to get a bit worried when he comes at me with another one. However, I remember his first computer idea in 1990 and it was a sound one. Greg, who was then an actor, and we were only in the city for maybe a year, came to me and said, “We need to buy a Macintosh computer and buy the software Quark X-press.” Well at the time we were trying to save for a wedding and we had just sold our car because we couldn’t afford it and the last thing I wanted to do was buy a computer and this expensive software but he convinced me this was the way to go and he learned that application inside and out and started getting all kinds of work with it. His love for computers just pretty much escalated from there and he’s still constantly obsessed with learning the next greatest thing and of course, there is this huge part of him that keeps wanting to invent the next greatest thing. Life with Greg. Lip biting at times but he keeps it interesting and once again it is getting interesting. And I'll be involved with this project which makes me happy because when he does contract work out side the office there's never much for me to do in the office except for a little filing and bookkeeping. Mind you out of the seven or eight major projects he started in the past, I think he fired me or I quit several times from most of them. I’m not saying a husband and wife working together works smoothly all the time.

By the way this has nothing to do with that first line. That is something entirely different but also very exciting.

posted by mary j. @ 9:54 AM 0 Comments

concert

Went to the U2 concert on Monday night. I loved it. The last concert I was at was Van Morrison, which was around this time last year. Anyway, what struck me funny is how cell phones have replaced the bic lighter. These days fewer people smoke but everyone and their dog has a cell phone. It was kind of pretty looking out at a sea of tiny square lights from thousands of cell phones but at the same time it was a little unnerving for me. I can’t pinpoint why but for a brief moment it made me feel sad. The future is now, sort of feeling.

posted by mary j. @ 8:58 AM 0 Comments

a pleasant dream

There is this house, my aunt’s old house.
Not the one she lives in in-real life
The one she lives in when I dream about her.
The one just up the road from my sister’s place.
The one situated far back from the main road and hidden by
woods.
I love this house and so one day when my aunt
(my favourite aunt) decides she wants to live in town,
I buy this house and convince
my husband to move from the city

and in my excitement I fill the crisper with apples
because horses stroll all the time through the long grass
out back, swishing grey and black tails -
behind them rolling hills slide slowly down into
treetops

This house smells of cedar trees
and has this wide gleaming countertop, separating two large rooms.
So perfectly designed for crowds and conversation
And knowing family is once again spread out all around and near me
I listen impatiently for the sound of car motors
and the break of dry branch under tire.

When they arrive I will ask if I can host thanksgiving this year.
Fill this house with the smell of cranberries

And knowing in this dream, I will be granted all things -
I happily drag my husband by the hand to the back window
And point where I want a shed full of chickens to go
and a porch swing to face the hills and open sky,
and I think about fall leaves and the sweater I will wear
And the frost and the snow
and my tracks to and from the blue tarp, which hides the firewood.

And it is only upon waking that this seems implausible
And I wonder if it is because my aunt never owned a house like this?

posted by mary j. @ 4:06 PM 0 Comments

sorry henry

The 7th already – library books due today. I am returning the Bostonians unfinished. I tried but it was boring me to tears. I guess I’m not sophisticated enough for Henry? Silk purse, sow’s ear - C’est La vive. Back to monsters crawling out of sewers. Well it isn’t totally my fault – every evening that I tried to pick it up, I had two excited daughters who wanted to talk about the coming school year and their friends and clothes and what this one said about that one – I did try to read this book. I waited til they were ready for bed, when they were in their rooms, when I thought it was safe to crawl into my own bed with book in hand, arrange my two pillows against the head board for extra comfort and then open the book to the page where I had last left Olive and Verna and the crew. However, by about the third paragraph each evening, I would hear a soft knock on my bedroom door. And before I could even utter the words, come in, my two very long daughters would first fling and then stretch themselves across my bed wanting to talk the night away. Greg would usually be in the basement office at the computer and I would make attempts to regain my solitude by asking both of them pleasantly about a half a dozen times, “can we talk in the morning? I just want to read a little.”
But they would continue on from one story to the next, finding great humor in every little situation they were describing until Henry’s masterpiece had to be once again closed and set atop the radiator beneath my window. Reading glasses folded and placed on top of it. It was just unable to compete with these two emerging and truly remarkable butterflies that settled on my top sheets every evening for the past two weeks.

posted by mary j. @ 9:55 AM 0 Comments