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A Good Home, Animals, Art, Artist, Country Living, Farm house, Garden, Gardening, Gardens and Wildlife, Home, Life in canada, Nature Paintings, Rabbits, Spring, Wild Rabbits, Wildlife, Winter

It’s A Wild Life

June 19, 2014June 20, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

It is a truth universally suspected that a family in possession of a wildlife painting must be in need of some wildlife.

Years ago, my husband’s family had a farm and he and I became custodians of it. The farm was on a hilltop so we cleverly named it Hill Top.

Husband, children and I summered and weekend-ed there. I loved that farm and wanted a name sign for our front gate. So my husband commissioned a local artist to make one for my birthday. Author-illustrator Beatrix Potter – she of Peter Rabbit fame and a farmhouse named Hill Top — came to mind.

The moment that sign went up, Peter Rabbit, his parents and all their friends took up residence in our gardens.

They ate us out of home and land. As soon as we planted vegetables, herbs and flowers, they ate them. There was soya and wheat growing in the fields. But why travel so far, when there’s good stuff nearby?

My husband couldn’t bring himself to hurt them — not with that sign out front. So there we were, hoist on our own petard.

When our family moved to another home, there were no rabbits — we thought.

And then two auspicious things happened:

We visited the old farmhouse. Our daughter noticed that the new owners had removed the Hill Top sign and begged them to give it back. They graciously agreed.

Soon after, our resident red fox – a predator of rabbits — upped and died. It might have been the sight of the sign that did it. But there was his carcass, lying across our stream.

It took gallons of expensive fox urine to protect our gardens that year. (If you want to learn more about that inauspicious episode, you’ll have to read my next book.)

And now?

Years after moving to our current farmhouse, we’re besieged by wild rabbits — again. Squirrels too, but they don’t eat shrubs, herbs, flowers and vegetables.

Last winter, the rabbits were so starved for food that they ate all my clematis vines, plus the barks of several tender young trees and shrubs.

My husband did a very manly thing: he shouted at them. The rabbits ran — and immediately returned.

We decided to sympathize. Wild rabbits, too, have to eat.

But soon it was spring — time to plant vegetables.

Husband decided the rabbits should be moved to a nearby nature park. He set a humane trap filled with things that Beatrix Potter said wild rabbits love: carrots and lettuce and cabbages. But we might as well have posted a sign saying: “This is a rabbit trap.”

Truth is, these particular rabbits mostly eat grass and clover so far this spring.

Truth is, our daughter has named them Fred and Penelope. (At least, she thinks there are only two. But where there are two, there are — or soon will be — a dozen.)

And truth is, my husband has put the sign up again.

Methinks it’s a sign of surrender.

Photos by Hamlin Grange.

A Good Home, APTN, Artist, Canada, Canadians, Country Living, Couples, Creative Writing, Docudrama, Flowers, Home, Home Decor, Homecoming, Interior Design, Joyful Moments, Life Challenges, Life in canada, Lifestyle, Maple Woods, Nature, Rex Deverell, Rita Deverell, Rita Shelton Deverell, Trees, Vision TV, Women leaders, Women's Studies, Writers

At Home with Rita Deverell

June 16, 2014September 2, 2015 Cynthia Reyes

For many years, Rita Shelton Deverell wanted to produce a docudrama about a remarkable woman. But other careers got in the way. The actor, playwright and docudrama-maker has also worked as a TV presenter and head of current affairs for Vision TV, the Canadian network she co-founded; news director (mentoring her successor) at APTN, the Aboriginal People’s TV Network; professor of journalism and women’s studies in two Canadian universities;

Her achievements earned her a place in the Order of Canada – Canada’s highest honour.

At last, Rita is writing the docudrama screenplay about Florence James. She’s writing it at her country home in the ‘Sugar Bush’, outside Toronto. “We bought the country place 22 years ago when our son graduated from high school. Thereafter we started to rent apartments in Toronto. There have been five Toronto apartments in 22 years (plus two in Winnipeg, and one in Halifax where I worked three-year stints). The ‘Sugar Bush’ house remains home throughout these moves and always welcomes us.” Like Rita, Florence James found a productive life and award-winning career in Canada. Rita came to Canada from Texas as a young woman, but Florence came here past age 60, after some terrible events.

“‘McCarthy and the Old Woman’ is about a feisty, resilient real-life heroine who lost everything because of the communist witch-hunts in the USA. Florence James was blacklisted and bankrupted. She survived the loss of her money, reputation, life’s work, her home and the death of her husband.”

The planning, creative thinking and writing for the docudrama are taking place here. Two writers live here. Rita’s husband Rex is a well-known playwright. Each has an office on the house’s lower level. “Sometimes I write and plan in longhand at the drum table. But I have to get the feeling that I’m ‘going to work’. Rex has never gone to an office, so I have to keep his joke-telling self away from my work space.” Rita’s homes – country and city – are beautifully designed – by her. They are bright, comfortable, unpretentious places, where history, art, houseplants and flowers mix. Many objects were passed down from Rex and Rita’s parents. “Every place in the large five-area living space is for my favourite leisure time activity, reading detective fiction. “We have lots of family pieces by now: the drum table was my mother’s. “The small desk and dining room table were Rex’s mother’s. The rocking chair was Rex’s grandfather’s, though not upholstered in leopard print. “Outside, the yellow Muskoka chair is really the place I love to sit and dream and have nothing to do.” “I’m a home addict. The trivial side is I love to look at houses, read the real estate ads all the time, adore interior decorating, and can be cheered up by having a design idea.

“The important thing though is I’m an introvert, and actually draw my energy by starting each day from home base. That’s a place where my life is ordered, feels controllable, and beautiful. Then I can go out into the world and deal better with the dis-ordered, un-controllable, and sometimes ugly.”

Recently, another of Rita’s projects was launched to positive reviews. It’s a multimedia, educational kit called ‘Women, Contemporary Aboriginal Issues and Resistance’. Free and downloadable, it includes a DVD:

http://www.msvu.ca/en/home/research/centresandinstitutes/IWGSJ/Events/ToolKit.aspx

Photos by Rex Deverell.

A Good Home, Flowers, Garden, Gardening, Home, Life in canada

Bloomin’ Stuff

June 6, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

Stuff is blooming in my garden.

Pink Stuff – some that were expected to be pink, and some that came up in a different colour scheme. It’s very pretty, this pink and white columbine. But where did it come from?

The grace of the garden: you get more than you planted.

The surplus, Canadians call it.

Brawta, Jamaicans call it.

I just call it grace. And when I think about it, my whole garden this spring is an illustration of grace. The harsh winter killed off very little. The starving rabbits chomped off all our clematis vines and tender shrubs right down to the ground, but most are returning. And I’m able to walk around the garden each morning and evening, and enjoy the miracle called Spring.

The Purple-y-Blue Stuff — like this bachelor’s button — returned looking dapper.

Yellow Stuff like these day lilies bloomed early for our region.

And then there is Stuff that’s making me wait. Like the peonies and the poppies.

Anticipation. Aspiration. Expectation. These things build character. Don’t they?

Perhaps it is time for some meditation.

Whether you garden or not, I hope your spring is going well.

By the way, these photos are entirely amateur, and I won’t identify the inept photo-taker (I simply can’t call her a ‘photographer’) in order to protect the guilty. My wonderful photographer is busy with other things right now, but he will return.

Dedicated to the memory of Donald Moore, one of the most patient and expert gardeners I’ve ever known.

A Good Home, Daughters, Family, Family Moments, Flowers, Following your dreams, Garden, Guitar Playing, Home, Joyful Moments, Learning to play the guitar, Life in canada, Mothers, Pets, play music, Verandahs

A Sweet Sound

May 30, 2014May 31, 2014 Cynthia Reyes

Twang, pling. Pling twang.

Pling, twang. Pling, twang.

Pl–ung???

My daughter is learning to play the guitar.

I knew she was committed when she bought her own guitar less than a week ago.

Next she cut her beautiful fingernails. One by one.

Then she watched a YouTube tutorial and downloaded a guitar chords app.

Pling pling. Twang twang…

She sings softly, willing her fingers to follow her tune.

Pling, pling, twang twang, twung…. Shi….!

She senses my presence and doesn’t finish that word.

She utters a loud sigh instead, rolls her eyes, shakes her head.

I’ve joined her on our farmhouse verandah. The day is crisp, cool, but beautiful. (Can you see the blue sky and evergreen spruce trees reflected on the front of her guitar?)

Birds are singing, her father’s gardening and our daughter’s little dog Mr. J. stops and listens for a moment to the guitar playing, before running off to bark at yet another squirrel.