Flowers

Untitled
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

This last week we went from winter to summer and eventually got spring.

The crocus and miniature iris are up in the garden, the tree's are alive with bird song, the earth or at least the Northern hemisphere is awakening.

I'm a fall and winter person, I enjoy the cold so why am I so hapy at this time of year?

It's the change I enjoy, seeing all that looked lifeless, magically spring back to life is inspiring and refreshing.
Unfortunately flowers are not the only things that springs back to life, so do the bugs.

Here come the blackfly and the mosquitoes!

But before they do there is the delicious in-between when walking the fields feels like walking on soggy shredded wheat (Robert Bateman said that) and the smell of spring is in the air, the birds are singing all these give promise of better days to come.

Yesterday we spent the day in a greenhouse of exotic plants and even more exotic smells from the flowers.

I think everyone should visit a greenhouse at least once during the winter it is sure to cheer you up.

I dedicate this weeks blog to the flowers ....


The flower offered of itself
And eloquently spoke
Of Gods
In languages of rainbows,
Perfumes
And secret silence...
~Phillip Pulfrey, from Love, Abstraction and other Speculations,

Looking Back

Looking Back
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

I am most at home in the wilderness, but sometimes an area that has been 'tamed' can affect me in a very similar way to that which I feel when I am "out there".

There is something about a cool, foggy morning that makes you think. Well maybe I should rephrase that; a long walk on a cool, foggy morning makes you think.

Walking the soon to be bulldozed lanes, barns and buildings of what was once Winfields Farm in Oshawa, Ontario, leaves you with mixed emotions; primary sadness. 

Yes it may only be a "Farm", a man made place, but it's shear size makes it special. 6000 hectares and once home to 600 horses, a magnificent equestrian past, all gone, to be gobbled up by 'development'.

There are graves here, not of people, but of horses.

Will the sounds of these magnificent creatures be heard above the din of the subdivisions that will, all too soon, sprawl across this space?

Will people talk in whispers about what they have seen galloping down their tarmaced streets on a moonless night?

I doubt it, but they are there....


So bleak is the picture... that the bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century. ~Philip Shabecoff, New York Times Magazine, 4 June 1978

Grandma's Window

Grandma's Window
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

Every time I visit an abandoned house I wonder.
I wonder about the families who lived there,
I wonder about what happened to them.

Some of these places are old and decrepit others still show signs of the lives that were lived there and I look upon the remnants which look back like silent ghosts.

And I think, where are they now, all those that lived, loved, laughed, cried in this place that was once a home?
And how quickly a home can disappear to be replaced by an empty shell
Well almost empty, except for Grandma's curtains in the window.....

Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day
~William Shakespeare

Standing Tall - The Old Oak - Scotsdale Farm

Standing Tall - The Old Oak - Scotsdale Farm
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

How many winters has this old oak seen? Alas I think she has seen her last but she still stands defiant in the face of one more icy blast...

We could learn a lot from tree's if only we would listen ...

The oaks and the pines, and their brethren of the wood, have seen so many suns rise and set, so many seasons come and go, and so many generations pass into silence, that we may well wonder what "the story of the trees" would be to us if they had tongues to tell it, or we ears fine enough to understand. ~Author Unknown, quoted in Quotations for Special Occasions by Maud van Buren, 1938

Old Faithful

Old Faithful
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

Today was a great day, not only was it warm (comparatively speaking) but it was a day filled with old friends and idle banter.
Or was that idle friends and .. no .. old friends and idle banter I was right the first time.

We visited McLeans Auto Wreckers. Now that might seem to be a strange place to actually want to go to but we are photographers and an Auto Wreckers, especially one with 40 acres of old cars is a photographers paradise even more so when the owners are accommodating and friendly.

My photographs from today are in colour, unusual for me but a glorious sunrise and blue skies deserved to be captured in colour

Apart from everything else it was a good walk ....

Better to hunt in fields, for health unbought,
Than fee the doctor for a nauseous draught,
The wise, for cure, on exercise depend;
God never made his work for man to mend.
~John Dryden

These Poor Hands

These Poor Hands
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

Old age - it comes to us all eventually.

I saw this lady bending over the baskets of fruit, nimble fingers searching for the best pieces.

By the look of her hands you wouldn't think them capable of such a task.

It was her hands that caused me to stop. However, looks can be deceiving ...

Father Time is not always a hard parent, and, though he tarries for none of his children, often lays his hand lightly upon those who have used him well; making them old men and women inexorably enough, but leaving their hearts and spirits young and in full vigour. With such people the grey head is but the impression of the old fellow's hand in giving them his blessing, and every wrinkle but a notch in the quiet calendar of a well-spent life. ~Charles Dickens

Hands of the craftsman

Hands of the craftsman
Originally uploaded by Alan Norsworthy

This weekend I was at Thak Ironworks in Floradale, Ontario and met Robb aka Thak.

He described his teen years as a time of discovery.
When he realised that all he needed was iron, a hammer and a forge he was well on his way to becoming what he is today.

Is it trite to call him an 'artist' ?
a 'smith' ?
A 'worker in iron'?

For he is all these things and more. What he does with iron is beyond Art, beyond 'smithing' , beyond just a 'worker in iron'.
He is all of these and the end result is far greater than the parts.

Above all he is a happy man, one of those rare people who have found a way to make a living by doing what he loves to do.

He is the envy of us all.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. ~Henry David Thoreau, Walden