Can you find a purer piece of Canadiana than Maple Syrup, nectar of the great white northern gods (ok, and parts of the the Northern US too).

If all you use this springtime elxir for is on top of pancakes, you are missing a world of culinary delight: dipping sauce for bacon, combine with soy sauce for a fabulous salmon marinade, mix with butter to top off a squash that will melt your heart, stir into your morning oatmeal, fold it into vanilla ice cream, splash it onto your baked beans, mix it with a salad vinaigrette, the ultimate topping for elf spaghetti, or just straight up shots.  And, to boot, its good for you, nature’s best sweetener.

A few photos from a nearby maple sugar festival.

Recently enjoyed holidays in southern climes – a few images of what caught my eye (I particularly love the crazy colour and texture transitions on this trunk of the palm tree in the first image).

It’s tillandsia usneoides, more commonly known as Spanish moss, a lovely, lilting epiphyte that not only absorbs nutrients and water from the air but catches sunset light in perfect fire-like hues.

Winter has finally made an appearance in these parts, and its a beautiful thing.  I’ve missed the contrasting whiteness of snow along with the quilted layer of quiet it brings.  Let it snow!

I walked home the other night, in the daylight-savings-time early evening darkness, with sidewalks still strewn with leaves.  I felt like a little kid swishing through boot-deep mounds, the lovely sound of all that thrashing and rustling, the lingering pleasure of a lasting autumn.

Cue up Vivaldi (the “Danza Pastorale,” aka, Concerto No. 3 in F major, or more commonly known as “Autumn”) and the Four Seasons.

It’s fall and where I’m living there’s a slow explosion of colour (unlike the variation on dun that I’ve gotten used to the past years).

Interesting to note that the autumn change in colours is actually an unmasking, with the leaves showing their original, true hues.

As trees hunker down for the winter and pull energy inward, chlorophyll gradually recedes along with its green pigment and the fall palette of trees is splashed around in all its glory.

Along with a few images of the fall fireworks, a poem from Luci Shaw.

Does Fall Go Back?

Does Fall go back as far as Eden? Did the

Lord God say, “Good” to a beech leaf
bleached back to its primary yellow? Did
Eve dance, entranced, when the first
leaves on the first oak turned red as wine
and loosed themselves? Did Adam rake
the ground clean and burn the leaves
after his other Garden work?