All The Roadrunning

For a guitar aficionado such as me, last night's Mark Knopfler and EmmyLou Harris concert was a treat. Knopfler led a five guitarist band through two hours of his signature rock roots sound.

EmmyLou has become the vocal heart of roots Americana. She and Knopfler are touring their new colaboration. The songs are soulful and complicated.

As well, each performer had dips into their own well of songs.

I adored Knopfler's playing style, especially when he brought out that steel guitar.

But the highlight for me was EmmyLou's 30 year old Boulder to Birmingham. At the first chords, the grey haired woman in front of me pulled off her glasses and put her hand over her eyes. I tried not to watch her shoulders heave. By the time EmmyLou got to the line "the canyon was on fire", I too was lost.

Thirty years were gone. I was sitting on a lumpy green corduroy couch, in a familiar old wood paneled livingroom washed by the memory of young love that burned too hot and was gone too soon. The pain lingering and the determination of - what - recapturing or rebuilding. I didn't know then.

All I know now is that life is a bedrock built of experience and time is an ever moving river and, for me, music is the hook that draws me down to touch memory.

Blue Jay Way

Directly out my window are two 40 year old blue spruce trees. The city carefully maintains them. This year they are brimming with pinecones, both brown and green.

There's a pair of mourning doves nesting in them. They tried low on one tree and had their effort torn down by some squirrels. Now they are rebuilding higher on the second tree. They are stupid birds, but I wish them luck.

With the ripening of the pinecones, have come the Blue Jays. For a week, every day at lunch, I saw one working his way through the branches.

I'm not usually thinking about the trees at other times of day, but one evening I was telling hubby about the jay. At the moment when we were both looking at the spruces, trying to imagine the bird, along flew first one, then two and finally five Blue Jays, squawking louder than sea gulls.

A hopeful sight in the downtown heart of this city.

Do You Know Where Your Asters Are?

With two weeks left until the garden show preview, this was a week of heavy weeding.
Everything unnameable has been yanked.

Hidden among the spirea and in certain corners of the garden I found those long weedy stems and narrow pointed leaves. My neighbour has a large clump bordering the sidewalk. I walk by and want to remove those reedy semi-leafless stalks.

They are not phlox. I have been stumped before and so pulled them. Then when Fall comes I'm wondering where all those outstanding shimmery purple blossoms have gone. An aster is wildflower, they can't be killed.

But, oh yes, they can be mistakenly pulled. But not this year.