Author: Christine Goodnough

I'm a wife, mom & grandma, homemaker, avid reader, blogger, and nature lover enjoying country living. I write short stories, poems, and share life experiences, adding a dash of humor whenever I can.

Frost & Flame

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 14 Comments

Prairie Blues

I’m feeling on the blue side this evening, owing to some changes in the air, literal and social.

For one thing, it was a really windy day and the September wind had a bite. When the sky clouded over in the afternoon it was downright cold. Reality blowing in; summer’s gone. 😦 This evening the wind has died down, but the weatherman is predicting frost tonight: -1C should finish off most of our lovely blooms. I’m not rushing out to cover anything, as they’ve been looking straggly for awhile now. They seem to know their season is over.

Here's a poem I wrote long ago about the September Wind:

Damp September wind whistles
through an early August day, chilling
our summer-browned bodies.

Ever the schoolyard bully, it cuffs us
with an almost icy hand.  "Remember!"
It mocks our shivers, our calendar

consultations.  Dismayed, we grab
for hours as they bounce away, August
days slipping out of our lives forever.

With sighs we hunt for sweaters,
check the pockets of our coats,
while we’re at it, wash our gloves.

© Christine Goodnough, August 2012

My husband tells me that, as of tomorrow, here in SK we’re back to wearing masks when we go shopping and to gatherings. THAT is disappointing! When you wear two back-of-the-ear hearing aids, as I do, the last thing you need is elastic getting tangled with the hearing aid’s plastic tubes. But so many people haven’t gotten their COVID vaccination that our province is experiencing another surge in COVID cases.

After a couple of months mask-free, this feels like a giant step backwards. There’s to be a wedding reception Saturday at our church and it just won’t be the same with everyone masked. Another rule will be that you have to provide proof of vaccination before you can dine in a restaurant.

That said, we enjoyed a nice visit with friends from Quebec who came for lunch and stayed awhile this afternoon. And tonight we have a blazing sunset, with a brilliant ring of fire in the west and southwest to brighten up our world for half an hour before dark.

I spent four hours yesterday, give or take, painting another picture; today I submitted it to the Artist’s Atelier on Malcolm Dewey’s website and got some valuable suggestions for improvement. I started doing all my pictures on canvas, but these days I like to paint a “trial run” on watercolor paper and see how it comes out. I always find some changes and improvements I want to make before committing the final picture to canvas.

Well, enough griping. Wishing you a great weekend, everyone.

Creations in Stone

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 5 Comments

Stone RDP.

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning was STONE
It happens that blogger Keith H posted photos he took while visiting what’s left of the English Castle of Corfe. If you want to see STONE in large quantities, hop over to Keith’s Ramblings and have a look. Not just the castle, but the whole town is well blessed with stone.

As an artist, I’m very fond of drawing and painting stone. Artists as a whole love textures and stone gives us lots of opportunities to paint, carve, and design.

Image by Ulrike Leone — Pixabay

We’re fond of clouds and waves for the same reason: these things offer so many textural possibilities on which we can work out our creative urges. Quilters love finding new patterns; those who work with yarn aren’t content to produce same-old flat fabric, but work in a variety of ribs, knots, cables, shells, fans.

It also happens that on one of our calendars this month there’s a picture taken in the U.S. Grand Canyon. No lack of colourful rock there!

Image from earlofoxford — Pixabay

These stones tell the story of water gushing through that land with tremendous force, carving channels in the rock, creating canyons. As these torrents gouged through the soft stone canyon walls, they made fantastic layered textures before settling into a peaceful river. Today visitors look down at the river snaking among the canyons it created and they marvel at the things water can do.

I’ve held feathers in my hand and studied their complexity of colour and texture; I’ve looked through a wildflower book and marveled at the many leaf and petal shapes and colours. From thorny wild roses to fluffy dandelions and fat, fleshy sedum, I find such variety!

Fur, feathers, scales, limbs, horns, tails…shapes and colours galore decorate our world. All these tell me that our Creator loves textures, too.

“Thou art worthy, O Lord, to receive glory and honour and power: for thou hast created all things, and for thy pleasure they are and were created.” Revelation 4:11

Fast Fly

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 7 Comments

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning is FOREBODING

And the Merriam-Webster Word of the Day yesterday was EGREGIOUS. Seeing that word, I tend to think of GREGARIOUS, which means sociable, friendly, outgoing,. However, EGREGIOUS means somewhat the opposite: obviously or noticeably bad.

As I sat at my laptop pondering what to write re: FOREBODING, a fly landed near my hand. Before I could terminate his existence he was gone. Suggesting a phrase — the first two lines of a poem, redirected from Joyce Kilmer’s “TREES”? Sure, why not? Bear with me here…

Fast Fly

I think that I shall never see
a fly that’s slow enough for me,
a boldly lingering freebooter
’til I can reach the flyswatter.
One lands, but when I blink my eye
it’s on alert and ready to fly
attuned to my egregious thought
of rendering it a bloody spot.

It seems to feel a faint foreboding
as tiny nibbles it’s uploading;
senses my unkind intention,
anticipates swift intervention
to its dining as I leave my chair
to grab the swatter hanging there.
Yet snails along, as flies are wont,
my sluggishness it seems to taunt.

I lift my swatter, all prepared
to deal with any fly that’s dared
check out my home for food un-grazed.
However, soon as hopes are raised
it will not move ’til I bring down
my swatter – such a crack resounds!
It spooks the cats but, woebegone!
that teasing fly is off and gone.

Times And Seasons

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 8 Comments

Another Week Joins Misty Yesterday

The clouds that sneezed on us earlier this week — 3mm or about 1/10″ in fact — have rolled away, the sun has come out with a blazing heat — moderately — and the combines are lumbering across grain fields again. I was out after supper watching one chomping its way through the field behind our neighbour’s farmyard; mostly watching the moving light and listening to the motor roar. Darkness comes so early these days — it’s 8:30 and very dark already.

While I was outside in the dusk I saw three cranes fly over. I thought I’d heard the unique croaking of sand hill cranes, but it seems so early for them to be here. Maybe they follow the sound of the combines? I still see the odd mourning dove but almost all of our other birds left a few weeks ago. The hummers left August 28th and we haven’t seen robins or warblers for several weeks. Did they get weary of the smoky air and move south? We’ve had relief from that lingering smoke for a couple of weeks, but I noticed some smell in the air again this morning.

The Ragtag Daily Prompt this morning was PING PONG. A very apt prompt for me because it feels like my mind ping-pongs a lot, mainly between “I just don’t feel like it” and “But I really should.” Today “I really should” won out and here I an doing a blog post again. When I sit down with my morning coffee and try to plan my day, my thoughts start to ping-pong from one “Needs doing ASP” to another five or six in that category and my energy wants to drain away. I’m sure you organized types will have no idea. 😉

I’ve been enjoying painting — and yet even with such a pleasant hobby there’s some serious ping-ponging. I’m very much a fan of Malcolm Dewy and the painterly or impressionist style he demonstrates in his You Tube videos. I’d like to paint like that! I also admire the works of Ian Harris and Clive5Art, who paint more realistic pictures. Bob Ross-type scenes. Yes! I’d like my pictures to be that realistic, too! So when I pick up a brush, I land somewhere in the middle, neither as impressionist, or as realistic, as I’d wish. Here’s my “Park.” As you can see, too much sharp detail for a Van Goh.

However, I’ve already let analysis and indecision ruin a lot of productivity and fun in my life, so I’ll just squash those bouncing ping pong balls and get at it. 🙂

A Day To Lollygag

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 7 Comments

Here’s my response to today’s Ragtag Daily Prompt is LOLLYGAG

OUT FISHIN'
by Edgar A Guest

A feller isn’t thinkin’ mean
out fishin’;
His thoughts are mostly good and clean
out fishin’.
He doesn’t knock his fellow men
or harbor any grudges then;
a feller’s at his finest when
out fishin’.
The rich are comrades to the poor
out fishin’;
all brothers of a common lure,
out fishin’.
the urchin with the pin and string
can chum with millionare and king;
vain pride is a forgotten thing
out fishin’.
A feller gets a chance to dream
out fishin’;
he learns the beauties of a stream
out fishin’;
And he can wash his soul in air
that isn’t foul with selfish care,
and relish plain and simple fare,
out fishin’.
A feller has no time for hate
out fishin’;
he isn’t eager to be great
out fishin’.
He isn’t thinkin’ thoughts of pelf,
of goods stacked high upon a shelf,
but he is always just himself
out fishin’.
A feller’s glad to be a friend
out fishin;
a helping hand he’ll gladly lend
out fishin’.
The brotherhood of rod and line
and sky and stream is always fine;
men come real close to God’s design
out fishin’.
A feller isn’t plotting schemes
out fishin’
he’s only busy with his dreams
out fishin;
His livery is a coat of tan,
his creed: to do the best he can.
A feller’s always mostly man
out fishin’.
Image by S Hermann and F Richter — Pixabay

Giving Disease A Jab

~ Christine Goodnough ~ 8 Comments

Hello and welcome to SEPTEMBER! Did anyone see SUMMER as it whizzed by?

Leaves are starting to fall, most of our pretty birds seem to have zipped off, harvest is underway — except that the rains we were praying for in July have finally come. I’m glad I’m not a farmer! Mind you, quite a few crops were cut and baled last month because there wasn’t enough grain in the heads to be worth harvesting.

As for me, I’ve started digging up my one large flowerbed. I left it uncultivated in spring because it was so dry; now that it’s been raining I’m getting it ready for winter and for planting next spring.

I’ve been digging around in my family tree roots lately, too, and discovered a family tragedy. One that was quite common back in those days. I can’t imagine how devastated great-great-grandfather Charles must have been when…

– his wife Ann, passed away on Dec 3rd, 1863. She was about forty years old and her youngest child was just a toddler.
– his father, John Watchorn, died on Jan 1st, 1864 at the age of 68.
– his daughter, Ellen, died on Jan 14th. From the records, it looks like she was in her early teens.
– his six-year-old son, Charles Jr, died a few weeks after Ellen.
Ann and her children are buried in one grave with a common headstone.

At one time I made a note in my records that gr-gr-grandmother Ann died of smallpox. An epidemic of that sort would account for the number of deaths in one family in such a short period of time. It’s odd that I can’t find any death records for any of these people. Were they lost in a fire or in transit to the Dept of Vital Statistics, or were there so many smallpox deaths in the area at that time that they weren’t recorded individually? Perhaps a local newspaper of the time would give me a better picture?

Of course I wondered if there was no smallpox vaccine available in their day, so I did some research. Yes, smallpox vaccine was available then. However, there was apparently a lot of fear and resistance, or just plain indifference, to the idea of vaccination. According to the Museum of Health Care at Kingston website:
“Smallpox vaccine was used widely in Canada during the early 1800s, although it soon became neglected. Low immunization levels led to persistent outbreaks…”
The Montreal area experienced the worst outbreak in 1885 when 3000 people died from smallpox. The epidemic spread from there into parts of eastern Ontario.
“Anti-vaccine sentiments mixed with religion and French-English political tensions helped fuel the crisis.”

Sigh… Do things never change?

Well, yes, they do, thankfully. In 1924, a Doctor Heagerty writing about smallpox, lists the terror people felt when the menace was mentioned and all damage it has done in the past, leaving so many people dead, crippled, or scarred for life. Then he writes:
“Vaccination has altered this, and forgetful or ignorant of the appalling ravages of the disease in other days, we now scarcely give the subject of smallpox a thought.”

Small pox, whooping cough, diphtheria, polio. Immunization has dealt a death blow to these scourges our ancestors feared. In more recent years measles, rubella, hepatitis, chicken pox, meningitis, pneumonia, and various influenza vaccines have made life easier yet. We’ve conquered a lot of killers.

So it puzzles me when I hear people who are alive today because their grandparents, parents, and themselves have been saved from these once common killers, now opposing COVID vaccination. I guess some things never change.