A year in images that speak

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A year in images that speak

Writers notice a lot, and sometimes that manifests in photographs instead of words I know several writers who are also photographers, using another medium to convey ideas that have fascinated us, enchanted us, haunted us. We record images that inspire, remind us of something we want to use in our books, or enrich our time away from the keyboard. So here are a few of my favourite such photographs from the past year. They each capture a little moment in time, just as my stories do. I hope you like them.

Signs of spring finally emerging in our local gardens. It felt like a long winter, and I wasn’t able to leave the house much, so a walk in the fresh air with bursts of colour and new growth felt indescribably reviving.

Heartland Forest is worth a journey when it becomes a froth of spring green, as if Mother Nature has strewn verdant lacework everywhere. You have to catch it quickly, before the leaves grow larger and darker, just at this perfect moment that feels like you’ve crossed over into some kind of enchanted realm.

The incredible hoopla around the rare solar eclipse in early April almost turned into a complete bust, even though we live right in the path of its totality. I ordered special viewing glasses months ahead of time so that we could watch the event safely. In Niagara Falls, the excitement was incredible, along with soaring hotel prices and bad hotel practices. But my hubby and I didn’t need to worry about that; all we had to do was step out into our backyard — or so we thought. As the totality approached, the sky was filled with clouds, and we thought, You have to be kidding us! Finally, with the event just minutes away, we decided to hop in our truck and try to find any patch of sky in the vicinity, and suddenly, as we were driving along the Welland Canal, there it was, just for a few moments during brief breaks in the cloud cover. Day turned into night, just as it was supposed to, and I even managed to take several decent photos — not great, but far better than we’d hoped for. We saw the Diamond Ring phenomenon, then returned home to enjoy the special meal I’d concocted, grateful that we hadn’t been cheated out of this once-in-a-lifetime event.

I took a friend to the Royal Botanic Garden in Hamilton for cherry blossom time. On a beautiful spring afternoon with a deep blue sky, the trees presented their dance of white blossoms filled with tiny bees creating a soft hum. We strolled for a while, then had a picnic. Magical day.

Despite all the advantages of modern technology, which has seen me through several jobs and allowed me to publish my novels and sell them online, there’s something special about the days when people went outside to enjoy fine weather and gentle amusements. Luckily, those days aren’t completely lost. Midway State Park in Bemus Point, New York, is a vestige of old-time America that’s a complete delight to visit. Rides are all low-tech, low cost and child-friendly. They’re scattered around a large property along Chautauqua Lake, and there are picnic tables to enjoy some refreshments, whether you buy some on site or bring your own. Tilt-o-Whirl rides like this one have been around for decades, and still bring pleasure to young and older alike, in the good old summertime.

If you think this is an innocent summertime beverage, you’re quite wrong. This is a Chocolate-Peanut Butter Adult Milkshake that we had in Bemus Point as ‘dessert’ after a fine lunch at a restaurant overlooking the lake, with “Adult” meaning “spiked”. There have to be some advantages to being grown up, after all

Fortunate to live in an agricultural area, I love to explore the farm stands in early summer just to bring home some glistening ripe bounty. Look at those strawberries, just waiting to be turned into a fabulous dessert. While I don’t love the summer season around here (too humid), I do love this aspect of it.

No bees, no summer bounty. I have a friend who’s really into bees, and she’s infected me with it as well. I follow bees around for hours trying to get good photos of the flighty little charmers, and was really tickled when this one turned out. Bees truly are amazing creatures, and I enjoy learning all about them via my bee-buddy. Here’s to you, Charmaine!

This photo reminds me of the old Beauty and the Beast story. I’m not sure why exactly — something about the moody, gothic look to it, with the lush crimson flowers strewn amongst tall trees and topiary. I think it has a fairy-tale quality — do you?

We had the most amazing visit to the old Herschell Carousel Factory in West Tonawanda, New York. I’ve always loved carousels, and being able to visit a place where they’ve been made was awesome. One of the best parts was seeing how the rolls of organ music were produced — here you can see the rolls of paper that have been marked according to a piece of music and punched with little metal punches so that each instrumental part of the player organ replicates the tune correctly. Then we watched a roll play out on an actual vintage organ — three closely-spaced punches created a staccato flurry with little drumsticks on a snare drum, several more played the horn section… So fascinating to watch!

There’s little better than a hike through the woods, surrounded by its aromas and green space — here at Panama Rocks in New York State, where the paths wander through a remarkable geological formation of rock canyons. Not the easiest hike, with some scrambling up and down the slopes involved, but well worth the effort.

In the fall we embarked on a long road trip down to Florida to visit friends, stopping at a few places along the way. One of them was Savannah, Georgia, a beautifully gracious old Southern city. Lots of history interspersed with shady parks that drip with Spanish moss and atmosphere. We had lunch in an old warehouse dating back to the 1800s as we watched river traffic pass by. I highly recommend a visit.

These gorgeous (to me) iguanas are something of a nuisance in Florida, but they’re so striking, and huge! Everything we see in nature is a gift not to be taken for granted.

We had a celebration of three milestone wedding anniversaries at a famous restaurant in Miami, Joe’s Stone Crab. Pat Sajak and Vanna White even made a point of going there on a location shoot of Wheel of Fortune. We had great fun wearing the enormous paper bibs the staff gives you so that you can cheerfully tear into the food without worrying about your clothing. A truly memorable meal.

We visited an old plantation outside of Charleston, South Carolina, on our meandering path back to home, and the house’s wide, shaded verandah was the epitome of Southern style. The house itself was spacious but understated — I could live there, sipping iced tea on a warm day. I read Gone With the Wind when I was nine years old, and remember going to see the movie at the theatre with my mom before the days of being able to rent it any time we wanted. Having learned a lot since then, I can now recognize the influence that author Margaret Mitchell’s upbringing in a slave-holding household had on her portrayals of Mammy and the other slaves at Tara plantation in the novel, but with that in mind, it was still enjoyable to see a piece of vividly-drawn history brought to life.

In November I was delighted to participate in the St Catharines Public Library’s first annual LitFest celebration of literature and reading. This was the library I grew up with and spent a great deal of time at when I was younger, and it’s such an honour now to have my books on their shelves for anyone to borrow and read. I made some sales, but more importantly, I got to chat with people who love reading as much as I do, as well as to meet with other adult authors in the area and talk some shop. Truly a pleasure all around.

Winter made an icy entrance much sooner than any of us anticipated here in Ontario. On a night when hubby and I bundled up and strolled the Winter Festival of Lights in Niagara Falls, I took this photo of a ghostly, ice-encrusted tree along the path. Some of the best horror stories are set in the winter, I feel, when the cold is isolating and lends an eerie otherness. Krampus is one of my favourite Christmas movies, not only because it subverts the sugar-sweet raft of Christmas romances, but for its adroit use of a snow storm to strand the family and turn the landscape into a monster’s hunting ground. But plenty of people were out enjoying the beautiful light displays along the Falls, no Krampus in sight

And on the last night of the old year we spent time at the spectacular silk lantern festival at the Nashville Zoo, where we were in the vicinity visiting a cousin. Each vignette, such as the one you see in this photo, tells its own story, and for this purpose, a picture really is worth a thousand words. A low-key, lovely way to close out the year.

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Published on January 07, 2025 19:00

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