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escape with me

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I have a treat for you today. Come and join me on my morning walk yesterday and escape for a few minutes from the hate, the anger, the despair, and the noise that we are all being pummelled with each and every day. I don’t know about you but my troubled soul needed a little healing and when the sun rose yesterday on freshly fallen snow with the mountains stark against the bluest of skies, I knew all I had to do was dress warmly, put on my boots and venture out into the crisp air and morning sunshine.  I’m happy to say it worked.

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It didn’t take long to enjoy every magical moment with everyone else who was out and about.

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This gallery, which I have also made into a slide show, I hope will help sooth your soul too.

This next photo is for Cheri and her Weekly Photo Challenge: Shadow

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As I came closer to the trees  in Vanier Park I was greeted by a symphony of sound that made me stop in my tracks and listen for several minutes, joined by others who were equally as enthralled.  Here is a short excerpt from my post entitled Birdsong for today’s Daily Prompt: Heard.  If you feel like pausing for a minute or two and hearing more visit the post and listen to it all.

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I hope this has made your day as much as it did mine.

“Ambience has the power to uplift your mood,” writes Jeff Golenski in his introduction to this week’s Weekly Photo Challenge.

 

hockey-ii

 

On a clear, crisp Saturday yesterday, this was a rare site in Vancouver’s Vanier Park, which definitely uplifted our mood as we walked by in the afternoon sunshine. But to fully appreciate the joy of the scene the sounds that accompany it and heard in the following brief video will complete the picture.

 

a chocapollock holiday greeting

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chocapollack

My wife’s creations are far tastier than mine could ever hope to be.

Her chocolate bark is just the perfect holiday bite and loved by us all.

Discover Challenge: Mixing Media

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For this week’s Discover Challenge: Mixing Media, Michelle asks us to “publish a post containing the kind of work you’d normally publish — but mix it with a second type of media, either digital or analog.”

This seemed to be the perfect opportunity to revisit some of the paintings that many of you will have seen on The Changing Palette over the past year.  Using iMovie on my MacBook Air I have pulled them together in a short video and added the sublime accompaniment of Glen Gould playing one of Bach’s Goldberg Variations.  I hope you enjoy it.

Here and Now: Part Two

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Discover Challenge: Here and Now

“Choose a moment and capture it in the medium of your choice.”

This week’s Discover Challenge from the Daily Post is all about being in the moment. After Here and Now: Part One, and having introduced you to the Gift of the Four Treasures earlier this month, today in another over my shoulder video, Here and Now: Part Two continues to be very much in the moment as the painting from Part One begins to appear thanks to those beautiful treasures.

 

over my shoulder VII – Here and Now

If you would like to see more of my over the shoulder videos you will find their links here on From Yardwork to Arwork: The Photinia Story Part Three.

spirit wind

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Spirit i

For last week’s Discover Challenge Ben asked us to show “something that stands out from the everyday.” This second submission is to share one of those rare moments to be savoured both visually and aurally. Last week on our favourite walk along the Admiralty Trail in the Pacific Spirit Regional Park the sun was illuminating the trees swaying in the warm afternoon wind creating a symphony of  light and sound.

This week is our daughter and son-in-law’s second wedding anniversary and our forty second. A time to celebrate and be thankful, but this year I cannot help but think of the families and friends so callously murdered and injured at their own wedding celebrations last week in Gaziantep, near the Syrian border in Turkey, and to whom I dedicate today’s post. There are no words that can begin to understand their sorrow and pain.  Not being religious I will let the wind in the trees of the Pacific Spirit Park be my prayer.

Tuscan Reverie

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For this inaugural Discover Challenge: Blogging the Senses, Cheri asks us publish a post that piques one of the five senses, hearing, sight, touch, smell, and taste, having found inspiration herself in an interview with medieval book historian Erik Kwakkel. Since we are free to “interpret this in any way, and in any format: prose, poetry, photography, audio, video,” and having been also inspired by Erik Kwakkel’s blog myself thanks to Cheri’s introduction, I thought how appropriate this would be to revisit the Abbey of St. Antimo, a former Benedictine Monastry in the commune of Montalcino in Tuscany, which I blogged about over two years ago.

St Antimo

The map is from a journal I kept during our Italian travels in 2000, and the entry for the 21st of April describes our visit to the Abbey that day. As you can read we took the bus from Siena to Montalcino and then walked the 10 kilometres to St. Antimo.

journal

The video is from the photographs I took during that memorable 10 kilometre walk through the magnificent Tuscan countryside. I hope your senses will be piqued as you enjoy the beauty of those Tuscan hills and listen to the Gregorian chant, “Haec Dies” from “Mysterium” a recording made in the Abbey in April 1995 by the five fathers of the Communita die Canonici Regolari di Sant’Antimo.