Although today turned out overcast and the house sits in a kind of perpetual gloom with so little light penetrating, all we have to do is look at one of the house windows to feel an appreciable lift of mood. The windows look back at us in gleaming colours -- if anything, enhanced by the ill temper of the outside environment. When it's a bright sunny day the gleam of spectacular colour from those windows is eye-overwhelming, but the eye is caressed by the soft glow emanating from the windows on such overcast days.

 

 

We have flowers and exotic vegetation, birds of many descriptions on the windows, frozen in time and place warming our views of the day. Irving painstakingly over the years designed every one of those windows, built them of stained glass and installed them, one after another. The view from our house through those windows is unchanging and glorious, bright colour and form and texture to captivate our attention in an arrest of motion and time.

 

 

Regardless of the time of day, the weather, the seasons, those windows always have something to say to us. As mute companions go they do a very good job of comforting us with the warmth and glow of their presence. They convey heat in the winter months that warms the house when the sun is blazing,  And in the summer months they're  put to sleep with a shimmering layer of sheers softening the colours to a pastel shade and restraining the communication of heat.

 

Each of the windows has a personality of its own; landscapes familiar and landscapes imagined. When he ran out of windows, Irving built doors or window shutters  to hold stained glass inserts. The house is a kaleidoscope of living colour.

Conversely, the out-of-doors has been transformed from its summer guise of manifold colour schemes to a monochromatic theme on white-and-black as winter descended and frigid air, boisterous winds and cloud systems carrying copious amounts of frozen water falling as snow and ice banished colour and invited stark black and white to dominate.

 

Usually, on public holidays the ravine we visit daily becomes a gathering place for the community where family guests are ushered into the forest in a brief exposure to the natural forest that runs through the geology of the area. Last winter the forest trails were full of people from the community and further afield who had never before entered the forest but were so fatigued by boredom brought about by instructions to physically isolate at this time of the global pandemic they would do anything for fresh air, exercise and a change of scenery.

 

Today, the trails were mostly absent others besides ourselves, though we did encounter a handful of people here and there with their companion dogs. Jackie and Jillie have this fanciful notion that they are the proprietors of the forest and only those given prior consent by them may enter their kingdom. Today they met an Akita, unassuming and friendly and happy to be companioned by them.