Hamilton seen from the mountain

This is a view of Hamilton, our home city, from Sam Lawrence Park. Locke Street would be far over to the right, off this picture. For much, much older photographs of similar views, see "Vintage Postcards of Hamilton, Ontario."

Locke Street community website

Our street has a community website. For an interview with the originator of the site, read "Locke Street Lover."

Making music

The living room is now also a good place for making music. Hannah (violin) and Tala (mandolin) are playing at a wedding with Angela ... I think sometime in August ... and they are working on the pieces they will be playing.

"An urban village vanguard?"

The article I wrote for Stained Glass Urbanism - The Untold Story of the Church and City Renewal, "An urban village vanguard?," is now available online in pdf. In it I offer ten observations about churches and old city neighbourhoods, and suggest that churches are responsible for re-inhabiting old city neighbourhoods, and can help cultivate urban villages.

Red sofa; girl, reading; cat, napping

We love these soft red sofas, bought second-hand in anticipation of moving to our wonderfully sunny living room here on Locke Street.

Hannah has posted a house-related entry over at her own blog.

Front garden ... progress

Angela and Tala planted Celosias ('Fresh Look' Orange and Yellow) and Marigolds ('Zenith Extra' Yellow) in the front this weekend.

Karesansui - phase one

The trenchdigging of a fortnight ago has borne its first fruits: the first phase of what I hope will be a freestyle karesansui - as a part of our front garden. This is the dry pond. My guess is that I will not get past phase one this year.

Front garden ... a long way to go

In A Pattern Language Alexander writes (Pattern #140) that "The relationship of a house to a street is often confused: either the house open entirely to the street and there is no privacy; or the house turns its back on the street, and communion with the street life is lost." As a normative guideline he suggests: "Let the common rooms open onto a wide terrace or a porch which looks into the street. Raise the terrace slightly above street level and protect it with a low wall, which you can see over if you sit near it, but which prevents people on the street from looking into the common rooms." We have a long way to go. This summer we will probably be content if Angela's hard work in evening out the soil and transfering some ground cover will result in a completely green terrace. And if the peonies keep flowering.

Geraniums at the front door

Our house ...

... in the middle of our street (to echo one of my favourite songs from the 80s). Here are three views of our street, two taken from the very southern end of the street, where it forms a t-junction with Aberdeen Avenue, and the third from a little closer by. Our house is the third house from the left in the third photograph. One of the delights of Locke Street is the extent to which it meets the requirements of Pattern #100 in Christopher Alexander's Pattern Language: Pedestrian Streets. We have people walking past our home at all times of night and day, usually on their way to the more commercial middle stretch of the road, where they will enjoy a bagel or a beer, an ice cream or a coffee, or simply be "botanists of the sidewalk."

Tala strangles the extension wire

After some electrical work in her room, Tala starts winding up the extension cord. The wily extension cord resists. Undaunted, like the infant Hercules, Tala masters the cord ... eventually.

(Hat tip to the British Museum and Barbara McManus.)

art

These are the paintings Hannah and Tala did for their art course, by the landing window on the stairs.

roses

view from front door

personal library

Dad has been hard at work. This is the major branch of our collection.

our garden

Our garden is just too long to take a picture of the whole thing, very awkward, so here's most of it.







This is mommy's frog which sprays water, daddy said I should include it.







And there's part of the garden, isn't that splendidly green grass? It better be, after it was all plowed up and we had such a barren place for a while. Here I must mention Mr. and Mrs. Zonneveld, but especially Mr. Jack Z because he came and worked for 8 hours in our garden one day, and a few more hours on another day, simply because he's a kind person and loves gardening. Also Mr. Sean Purcell, who did the heavy lifting, and Mrs. Krista Purcell (she's the daughter of Mr. Jack Z) who weeded and raked and dug and advised. I must tell you, we would have had very good intentions for that garden, but it would not have been dug up and replanted ANY time soon if they all hadn't come in and worked so hard.



This is our pergola by the side of the house. You know what happened once? I spent a long long time sweeping all that area, and the next day it was exactly the same again! Like magic. And here I must mention daddy, who hung up all those flowers with some fancy knot which I can't remember the name of.

gardening

This is for some gravel/beams we're putting at our front for the time-being so humans and dogs don't leave their excrement. Tala cut away all the dead twigs, and would have done a good job, except that dad likes things quick and easy. Dad dug until he hit clay.