For the past several days people everywhere have been chatting energetically about it. The Snowfall Warning continues until daybreak tomorrow. About a week ago there was an early morning frost that resembled a skiff of snow; but today’s forecast is far less ambivalent. Already the harvested field is more defined as the white snow covers the earthly remains of the mutely coloured stalks. Meanwhile the faded stumps protrude from the snow like an army of perfectly aligned constituents. Today’s blast is the first snowfall of the season.

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Today we lunched with Bruce and Graham – and their handsome dog Tanner – at their warm and welcoming residence in the Town of Smiths Falls, Lanark County along the Rideau Canal. The exceedingly flavourful meal – prepared as always with recognizable skill – was the perfect crescendo to our already vibrant confab. Our social history, serendipitous acquaintance and ancestral commonality contributed no doubt unwittingly to the fluency of the conversation. It was only our abhorrence of driving in the dark which accelerated our otherwise sparing departure from the drawing room and after-luncheon coffee.

It is named after Thomas Smyth, a United Empire Loyalist who in 1786 was granted 1.6 square kilometres (400 acres) in what is present-day Smiths Falls. The Heritage House Museum (c. 1862), also known as the Ward House, was designated under the Ontario Heritage Act in 1977.

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Waiting has forever been a challenge for me. The immediate corollary is impatience.  In business I excused the irritability arising from having to wait for information from another lawyer by arguing the urgency to clarify matters for my client. Very often my restlessness was well founded. The matter had been overlooked by the other firm or “fallen through the cracks”. As a result I smugly dismissed the prior recommendations to give the matter time or hold your horses. Probably things would have eventually worked out just fine; but the unhesitant pursuit of the affair unquestionably kept things moving.

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The precipitous change from summer to autumn is already but a sketchy memory. The temperature has fallen. The burnished leaves have blown away. The cornfields are harvested. The squawking geese circle endlessly in flight. Daylight Savings Time has begun with its brilliant mornings and monstrously dark afternoons.

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Not long ago I received (by email) a “selfie” of my elder niece (and goddaughter) and her handsome partner. I knew in an instant that it was a good shot. This seemingly idle observation of mine was all the more significant because of the casual, unwitting nature of the photograph. It was after all a “selfie”, an artistic flirtation not uncommon among the XYZ generations (basically, anything after The Beatles) and normally undertaken with a minimum of scrutiny or artistic devotion. It wasn’t a calculated composition; it was a whimsical snap. There was no posing. Yet it spoke to me.  It was a keeper. But how to do so? Storing things had proven to be a disengaging exercise. It complicated the matter when I added the ingredient that my niece is a professional photographer, primarily equestrian; but anything else she touches regularly proves to be equally memorable. Her skill is not discretionary or exclusionary. Here, I reasoned, was an opportunity.

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Forgive me – my apology for endless repetition – but I am compelled as a matter of duty to relate today’s encore brilliance. A simple matter, yes, perhaps; but one which nonetheless warrants unqualified attention for its splendour. It has been another glorious late autumn day in our tiny town – beaming yellow sunshine through the towering cumulonimbi, a fresh breeze, dry roads and cooperative traffic.

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If there’s one thing I like, it’s a quiet life. I’m not one of those
fellows who get all restless and depressed if things aren’t happening
to them all the time. You can’t make it too placid for me. Give me
regular meals, a good show with decent music every now and then, and
one or two pals to totter round with, and I ask no more. Bertie Wooster by P. G. Wodehouse

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When I transitioned early in my law career from a downtown urban firm to a main street rural sole proprietorship, it wasn’t long before I confronted the grid maps of the townships in the County of Lanark. These and survey matters in general frequently initiated any title searching. The preliminary education was understanding the difference between the fifth line and the fifth concession (the latter being the grid definitions of the townships in the county).

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There is not in all England a town so blatantly picturesque as Tilling,
nor one, for the lover of level marsh land, of tall reedy dykes, of
enormous sunsets and rims of blue sea on the horizon, with so fortunate
an environment. The hill on which it is built rises steeply from the
level land, and, crowned by the great grave church so conveniently close
to Miss Mapp’s residence, positively consists of quaint corners,
rough-cast and timber cottages, and mellow Georgian fronts. Corners and
quaintnesses, gems, glimpses and bits are an obsession to the artist,
and in consequence, during the summer months, not only did the majority
of its inhabitants turn out into the cobbled ways with sketching-blocks,
canvases and paintboxes, but every morning brought into the town
charabancs from neighbouring places loaded with passengers, many of whom
joined the artistic residents. E. F. Benson

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Today is the beginning of the month of November.  My immediate association is Armistice Day on November 11th.  It was always a dull grey day, as frequently with frigid temperatures. Usually rain, though seldom snow. Today’s weather is less mournful but nonetheless predominantly bleak. In prep school there was an hour “off”, perhaps marked by a brief assembly in chapel to memorialize the event.

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