peculiarspaces

Lucky birds in Trout Brook, Gros Morne

It seems to be true that if  you have an idea then it just seems like everyone has had it already:  I am therefore seeing ‘sheds’ everywhere – more of which in a few days.  These are in Newfoundland, land of timber houses, in fact, timber everything.  In this wild landscape it is a wonder that such seemingly frail structures, many built on stilts over the water, persist at all.  But they do and they show their stoic side in the beauty of their weatherbeaten, sunfaded and windwashed timbers.

Cape Anguille Lighthouse Buildings

So to the first peculiarity:  as a I am now forced to admit to the aesthetic possibility of the dandelion.  This vile and hated weed in Brixton blooms across the island in profusion and turnd out to be a glorius, happy sight, even in this graveyard.  Fleeting things though, dandelions and I wonder what the graveyard will look like when, for an instant before the wind blows, all the flowerheads are clocks, like this bank in front of the harbour at Rose Blanche.

Safely out of Nova Scotia and on my way to Metis, my mind turns to thoughts  of ‘conceptual’ landscapes in their many guises.  In Cape Breton, Joe has taken the idea of a scarecrow presiding over a garden and expanded to produce a village of well over 100 figures (and counting for Joe is hard at work here).  This transcends the more normal (peculiar?) practice of  ‘yard art’ found elsewhere, which is normally reserved to moose silhouettes grazong on the lawn.  Here in Whycocomagh, the Simpsons are surely the most peculiar inhabitants of the landscape found on the trip so far.