Printable Vintage Art: Landscape Study from Barbizon by Carl Larsson

Landscape Study from Barbizon, 1878
by Carl Larsson (1853–1919)

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes.
Don't resist them; that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality.
Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.
― Lao Tzu

I wouldn't need to be so very different for sun to seem to be about sun,
for green to be about green,
for joy and boredom and anguish and terror and death to all be themselves,
beyond the need for any killing clarity,
and then this--this, the growing rings of light and water and stone--
would take up all of me, and be all the words I need.
― Richard Powers, The Overstory

You can download a digitally enhanced version of the vintage painting (as seen above) as a high-res 11” x 9” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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When there is no peace in your soul there is no peace in your heart,
when there is no peace in your heart there is no peace in your mind,
when there is no peace in your mind there is no peace in your life,
and when there is no peace in your life there is no peace in your world.
― Matshona Dhliwayo

Photo of Guildwood © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

Printable Vintage Art: New England Road by Childe Hassam

New England Road, c1902
by Childe Hassam (1859–1935)

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No man is brave that has never walked a hundred miles. If you want to know the truth of who you are, walk until not a person knows your name. Travel is the great leveler, the great teacher, bitter as medicine, crueler than mirror-glass. A long stretch of road will teach you more about yourself than a hundred years of quiet introspection.
― Patrick Rothfuss, The Wise Man's Fear

Is not this a true autumn day? Just the still melancholy that I love - that makes life and nature harmonise. The birds are consulting about their migrations, the trees are putting on the hectic or the pallid hues of decay, and begin to strew the ground, that one's very footsteps may not disturb the repose of earth and air, while they give us a scent that is a perfect anodyne to the restless spirit. Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.
― George Eliot, George Eliot’s Life, as Related in her Letters and Journals

You can download a digitally enhanced version of the vintage painting (as seen above) as a high-res 10” x 10” @ 300 ppi JPEG here.


Digitally enhanced reproductions of public domain fine art are shared under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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That old September feeling, left over from school days, of summer passing, vacation nearly done, obligations gathering, books and football in the air ... Another fall, another turned page: there was something of jubilee in that annual autumnal beginning, as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer.
― Wallace Stegner, Angle of Repose

Photo of autmn woods by the pond © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Fluid Reality (1)

If nothing lasted and the world did not exist,
all that meant was that reality was not fixed.
The illusion she lived in was fluid and mutable,
and could be easily altered by someone willing to rewrite the script of reality.
― R.F. Kuang, The Dragon Republic

I've been making a list of the things they don't teach you at school.
They don't teach you how to love somebody.
They don't teach you how to be famous.
They don't teach you how to be rich or how to be poor.
They don't teach you how to walk away from someone you don't love any longer.
They don't teach you how to know what's going on in someone else's mind.
They don't teach you what to say to someone who's dying.
They don't teach you anything worth knowing.
― Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

Stormy clouds gathering above red roof tiles.
Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Summer Throwback Walk at Lynde Shores Conservation Area in Whitby, Ontario

Youth is happy because it has the capacity to see beauty.
Anyone who keeps the ability to see beauty never grows old.
― Franz Kafka

The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.
― W.B. Yeats

Look at everything always as though you were seeing it either for the first or last time:
Thus is your time on earth filled with glory.
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

Picture above shows a fallen tree in the woods while we were out walking one summer day in Lynde Shores Conservation Area many years ago. Doesn't it almost look like it could be a tropical rainforest with the foliage being so lush?

We first started going to Lynde Shores in Whitby, Ontario when our daughter was around 2 years old (she is turning 18 this year) and it was once our favourite go-to destination for at least a decade because she was (still is, actually) absolutely fascinated by the abundance of wildlife that would waddle, scamper or crawl around with no fear of the humans traipsing through their habitat. We go less frequently now as it has gotten much busier since the COVID-19 lockdown but it is still worth visiting especially if you have young children who love getting up close and personal with Nature!

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My Photo Journal: January Cold (1)

“January”

The days are short, / The sun a spark
Hung thin between / The dark and dark.

Fat snowy footsteps / Track the floor,
And parkas pile up / Near the door.

The river is / A frozen place
Held still beneath / The trees' black lace.

The sky is low. / The wind is gray.
The radiator / Purrs all day.
― John Updike, A Child's Calendar

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.
― Roman Payne

Image shows a winter-bare tree standing in a field of snow-draped goldenrod and other native vegetation, their wild beauty unbowed by harsh winds or icy cold. I took the photo on a walk around the Civic Recreation Complex in Whitby, Ontario. Are you still going out and about despite the inclement weather? Or have you decided to cocoon at home until spring returns? Leave a comment below to tell us how you're handling January.
Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: November Sky (1)

For each new morning with its light,
For rest and shelter of the night,
For health and food, for love and friends,
For everything Thy goodness sends.
― Ralph Emerson

If we never experience the chill of a dark winter,
it is very unlikely that we will ever cherish the warmth of a bright summer’s day.
Nothing stimulates our appetite for the simple joys of life
more than the starvation caused by sadness or desperation.
In order to complete our amazing life journey successfully,
it is vital that we turn each and every dark tear into a pearl of wisdom,
and find the blessing in every curse.
― Anthon St. Maarten, Divine Living: The Essential Guide To Your True Destiny

Dark clouds drifting by against a momentarily bright November sky.
Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: A Thanksgiving Day Walk at Gold Point Wildlife Reserve, Oshawa, Ontario (2025)

What if it's the there
and not the here
that I long for?
The wander
and not the wait,
the magic
in the lost feet
stumbling down
the faraway street
and the way the moon
never hangs
quite the same.
― Tyler Knott Gregson, Chasers of the Light

I was the world in which I walked, and what I saw
Or heard or felt came not but from myself;
And there I found myself more truly and more strange.
― Wallace Stevens, The Collected Poems

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: A Walk on Michaelmas Day with Bushels of Michaelmas Daisies

The Michaelmas daisies, among dead weeds,
Bloom for St Michael's valorous deeds.

We had such a lovely walk this morning through fields bursting with Michaelmas daisies (Aster). The weather was glorious as Fall decided to cosplay Summer for Michaelmas Day. Do you think, perhaps, this is just capricious Fall's way to tease a warning about a potentially prolonged Winter ahead? In Irish folklore, clear weather on Michaelmas warns of a long winter: "Michaelmas Day be bright and clear there will be two Winters in the year." 2025's Farmer's Almanac has already predicted colder than mornal Winter temperatures for southern Ontario so I feel we are being given notice...

But who could possibly worry about Winter when golden light appears to have infused every nook and cranny of the landscape and the world seems to be caught up in a Summer fantasy?

Nature's first green is gold,
Her hardest hue to hold.
Her early leaf's a flower;
But only so an hour.
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
So Eden sank to grief,
So dawn goes down to day.
Nothing gold can stay.
― Robert Frost

Yes, the gold will doubtless fade into gray but for now, surely, surely, we can simply bask in the bold and brawny sun-soaked day?

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My Photo Journal: A Quiet Start to January

Are the days of winter sunshine just as sad for you, too?
When it is misty, in the evenings, and I am out walking by myself,
it seems to me that the rain is falling through my heart
and causing it to crumble into ruins.
― Gustave Flaubert

A cold wind was blowing from the north,
and it made the trees rustle like living things.
― George R.R. Martin

I do an awful lot of thinking and dreaming about things in the past and the future
- the timelessness of the rocks and the hills - all the people who have existed there.
I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure of the landscape
- the loneliness of it, the dead feeling of winter.
Something waits beneath it, the whole story doesn't show.
― Andrew Wyeth

December and January have been very quiet months for us. Usually spent in celebration with a flurry of birthdays and holiday get-togethers, we were instead filled with listless introspection, downcast by the passing of my father-in-law in November while also being plagued with health/pain problems.

Christmas and New Year were spent mostly walking in woods and along wintry lanes. These pictures were taken in Darlington Provincial Park. Trudging up to the wind-swept beach, we saw this tiny little giraffe braving the cold. He did make us smile and provided a glimmer of warm-weather activities. I hope his owner comes back to collect him when the weather improves!

And so with the sunshine and the great bursts of leaves growing on the trees,
just as things grow in fast movies,
I had that familiar conviction that life was beginning over again with the summer.
― F. Scott Fitzgerald

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My Photo Journal: October Lake at Twilight

O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue,
with peace you force all the restless work to end;
those who exalt you see and understand,
and he is sound of mind who honours you.
You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so
you offer calm in your moist shade; you send
to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend
up to the highest, where I long to go.
Shadow of death that brings to quiet close
all miseries that plague the heart and soul,
for those in pain the last and best of cures;
you heal the flesh of its infirmities,
dry and our tears and shut away our toil,
and free the good from wrath and fretting cares.
― Michelangelo Buonarroti, Complete Poems and Selected Letters

The hours I spend with you I look upon as sort of a perfumed garden,
a dim twilight, and a fountain singing to it.
You and you alone make me feel that I am alive.
Other men it is said have seen angels, but I have seen thee and thou art enough.
― George Edward Moore

Soft, dusky twilight by the shores of Lake Ontario in October.
© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: To Live (1)

To live is the rarest thing in the world.
Most people exist, that is all.
― Oscar Wilde

I may not have gone where I intended to go,
but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
― Douglas Adams, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Finish each day and be done with it.
You have done what you could. Some blunders and absurdities no doubt crept in;
forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day.
You shall begin it serenely and with too high a spirit
to be encumbered with your old nonsense.
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Warm and sunny day down by the waterfront at Kiwanis Heydenshore Park in Whitby, Ontario. Heydenshore Pavilion (with the lighthouse a stone's throw away) is located within 15 acres of scenic parkland in Heydenshore Kiwanis Park. The park is on the shore of Lake Ontario adjacent to Whitby Shores Waterfront Trail, with a spectacular view of the lake from its open patio.

Starting in 2023, the historic Pump House on Whitby’s waterfront got a new lease on life when Town Brewery was awarded a five-year food and beverage pop-up licence to open the Waterfront Beer Garden. The restaurant is now closed for the season (re-opening May 2025) but the park remains busy with families that want to savour the still-mild October days.

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: My Sunset Sky

Clouds come floating into my life,
no longer to carry rain or usher storm,
but to add color to my sunset sky.
― Rabindranath Tagore, Stray Birds

Life is full of beauty. Notice it.
Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces.
Smell the rain, and feel the wind.
Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
― Ashley Smith

Burning red, outrageously orange, and moody purple sky at sunset over a nearby park.
Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Just a Little Early Autumn Stroll

Many people lose the small joys in the hope for the big happiness.
― Pearl S. Buck

I am content; that is a blessing greater than riches;
and he to whom that is given need ask no more.
― Henry Fielding

Two contented-looking ducks taking an early autumn stroll at the Ed Broadbent Waterfront Park in Oshawa, Ontario.

Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.


Public domain poem is from my personal collection of ephemera. These images are to be incorporated into your creative endeavors and not for resale or re-distribution "as-is". Please credit FieldandGarden.com as your source when sharing or publishing.

My Photo Journal: Two Habitats (A Juxtaposition)

We forget, in a world completely transformed by man,
that what we’re looking at is not necessarily the environment wildlife prefer,
but the depleted remnant that wildlife is having to cope with:
what it has is not necessarily what it wants.
― Isabella Tree, Wilding

We will spend billions making inhospitable distant planets habitable.
And yet we spend trillions destroying the abundant ingredients for life on our home planet.
― Freequill

A photo taken many years ago showing two different types of dwellings that we stumbled upon as we were wandering in the area around the Music Gardens in downtown Toronto, a small park fronting on its ineer harbour. I am not sure if the magnificent bird house is still there but it would be lovely if it was!

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Come Into the Light

COMING FORTH INTO THE LIGHT

I was born the day
I thought:
What is?
What was?
And
What if?

I was transformed the day
My ego shattered,
And all the superficial, material
Things that mattered
To me before,
Suddenly ceased
To matter.

I really came into being
The day I no longer cared about
What the world thought of me,
Only on my thoughts for
Changing the world.
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun
Park bench beside a meandering path at the Oshawa Valley Botanical Garden, surrounded by evergreen and deciduous trees in summertime.

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Maple in Sunlight and Shade

How can I be substantial if I do not cast a shadow?
I must have a dark side also If I am to be whole.
― C.G. Jung, Modern Man in Search of a Soul

So don't be frightened, dear friend,
if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known,
casting its shadow over all you do.
You must think that something is happening within you,
and remember that life has not forgotten you;
it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall.
Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness,
any pain, any depression,
since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

A mature maple tree (Acer) casting a shadow as the sun shines against its back.

Photo © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Red-winged Blackbird in a Wildflower Meadow

FLOWERS AND WEEDS
by GEORGE COOPER
(originally published March 8, 1887)

HAVE you ever heard what the fairies say,
Little girl, little boy? Oh, hear and heed!
For each smile you wear on your face today
There's a flower grows; for each frown a weed.

So to make this world like a garden bright,
Little girl, little boy, keep frowns away.
Oh, the loving lips that can say tonight,
We have scattered flowers o'er the earth today!

The image above shows a red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus) perched on top of a wildflower stalk (it looks like a goldenrod not yet in bloom).

These throwback photos were taken in 2012 on a walk through the DuPont Gordon Richards Park located near the waterfront in Whitby, Ontario. The park is a great place to spot many diffent types of birds and wildflowers, such as the strikingly pretty but incredibly invasive broad-leaved everlasting-pea or Lathyrus latifolius (below).

I hope you are enjoying beautiful weather where you are and wish you many hours of walking along happy trails filled with birdsong every step of your way.

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.


Public domain poem is from my personal collection of ephemera. These images are to be incorporated into your creative endeavors and not for resale or re-distribution "as-is". Please credit FieldandGarden.com as your source when sharing or publishing.

My Photo Journal: Morning Light at Stone Street Park

These are the magic moments that you will remember on your deathbed.
The things that made life worth living. Your first love, the birth of your child,
achieving that lifelong dream, sharing great food and sights with friends and loved ones.
— Richard Heart

The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people
when they realize their relationship, their oneness with the universe and all its powers,
and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit,
and that its center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
― Black Elk
Throwback photo of a bare willow tree in morning light at Stone Street Park in Oshawa. Stone Street Park is a large park along the Oshawa segment of the 1400-km Great Lakes Waterfront Trail. The Oshawa portion of the Waterfront Trail runs along Lake Ontario for 15.5 km from the McLaughlin Bay Wildlife Reserve to Whitby Harbour. The ever-changing views along the water at Stone Street Park make it one of our favourite destinations to walk the dog.

© FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Morning Light at Lakeview Park

If the world were merely seductive, that would be easy.
If it were merely challenging, that would be no problem.
But I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world
and a desire to enjoy the world.
This makes it hard to plan the day.
— E.B. White

A crisp and brilliant morning at Lakeview Park in Oshawa. This is one of our favourite parks to walk in with the dog; it has lots of paved paths from which you can see and hear the water of Lake Ontario. Easily one of the most popular and accessible parks in the city.

All photos © FieldandGarden.com. All rights reserved.

My Photo Journal: Trees at Orono Crown Lands

The Road Not Taken
by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Perfect weather for a nature walk through the Orono Crown Lands; the day was bright and sunny with just enough wind to keep the walk from getting unpleasantly hot. We took the Purple and Pink Loops today which meant we didn't get to walk beside Wilmot Creek. If possible, we aim to try the Red or Orange Loops next weekend as the path along the water can be very pretty.

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