Katherine Day Part 6

The whimsy of Katherine Day.

 Part 6

Katherine Day - An Enchanted Cottage in the Country

By Ted and Suzanne Currie

     "A good step towards learning about colour is to draw and paint the colours in sequence, in a circle. Take a page of your sketch-book, and with a compass draw as large a circle as you can. With the same centre, reduce the radius and draw another circle - two concentric circles. Divide the space between the two circles first into three parts, then halve these three - making six truncated cones around a small circle in the centre. Now take your paints, and colour alternate spaces in this order - yellow, blue, red. Next, colour these blanks. In the one between yellow and blue, mix these two colours to get green, and paint it in. Next blank space is between blue and red, to get violet - and paint that in. The third blank space is between red and yellow. Mix those and you get orange. Paint that in, and your simple spectrum is done."
     The directions above were taken from an unpublished manuscript written by artist Katherine Day, regarding the creation of folk-style hooked rugs, of which she was an expert.
     If, while dawdling about on a country hike in Oro-Medonte, you were to pause on an autumn afternoon just like this, for one moment or two, in order to enjoy the view over these haze-covered Oro-Medonte hills and valleys, it would be a re-creation of the many vigils Katherine Day took, in the 1930's and early 1940's, her early days at Hawthornes. It's a timely sensation, and quite logical, to then feel as if this place on earth possesses more sources of inspiration than anywhere else. The soft brush of autumn breeze refreshes the traveller, and the azure sky allures the imagination, to cut free from all its contemporary fetters, to explore the universe. Should you hear the soft voices of history, the voyeur then, should feel honored to have been invited into this profoundly storied place, where artists and writers have thrived for long and long, neighboring with homesteaders and the proponents of commerce, who made its hamlets bustle and its farms prosper.
     Canadian artist, Katherine Day, who lived in an enchanted little house along this road, incorporated this sense of resident spirituality in her sketches and landscape paintings. It was the neighborhood, near the community in which she was born, and resided for her childhood, that brought her back home from Europe, then on the brink of World War; the City of Paris too dangerous to remain as an artist-in-training. She knew it would be a major career, as well as emotional shift, from what she had prepared for, with private tutoring for several years; the plan to immerse herself fully into the international art world. To come back to rural Ontario may have at times, in quiet contemplation, seemed much less exciting and possibility-laden. She may have had doubts, about the sensibilities of removing herself from the European art community, that had seemed supportive of her early forays. And to some who knew her, it gave the appearance of a surrender, to rashly abandon what had seemed so appealing only a few year earlier. Yet few who knew her well, would have argued that it was a wrong decision to establish herself at Hawthornes, and later, Pax Cottage in Oro-Medonte.
     We resume with Katherine Day's handwritten journal, from the early 1940's, and her modest but comfortable farmstead, where she created many significant pieces of art, kept a magnificent garden, and tended her bees, goats, chickens, dogs and cats with great compassion.
     "Chips,' is on my lap, a soft downy puff ball of a kitten, the colour of a biscuit. He is an enormous kitten for being only seventeen days old, but still weak in the legs. It puts out a delicate paw and opens lips and smacks them. Screams in terror when put back in his basket.
     "The ruffled Silkie had to be taken away from the big fancy Sussex rooster, who roams around the chicken yard and chases every hen and rooster. Sambo is six years old and beginning to go bald in patches, but baldenss is not the natural state of his back. Those feathers were pulled out, and they are only now slowly coming in again. Sambo's sense of importance has collapsed like a pricked balloon, and all he wants now is to stay clear of the Sussex rooster. He skims over the ground in long stiff-legged jumps whenever he hears the voice of the Sussex, and now he spends his nights with the goats. Unwillingly, for he hates them, jumping all across the place but he hates the Sussex more than the goats. Tonight Francis had to go inside the goat house to hold the kids who will come howling out in Sambo's face, when he tries timidly to enter. Back he goes, sqwauking, and his performance takes place all over again ad nauseum until a condition is reached when no goat busts into Sambo's face, as he reaches the threshold. Then the door is slammed on them and all is well for another twenty-four hours. How they pass the nights I do not know but Sambo pops out when I go in the morning, as though he waited impatiently for the door to open. He jumps out with a wild cluck and disappears around the corner, searching for worms. Today he had a disappointing time with a found bit of string I must have accidentally dropped. He swallowed it in one gulp and then paced the grass thoughtfully for a minute or two. Finally he gave a sharp cluck and continued to search for worms, the more digestible sort."
     On the 15th of April, Katherine Day penned into her journal the following homestead observations:
     "Sambo has gone home with little neighborhood boy named Elmer. He is a dear little boy who loves animals and whenever he is up at his uncle's house, nearby, he comes over to see the kitten, or the goats, or the chickens. He tenderly wrapped Sambo's wings to the body and with an outward swing of his elbow and a tender hand over the little frightened creature, he tucked it under his arm. He stroked it gently and admired the fluffy feathers and the bright black eyes. 'He's a nice little hen,' he said in a comfortable voice. 'The big rooster used to bully him (Sambo),' I said, and 'he must have been furious with him to have torn out his feathers, all along his back, but they are growing back again. They're growing now. Those are pin feathers. He'll be alright.' 'Do you want a sack to put him in,' I asked the young man. 'Oh no, I'd rather carry him like this. He'll be alright.' And away he went proudly with his bird under his arm."
     "May 5th - I have only five 'Silkies' now. A man from Waubaushene came and took away five, and I sold three to another man at Longford Mills. One Silkie is sitting at present. I find that the sitting hen must be put off her nest at feeding time. Otherwise she becomes hungry and eats her eggs. Putting grain in beside helps her along past destroying her own eggs. For when she pecks at the grain she, if it's too close, can accidentally peck at an egg under her breast. A hard peck and out comes the contents of the damaged egg, and then gobbles it up. Several eggs had gone that way before I thought of a solution to the problem. Put the hen off the nest when she should be feeding. Shriek, well, she never did so louder and more fiercely. Then she will feed and drink normally and hatch her eggs.
     "My goats are out and tethered. I must tether them all together where they each can see the other, as there is a great to-do out there at times. Hortense (a goat) will bawl and drag her chain, turning herself round and back, the length of it, digging her other toes in, and leaning as far from the centre of the radius of the chains, she can manage to balance, roaring and shouting. The absent one will be doing the exact same, in mimic, twisting the tether round and round.
     "Ninny is an expert at getting herself loose. No knot I can tie defies her. She goes backwards and forward at the extreme length of the chain, jerking and visibly calculating the force of her blows. If there is a small cluster of bushes to wind around, she happily careens about and about some more. Then, a sharp jerk and she has somehow freed herself. Quietly she steps away and munches at that bunch of fresh greens, which has been just beyond her reach. Then she passes on to the lilac hedge in soft leaf and daffodils brightly nodding in the long grass, succulent tulips showing as a special treat.
     "When discovered she gives a plaintive 'baa,' and a final graceful leap and kick, before she starts off two paces ahead of me. She snatches at bunches of grass as she passes and the only way I can catch her is to walk away from her. When she leaps to my side to see what it can be that has interested me, so much that I cannot follow her. That moment comes. I seize her collar and march her back to her tether. She gives another plaintive 'baa' to tell the world she is hardly used, and she starts all over again to secure her release."
     The artist / homesteader writes about her horticultural efforts, at Hawthornes, noting that "Every spring there are hundreds of suckers at the foot of the lilacs needing to be removed. (Unwanted growth that can sap the strength of a lilac bush). Some of these pull up with roots which reinforce the young and expanding lilac hedge. But most of them are clipped off close to the ground and thrown away. It is an annual and necessary job in order to ensure the vitality of these hundred year old trees. It is amazing, I think, that if there were no suckers, to drain this vitality, the blooms might be improved, but such a time is long arriving."
     "The Cowslips which I stole from an old abandoned garden, from another homestead, are doing well in the long grass. This is their third year and they have all come through the winter well. It is surprising the vitality that stays in a dormant plant bulb. In England, in the winter of 1938-39, I bought a package of bulbs and was unable to plant them until I came home, the following spring. They looked hard and dried-up, and in fact, gave no sign of life. Not that summer or the following summer, but finally the third summer season. But this year unfortunately for the late bloomers, there are dozens of new blooms which I can identify as being from the English Narcissus and Snowdrop bulbs. I discovered today, that I had transplanted the Rhubarb badly. Last fall I decided to divide the clump of Ruby Rhubarb and have a row instead. But I put two pieces of root down much too far in the soil, and when all the plants didn't come up, and I dug to see why, there were these two Rhubarb plants struggling to adjust themselves to the subterranean life. The growing tip should be just at the surface and still well covered up. Ruby Rhubarb is to be recommended for its beautiful colours and fine flavours. All other Rhubarb pales beside it.
     "The small Asparagus bed has finally, on the fourth year, furnished us with a meal. And this year I can cut as much as I like without fear of destroying the plants. Of the herbs, Hyssop and assorted plants for cookery use, have wintered well and have tough woody stalks. Hyssop has bright blue flowers, which are very attractive and the dark, small leaf has a pungent aromatic smell, recommended for use to treat various ailments, in old folk remedies. Wormwood has a light green leaf deeply marked by rounded indentations, and also has a pleasing aromatic scent. It is also recommended for sick horses."
     It may well be the case, I have stayed much too late this afternoon, looking out over the hills and distant valleys of this picturesque region of Simcoe County. I have been tantalized to a gentle stupor, by the rich aroma of the season's harvest; the sweet permeating atmosphere hanging over the harvested fields. Tell-tale evidence, of all that the earth has produced for our mutual benefit; the beautiful tomatoes and sweet corn, the cucumbers by the bushel-load, and zucchinis, that seem to be bigger this year than ever. And the apples, juicy and remarkable as always. There is a reward for dawdling you see, and it is in the rich bounty, at this precise moment, I am enjoying from our bags of fresh produced purchased at a local market just down the road. This is the place where Katherine Day found her inspiration, to create hundreds of art works over the decades, so greatly appreciated by her patrons.
     More on Miss Day's horticultural profiles, from Hawthornes, in the next chapter of this artist's biography. Please join me again tomorrow for Chapter 7.