Good morning creekside

The first shed workshop: teaching, debating, cheering, illustrating, running around with shooting assignments and creative prompts at the beach and the public wharf. I told them all to help themselves, my house as their house, and it was a bunked-in, slipper-wearing, coffee-making sunshiney bunch of people that were just meant to be together. I didn't take many photos until the cheerful mess in the morning after that magical Saturday—feasts from The Sea Shanty (Vegan lasagne! Ghetto skor-bar trifle! Haddock chowder! Meals spilled out the dining room and to tables outside), and with woodsmoke thick in the air and more friends joining us, the best thing ever: a creekside performance from Grassmarket (Penelope also happens to be my book editor for life) on the shed deck stage.

The whole weekend was such a high. We flopped on quilts in front of the fire and clapped and cried and yelled. I still can't sort out the words for how great it was—the people, the shooting, the conversation, the food... other than to say that I am going to make this happen again. Another photography workshop—perhaps an advanced session—and a writing workshop. We're socked in right now by eventual winter but the spring will definitely see this unfold again. I feel like I won the experience lottery, scrambling to get the shed done and then the tumble of spontaneous yeses from Montreal, England, Regina, New Brunswick and more, all now people I thoroughly adore.

With thanks to Shelagh for the photos of us at the public wharf at Bush Island. More shed photos will come soon—right now it's hastily abandoned, full of leaves and wine glasses and kindling ash. The kind of abandoned that I don't want to clean up. It keeps the night going, somehow, until the next one.