Oil  on canvas,  5″ x 7″, signed and dated
This painting is available for sale. 
Inquiries email mavis.penney@gmail.com
www.mavispenneystudios.com

Visit “Off the Highway” our “100 Days 100 Paintings” blog to see more landscapes from Labrador, Canada and Nebraska, U.S. A. Only until the end of this week!

Check it out at:  http://offthehighway.wordpress.com/

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- Muskrat Falls is an impressive natural 50 foot waterfall on the lower Churchill River. The hydro power potential of Muskrat Falls was recognized more than a hundred years ago when investors proposed constructing a dam and paper mill there. It wasn’t built, but the hydro potential of the site remains under review today in a controversial  plan for electric power development.  –

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Muskrat Falls

– Fireweed, a tall, vigorous plant with magenta pink flowers, gets its name from its ability to re-grow quickly in burnt-over areas.  Fireweed is used around the world as a medicinal herb for its anti-inflammatory and anti bacterial properties, and as a tea. Young fireweed leaves and shoots are edible, and fireweed honey is a particular treat for folks with a sweet tooth. –

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Fireweed

– The MV Northern Ranger is a passenger and freight ferry that operates along the Labrador coast during the shipping season.  Since this vessel and others like it are intended to provide local transportation, there is little publicity or promotion of the service, although many tourists from outside Labrador take the round trip aboard the Northern Ranger to photograph whales and icebergs and to visit communities in Labrador. One traveller liked his cruise so much he posted this information in 2007: http://www.bluepeak.net/canada/northernranger/  The official and detailed 2009 information is here: http://www.tw.gov.nl.ca/ferryservices/schedules/H-goosebay-nain.stm . –

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Northern Ranger at Terrington Basin

Brilliant summer sunlight shining through layers and layers of leaves, each leaf reflecting different shades of greens and yellows onto whatever is next to it.  Greens and greens and greens!

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Dappled Light

Less than three weeks ago, a forest fire whipped through this timber stand just outside a municipal park near Happy Valley-Goose Bay.  Firefighting airplanes, helicopters, firetrucks and ground crews kept the fire from jumping the highway and destroying the RV park  on the other side of the road.   There were people camped in tents in the area, too, so it was very fortunate that no one was hurt, and the remnants of the fire were put out after several days.  And now, not even twenty days afterwards , the roots of these trees are sending out new shoots and greenery in  the midst of what looks like destruction.  There’s a moral here: Even if you suffer total disaster, if you have firmly grounded roots, you can regrow and grow stronger from the ashes of what surrounds you.

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New Life in the Ashes

For me, lupins are the quintessential summer wildflower. Lupin leaves come in early in the summer, spreading outward from where the plants bloomed the year before, and long spikes shoot up to announce where the luminescent purple-pink blossoms will appear. Cultivated lupins come in spectacular arrays of color, but I find wild lupins beautiful, versatile, tenacious, in fact, everything that I want summer to be.

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Twin Lupins

If there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, what would I find at the end of a double rainbow?  I really don’t know, because I was too taken up looking at the rainbow itself to attempt a trek into the thick woods beside this groomed lawn.  Wouldn’t you do the same?

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Double Rainbow

There are carpets of this cheerful white flower everywhere around here. Crackerberries are also known as bunchberries, from the bunches of brilliant red-orange berries that develop later in the season. I was surprised to learn that this abundance of crackerberry flowers is all part of one plant, with a massive root system connecting them all.

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Crackerberries

In the hot, dry, windy weather that we are having, forest fires can spring up out of almost nothing.  Officials say that accumulations of sawdust at an old sawmill caught fire from spontaneous combustion, and it wasn’t long before an industrial fire turned into a forest fire. Town firefighters, waterbombers and groundcrews are still putting out flare-ups just off the  highway near Happy Valley-Goose Bay.

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A Sawmill Fire Becomes a Forest Fire