iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 03/10/2026

The Missisquoi River surrounded by the fall glory of the valley where my husband and I have lived almost 50 years now. Back in the day it was a hippie haven. Now we couldn't afford to buy here.

The Missisquoi River, smooth as glass, with surrounding trees and mountains reflected in the water. It's October and so the mountains are covered with red, orange and yellow trees.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

If you want to get all science-y, they're called crepuscular rays. Our house is part way up a mountain so in the fall at our elevation we get very heavy fog. When the sun first comes up, this is what I see. It only lasts minutes because the sun burns the fog off quickly.

Blinding white rays as the rising sun pierces fog. On the left are red begonias, then a mixed drift of hostas, more red begonias and finally more hosta. In the background is forest. On the right are variegated hosta, a blue pot holding red begonia, tall grass and at the back right of the bed are yellow coleus.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Boop looking sweet and angelic. Alas, she is a spawn of Satan, but we love her anyway. #Caturday #orange_cat

A tiny orange female cat with an orange collar sleeps on a fake fur dark blue pillow on a green sofa. Her front legs are extended out in front of her. She looks sweet and angelic. She is not.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

When the black-eyed susans get going you know that summer has begun its decline.

Three black-eyed susans, a plant with a dark brown round center and long narrow yellow petals, beginning to flower. They're surrounded by green foliage and flower buds in various stages of opening.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

For years I wondered why they're called water hyacinth. Then we had a few remarkably hot summers her in Quebec and I finally saw blossoms in my pond. But this year? This year is off the charts both for temperature and flowers. #garden #water_hyacinth

A large cluster of water hyacinth plants in a water garden. The garden is surrounded by rocks, with the upright stems of water iris in the background. This started out as three tiny plants and there are hundreds now.

A close-up of water hyacinth plants in a water garden. They are very pale mauve with blue eyes in the center of each flower. The leaves are very bulbous and the plant floats on water. This started out as three tiny plants and there are hundreds now. Each flower only lasts one day.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

On a really foggy morning I will get fabulous beams when the sun comes over the mountains. As I waited in anticipation, the spousal unit said my picture would be spoiled by my wheelbarrow. I objected and at that moment the sun appeared. Behold The Holy Wheelbarrow. #garden #crepuscular_rays #hostas

A beam of sun makes a crepuscular ray that looks as if a wheelbarrow is being touched by divinity. In the foreground a brick garden path is lined with hostas and flowering plants.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

Anyone who discounts hostas as a flowering plant really underestimates them.

An interlocking brick pathway lined with variegated, green and solid blue hostas. In the background red daylilies and in the right foreground a blue pot with a pink begonia.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 23/06/2026

As a friend and I were walking, a mother beef cow took her new calf down to the road to show it to the dairy cows in the next field across the road. The dairy cows seem interested.

A mother beef cow shows the dairy cows across the road her new calf.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

I plant his 'n' her plant as a food source for early hummingbirds. While I wait for them to show up, the bumblebees indulge in a quick snack.

A yellow and black bumblebee crawls into a blue trumpet shaped flower that's edged in pink. In the background are green leaves dappled with white. The plant is colloquilly called his 'n' her plant.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

My cat Boop sleeps in truly weird positions.

Small orange cat asleep upright in chair sitting on her behind, propped up by her right front paw with her left paw, leg and tail extended.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

It snowed yesterday. Of course it did. Shorts weather one day, parka weather the next. Welcome to Quebec. While I await my beloved daffodils, I finished the last of this year's bead and wire flowers. It feels carnivorus, so I've named it Audrey.

A flower made of different coloured beads and copper wire clamped in a vise by a window that looks out into a snow covered yard.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

When I saw these two my first thought was, "Was it something he said?"

A brown bull and a white cow stand rump to rump in a field. Behind them is fog and above that is a mountainside covered with trees in full autumn colour. When I saw them I laughed and said to my walking buddy, "Was it something he said?"

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 06/10/2025

My morning walk. I've lived in this valley 48 years and these fall mornings still take my breath away.

A dirt road curves through fog in a hilly valley. A few brightly coloured trees are visible and in the top right bits of the mountain are just whispering through the fog.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 17/05/2025

Now that I'm in the middle of a major storm that's blowing off all the petals, thought I'd preserve a memory of the magnolia.

A perfect white magnolia blossom minutes a day before a big storm blew it to smithereens.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 06/02/2025

"I drink local Donald" New billboard in Montréal from Boréal beer made in Québec.

A long narrow billboard spans the top of an on ramp in Montreal. In the center are five can of Boreale beer of different flavours. To the left it says "Je bois local mon Donald" which translates to I drink local Donald. To the right it says Boreal fierement d'ici which translates as Boreale, proudly local.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 30/01/2025

An elderly man reflects on his 17th summer, spent with his beloved grandparents outside a remote, poor Irish village. Wry, evocative, tender, This Is Happiness by Niall Williams is a yarn spun of a faith questioned, love, loss, guilt and redemption. Recommended. 4.5 🖋️📚💙

Cover of book This Is Happiness by Niall Williams. A dark, heavily clouded sky with blue edges hangs over a rocky field of yellowing grass fringed with tall yellowing rushes. On the top left, a road winds to a long, low hill. No sign of habitation anywhere.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

There's a lot to recommend in The Siege of Burning Grass. It's a beautifully written and timely examination of war. The story is compelling, characters interesting and the world created is original. The very last pages as this good read rushed to its ending were a bit of a letdown for me. 3.75 ⭐🪐📚💙

Cover of The Siege of Burning Grass by Premee Mohamed who is a Nebula, World Fantasy and Aurora Winning Author. Title in red lettering, beige background. Under the title the head of a raven dressed in a green suit coat looks left.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Dawn this morning from the upstairs window. For a few moments the rising sun turns the snow orange.

Sun rise on the mountains across the valley from me. The tops of the snow covered mountains turn orange from the light of the rising sun, as do the bottoms of low clouds. Leafless trees fill the bottom and the foreground of the picture.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 27/01/2025

Tom Lake is the only novel I’ve read so far that catches how the covid lock down changed how we looked at time, how it had us all taking stock of our lives. It’s a beautifully written meditation on love and the little corners of ourselves we hide, even from those we love and trust most. ⭐⭐⭐⭐📚💙

The cover of the book Tom Lake by Ann Patchett. On a background of green hay with daisies popping up through it is the book title. In a yellow circle it says "A bittersweet tale of family, heartbreak and hope" GUARDIAN.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

If you like Louise Penny books, then you might also like Ann Lambert’s series with Marie Russell and Detective Roméo Leduc which is also set in Quebec. Leduc is a more flawed person than Gamache, which makes him more interesting to me. Three books in series so far. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⚡️📚💙

The Birds That Stay by Ann Lambert. Black cover with title, author's name and a mysterious gold medallion.

The Dogs of Winter by Ann Lambert. A white cover with black paw prints.

Whale Fall by Ann Lambert. Frothy white wave crest rises out of the ocean with red blood spatters around.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Octavia Butler’s Kindred jolted me out of what I thought I understood about slavery by using time travel to toss a modern black woman back into slavery. First book of 2025 read and now almost a month later and many other books read, it’s still the one that resonates the most. Remarkable. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 💙📚🪐📚

Cover of the book Kindred by Octavia Butler. The bottom of the page is a cluster of black slave cabins built of squared logs with chimneys on their side. Above hovers a head and shoulder image of a short haired black woman wearing a white dress, her head slightly lowered, her eyes looking down.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Claire Keegan’s tiny perfect novellas always make me cry. Foster is no exception, told through the eyes of a young girl taken to her aunt and uncle’s farm for a summer. She responds to love and attention like a wilted plant responds to water. Five kleenexes. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 💙📚

The cover of Claire Keegan's book "Foster", a black and white photo. In the foreground the back of a young girl wearing a striped tee shirt, her long hair gathered back by a clip. In the foreground, a young boy on a merry-go-round.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

How do you find hope when a mysterious chronic illness leaves you bedridden? I got a glimpse of that through this quiet memoir The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. As a gardener, I’ve always hated snails. Now I have a more nuanced view of them, too. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 💙📚

Cover of the book The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating by Elisabeth Tova Bailey. Pale blue with a gray snail extended out of a brown shell, perched on the word "Wild" in the title.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

I love Leonard Cohen’s music and wanted to know more about him so I had high hopes for Leonard Cohen: The Man Who Saw the Angels Fall by Christophe Lebold. It got great reviews but I didn’t enjoy it. Too intellectual for me. ⭐💙📚

Cover of Leonard Cohen, The Man Who Saw The Angels Fall by Christophe Lebold. A black and white photo of Leonard Cohen lighting a cigarette.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Think climate change novel with Da Vinci Code vibes and you have Neal Stephenson’s Termination Shock. The audio book version is excellent, a great escapist experience with enough history and science to inform as well an entertain. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ 💙📚🎧📚

Bright Blue book cover with water current vibes and the text "Neal Stephenson Termination Shock A Novel". The "o" in Shock is an orange globe with the image of North and South America cut out so the blue of the cover shows.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 25/01/2025

Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a non-fiction book about life in a Mumbai slum, was a bleak read. Corruption pollutes everything, crushes people’s lives. I wonder what the future holds for an America governed by such an openly corrupt man. ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 💙📚

behind the beautiful forevers by Katherine Boo. A child dressed in a grimy too big dress squats by a sewage pond, her face tipped towards the sun. In the background piles of garbage and ragged shacks made of construction waste. In the far background pristine high rises.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 24/01/2025

Two of the best agents from very different societies travel up and down time, tweaking history for control of earth. Of course they’re women. Of course their paths cross. They leave letters for each other, at first taunting. Grudging respect turns to something else. Can this end well? ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 🌈🪐📚💙

$This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal el-Mohtar and Max Gladstone. A blue cover featuring a red cardinal digitally fractured with an upside down digitally fractured bluebird standing toe to toe with it.$

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 23/01/2025

Finished the third novella in the fabulous Murderbot Diaries series. The adventures of this grumpy, sarcastic ever more human robot continue to delight. Can hardly wait until my Libby queue spits out installment four, Exit Strategy. Thank you, Martha Wells. 4.5 stars. 🪐📚💙

Rogue Protocol, third installment of the Murderbot Diaries by Martha Wells. Two silhouetted figures stand on a gantry within a domed glass ceiling of a geodesic type building, looking down on a suspended domed pod.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 22/01/2025

The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan. 💙📚

A three storey white house with a gold roof surrounded in the foreground by tropical foliage with a blue sky above. The book is The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years by Shubnum Khan.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 21/01/2025

I stayed up stupidly late reading because I HAD to see how this book ended. I am too old to be doing this. Zero regrets that I did. ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ #booksky #books #ShubnumKhan

Shubnum Khan's book The Djinn Waits a Hundred Years. Three storey house edged with lush tropical foliage, topped by a bright blue sky. A five star read.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 12/01/2025

I've lived in the woods 47 years. How can a book make me suddenly nervous about trees? And deer? #Booksky #Fantasy #PremeeMohamed

The Butcher of the Forest by Premee Mohamed. I love writers that make you reconsider things you thought you knew about.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 19/12/2024

There comes a moment when you have to acknowledge that perfection has been achieved. This week the spouse achieved peak Charlie Brown Christmas Tree. He won't take a tree from our woods that might flourish and always culls a windfall or damaged tree. Respect where respect is due. #Christmas

Truly sad little tree covered with Christmas decorations, a poor tree that was smucked by a big tree during a wind storm.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 18/12/2024

Winter is slow to come this year to the Eastern Townships. It tiptoes in, we get a stupidly late rain, and it tiptoes out. #Quebec #snow #garden

At the end of a curving path, a small statue of a woman takes shelter from a light snowfall under a hydrangea.

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Marn Simmons 🇨🇦 📚🌻 @marnpoo.bsky.social · 17/12/2024

My cat Sophie helping with Christmas wrapping, if by help you mean squishing herself into the box of greeting cards I want to wrap. #catsofbluesky

Large tuxedo cat squished into smallish box. Where there's a will, there's a way.

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