It's the birthday of painter and writer Emily Carr, born on Vancouver Island, Canada in 1871. Her parents died when she was young, and she was raised by her older sisters. She's best known for her landscape and native themed paintings. By the time of her death, she was considered the Canadian Van Gogh. She was also known as the "little old woman on the edge of nowhere." She kept a household of animals, which included a monkey, a pet rat, parrots, dogs, and other various wild creatures she had tamed.

She began writing after a heart attack restricted her ability to paint. She wrote Klee Wyck (1941), which won a Governor General's Award, and The House of All Sorts (1944). Most of her life stories, journals, and letters were published after she died in 1945.

Carr said, "It is not all bad, this getting old, ripening. After the fruit has got its growth it should juice up and mellow. God forbid I should live long enough to ferment and rot and fall to the ground in a squash."

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I love Emily Carr's paintings. Several years ago I saw a wonderful exhibition about her life and art at the provincial museum in Victoria. I also visited her grave, which is simply a corner of a family plot that has names carved into a horizontal concrete slab. There's no headstone. People have placed pine cones, feathers and other objects from nature around her name.