2nd post

I had a terrible time to post my first Blog. Live Writer could not post it. I then tried Blogger and it took ages to enter the pictures. This is the first time I had problems. I guess I am joining the crowd in this. I just wish they would leave things alone when they work properly.
Grrrrrrrrrrr
I also tried this post in Live writer. Both times this is the window that popped up:














What's up with this??? I did the same thing I always did. Very frustrating.

Losing interest

Yes, I am losing interest in blogging. I guess that is because nothing really interesting happens that I could write about.
Today I went to the garden and took a few pictures.

Our lettuce



Rhubarb


and it looks like we are getting lots of strawberries.

The Dahlias are coming up nicely too. I saved the tubers from last year and had luck with them sprouting. The year before I did not have one that overwintered. It will be interesting to see which type of dahlias we will get. I did not mark them. This fall I will make sure I do.

The other day Cliff came in the kitchen bringing me our first potatoes. Here is a picture:




I almost needed glasses to see them but I threw them in with the potatoes for that day. Now I am waiting for the big ones! I bought a 10 pound bag of potatoes the other day and they are really terrible. I have to peel twice as much as I want to eat because so much of them has to be cut off.
As you see, nothing earth shattering is occurring but I like it this way.
Hope everybody had a great Father’s Day.

See you in the future.
Good night everybody ☺

Doors and windows wide open

drapes drawn. Only a few days ago I was cold all day but too stubborn to start a fire or turn on the electricity. Looks like we went from Winter to Summer within a few days. What happened to Spring????
This morning I even had to water and if the weather stays like this we will have to do that every day.
A few weeks ago I bought a hanging basket with beautiful blue flowers at Superstore.



I really like it a lot but lately I find about 4 honey- or mason bees dead under it on the balcony floor every day. I really would like to find out why that is. We have 3 other baskets and I use the same fertilizer on all of them, same as last year (Schultz 10-15-10 Liquid Plant Food).
I have never bought any baskets at Superstore because normally they look bedraggled but this one caught my eye. I think I want to find out which nursery supplies the store and see if they sprayed something toxic on the flowers. They might not tell me though.
I finally picked some of our rhubarb. Three stalks was enough to make a batch of “Heavenly Jam”. That is everybody's favourite. Lettuce is also coming on strong. We try to have a salad every day once or twice. Just before lunch I usually look around the garden to see what I can pick to cook. Today it was a bunch of greens and boy did they taste good! These plants are self-seeding and come back every year all over the garden.
Pretty soon the rapini will be finished so it’s good the greens are now big enough to eat.
The tomato plants are all blooming. We plant “Early Girl” and they taste wonderful but it will be the end of July before we can start eating them. I can hardly wait.

That’s it for today.
Good night everybody ☺

Bunnies and Birds

This year we have an abundance of bunnies around our house. Big ones, medium sized ones and tiny ones. As long as they don’t go in the garden they are safe but we also have one little one in the garden. I have no idea how they get in there. Every morning I expect to see the broccoli plants mowed down. I sure hope not. They play all the time, racing each other jumping over top of each other and just plain hop around. It seems that every few years there are lots of them and other years we hardly see any. It’s neat to see them clip a spent dandelion stem at the bottom and then nibble till it’s all gone which only takes a few seconds.
The birds are a different story though. A few days ago I went around the north side of our house which has no windows and is close to our neighbours' fence so we don’t go around that side normally. I noticed lots of white spots on the ground and when I looked up I realized it was bird droppings all down the side of the house. Hmmmmmmmm. I called Cliff but we thought the birds were roosting on a square vent that was sticking out a bit. The next day I looked again and I noticed a piece of hey or weed hanging from a vent hole. Hmmmmmm again. The day after that I walked home from the mail box and actually saw a robin flying out of that vent hole. That did it. With a tall ladder (the house is 2 storeys high) Cliff checked out the top of the gable.  Four of the  vent holes had no screens left.  This time he stapled wire screening over the holes but when I looked today one of the staples was gone and the edge of the screen was frayed. More staples are going up. I wonder who is going to win this war…. 
We have four or five birds roosting under our balcony and that’s OK but not IN the house please. They do make a mess there too, but I can clean that up easily.  
That was my big excitement for today.

Good night everybody ☺

Long, long ago…

I wrote the last Blog. I have had inquiries from Janna and Eddie wondering if I am OK. Thank you both for the thought and I am very well indeed, just too lazy to write. Actually there really is not much to write about.
Cliff is still working hard to stop the darn ECO depot/dump from being built in the farmland close by. Nobody is against having an ECO depot/dump  but not in a location that is farmland. It should be in an industrial area. It sure is hard to ‘fight City Hall” Last night we were both at a meeting of our area director but when questions came up that he found uncomfortable, he just changed the subject and so the fight goes on!!




Last Sunday we had another sign waving session. We are sure busy bees.


On June 18th we will have a fundraising dance. It should be lots of fun since we will have a live band which is supposed to be really good. This is coupled with a silent auction.

The garden is coming along great. We are now eating our home grown lettuce, onions and still Rapini every day. Our squash from last year lasted until about 4 weeks ago and I can hardly wait for the next crop. I really miss it. The tomatoes are growing by leaps and bounds. They are under cloches. Not long and radishes will also be on the menu.
To this day I still have 3 large bags of raspberries and one large bag of strawberries in the freezer. I really must do something with that.
The rhubarb is almost as tall as I am and I have not touched one leaf. It needs so much sugar that I don’t really want to use it. I will make some heavenly jam with it but I need crushed pineapple and after just checking my supply I find I am out of that. Next shopping trip will remedy that.
I just finished the audiobook “Heaven is for real” by Todd Burpo. It really is thought provoking. As you know I enjoy listening to books while I do otherwise boring chores. It’s a good thing I can download those from the library. I would be broke if I had to pay for them.

Back to my chores.
Good bye everybody ☺

Mother’s Day tomorrow

and we went to town today to get 2 flower baskets and some plants to put together a third one. The third one is the one that had the birds nest last year and one of the plants actually survived the winter. I originally thought I would just plant a few more flowers in it but the dirt was so matted up that I had to replace it. I hope the old plants will survive because they took quite a beating when I got them out. Now we need one more basket to even everything out. I have a solar light in each one and also solar Chinese lanterns between the baskets. Cliff figures the lanterns look “tacky” but I like them and so they stay
We actually went shopping quite a few times this week. Normally we combine all of it in one day but somehow this week was different.
The weather has been “Medium-Rare” this week but we picked nice days for our outings.
Weather permitting Cliff is outside whipping the garden into shape but he has a long way to go yet.  It has been too wet all Spring to do much.
A lot of our Lilies are up but none of the dahlias survived. I have to buy new ones next trip out.
Pretty soon we’ll be eating the first Rhubarb.
All is good ☺

Good bye everybody ☺

Is spring finally here?

I sure hope so.
According to the above picture it looks like it is true. The Orchard Mason Bees are hard at work. Cliff had to make another bee house to accommodate all of the newly hatched bees. I am glad they are not inclined to sting because there are so many of them.
It was such a fine day that I even went out and weeded the flower bed. It always pleases me to see it free of weeds. Unfortunately that is an ongoing process. It does not take long before the weeds take over again.
We bought our 18 Early Girl tomatoes a few days ago and yesterday Cliff planted them in 2 cloches. He also planted 6 lettuce plants that we bought already about 5 inches tall and 6 tiny little lettuce plants that I raised in the house. All of those are under plastic cloches as well. It is still too cold at night without protection.
I was able to pick the first useable veggies.

Rapini


I will be cooking some tomorrow. Rapini is a plant that comes back every year and tastes great. I always look forward to the first meal. This year it has been much later than normal.
It has also been a much colder Spring and most of our tulips have frozen edges and don’t look nice. Too bad because they looked great last year.
Time for bed.
Good night everybody ☺