Happy Easter

 Wishing everyone a happy Easter this weekend. We are gathering as an extended family on Sunday at our house. About fourteen of us this year. There will be ham, mashed potatoes, carrots, green beans, a creamy corn casserole, chick pea salad and a spring greens salad. I’m baking a lemon layer cake and my daughter is making a cinnamon roll cake. My sister in law is bringing another dessert and my sister is bringing appetizers. 

I don’t think we are expecting a warm spring day, but instead cool and rainy ( perhaps snow). But that’s April. 

Even though our two kids are 26 and 29, I’ll still pick up a few little Easter treats for them ( and their significant others).I asked husband if he wanted anything and he said yes, but just one. Likely something Reese’s Peanut Butter chocolate. Then I asked, and what am I getting? Like most moms, I’ll get my own ( like stuffing your own stocking at Christmas! Haha.)

I am looking forward to getting on with outdoor tasks the first of which will be raking our one acre property. If the weather behaves we will have “ kid” help on the holiday Monday. 

Happy Easter everyone! 🐣

It's a bit COLD

 I thought I would quickly pop back here for an update. We are having another good old fashioned winter again. LOTS of snow in "southwestern Ontario" with lake effect snow coming off of the Great Lakes. At the moment, we are in quite a cold snap. Keep in mind, we are measuring in Celsius.

Yes, that's a going to be a low tonight of -24, feels like -34. If you don't understand, "feels likes" means taking into account the wind chill factor. So even though you might be outside in a balmy -24, with the wind blowing, it's more like -34. Let's just say that the cats don't stay outside very long in this weather. 

Husband and I got away for a week and thoroughly enjoyed the sun whilst at home they were getting a blizzard which closed roads and actually closed schools for a couple of days (usually the busses are cancelled, but schools remain open). Busses get cancelled because the back roads are not able to be cleared in time by the snow ploughs, or the blowing snow is causing white outs that are too dangerous for busses to be travelling in. We really enjoyed the resort we were at (Dominican Republic) and would consider returning there some day. It was 28 degrees there. Lovely. 

Being as it is a sunny morning (a rarity), here are some east-facing and west-facing porch pictures to show you our snow. 

I hope you are warm and contented, wherever you are in the world. 

Don’t wait - Loss

 My oldest brother died yesterday. This was a shock for everyone. He was 72 years old- a character if there ever was one. He hid how much his COPD had advanced and was affecting him. He also had later onset diabetes ( requiring insulin). 

When he started feeling unwell last week he naturally thought it was a cold virus and rested and dealt with it accordingly but it was influenza which rapidly became pneumonia. Within hours he was intubated and in the ICU. Regardless of all the antibiotics and the multiple machines and lines which were helping his body systems to function it was all too much and he died within four days, never coming out of his heavy sedation/ medical coma. 

Don’t wait is what I put in the title of this post. Don’t wait to take care of your health. Don’t wait to get together with family and friends. Don’t wait to take the trip, make the call, hug someone, or prepare or update your will. 

When you think you are having a bad day, ask yourself if you woke up in your own home and breathed on your own. If you did, it’s a good day. 

Thank you for allowing me to share. Please enjoy the holiday season and appreciate your good fortunes. 

At Long Last, December 4, 2025

 Realizing I've been absent from blogging for months now, I thought I should show proof of life. This morning, here in Ontario, I am sitting with my Santa mug of coffee, reading blogs and preparing myself mentally for getting ready for a supply teaching job even though buses are cancelled due to the wintry weather. (The schools remain open and many children are brought in by their parents). 

Life has been busy and good. We spent the whole summer and fall doing projects related to getting ready to host our daughter's wedding here in August of '26. We also went away for a week to Cuba in November which was ill fated and probably won't be repeated again in our life time, ha ha! 

I am just starting to gear up for the Christmas season. We were in the city to deliver our son's cat back to him (we were cat sitting while he was away for a much more successful holiday to Mexico later in November) and we managed to get some shopping done. We found a Christmas tree (real) close to home for a sale price of $60.00 which suited us much better than the $99.99 price tag we were seeing! I decorated the tree with Celtic Christmas music in the background yesterday. 

As per usual, Murphy has ensconced himself in his rightful place under the tree. (Tree skirt is not yet put down, so excuse the ugly mat that is used to protect the wood floor). 

I shall start baking soon. We will be having our immediate family get together on the 24th and then extended family will be on Boxing Day, hosted by my eldest brother's long time girlfriend. I am not heart broken over not hosting this year. It is a big undertaking. This will be the first year that we will not be bringing my mother-in-law out of her nursing home to come to our house for a meal and presents. Her dementia has made it more difficult to leave the comfort and familiarity of her place and she is not always aware of who her son is. So we will go to her and hope that it is a nice break in her day. 

As I said, today is blustery and as I look out at the one street light on our dead end road here at the edge of the village, I see there is a tiny break in the weather. Hopefully when it is time for me to set out, there will be another break as I navigate the 20 minute drive through the country side to the school I am working at today. It is a JK /SK class that I am in (junior kindergarten, senior kindergarten split) so I'm not sure how many little ones will show up. 

I hope everyone is well out there. I still enjoy reading blogs, but have lost the previous years' momentum of writing posts myself. Perhaps I will do another Christmas baking post soon. 

Aug. 10, 2025

 In all this heat, I’m still working on perennial/ shrub beds. This will be a quick post, but for those of you who do your own gardening and end up having to clean up existing beds, I discovered a great “ hack” as they say. Well, likely others have discovered it as well, but it’s new to me. 

I have dastardly creeping bellflower in some beds and it’s nasty to get rid of. You must dig deeply to get at the main roots, not just the little spidery white roots just under the surface. Of course, I have established shrubs and plants like peonies and spirea that I am not going to dig up and then put back in place, but they are big and scratchy in the case of spirea, so I took some foam covered gardening wire ( or tie-back) and wrapped it around the whole shrub as best I could and cinched it in and twisted the wire closed. This gave me lots of room, let me see what was under all those branches, and doesn’t hurt the plants at all. 

I did this to try and control a giant Annabelle hydrangea, too. It worked really well! 

Also, I just planted a Rose of Sharon because I needed something that would be in bloom at this time. It wasn’t blooming when I planted it, but it had several buds. Well, look at this!!

Those blooms are huge! I couldn’t believe it. And… they were 25% off! I love end of season sales!

 

 

August 1, 2025 (gardens and a birding app)

 It's a new month and lots has been accomplished. I also have a free app that I'm enjoying right now, and if you are a bird lover/enthusiast, you will love it, too. 

As you may know, we are working on the property to ready it for next years (on this very date in fact) wedding of our daughter. It is very important now to look around the perennial borders and see what is in bloom, as I want to be sure to promote that for next year. 

Most of my jobs involve gardening, or should I say revamping existing beds and borders. Here is one that I literally dug 80% of the plant material out of it because it was overgrown, weed infested, and needing purposeful planning. Here it is after much work.

The perennial I gleefully dug up and tossed behind the chicken coop was Rudbekia (black eyed Susan). I have fought that flower mightily over the years. It has the ability to self-seed like no other. 

Now this bed has two cedars, two spireas (which were already there, but I moved one), three daylilies, two butterfly bushes, three hydrangeas (little lime, and little lime punch), one wiegela red prince, a handful of stella d'oro daylilies and one potentilla (yellow).  I just need to lay down weed barrier and mulch it. I'm still deciding where to purchase mulch. The cost of plants and landscaping materials has almost doubled over the years. I usually just divide what I already have, rather than buying new, but I wanted this bed to be really nice and balanced for next August. The daylilies, butterfly bushes, hydrangea and potentilla will all be blooming at the time of the wedding.

Prior to this I also worked on a very long bed that borders our property and has a rail fence behind it. It too, was extremely over grown, mostly with grass and the dreaded bindweed which is impossible to eradicate. I spent days and days and days digging up each section, dumping, covering with weed barrier and mulching. That particular mulch was the result of an arborist who came in late spring to do some work for us and he wood chipped some large branches that were taken down. This bed is a mish-mash of shrubs and some perennials. I added cedars and some divisions of plants I already had and it will be good for next year. 

The flat lawn area in the foreground is where the large wedding tent will be set up for the meal and the dancing later in the evening. Husband has been putting the lawn roller on the back of the lawn mower every time he mows to make sure things are as smooth as possible and will do that next summer as well. We have a "country lawn", meaning it's green and we mow it but it's not all perfect grass. We don't hire a company to spray, seed, and fertilize. Everything we do is done inexpensively and usually just by us. 

My gardening continues and my vegetable garden is doing very well. We've had such lovely heat and the beans have exploded. Yesterday I blanched and froze quite a lot of green and yellow beans for future meals. Also in my vegetable garden is something that makes me ridiculously happy. I planted zinnias and cosmos for the first time and I can't believe the zinnias! They are so bright and cheerful and are such amazing cut flowers. I'm sure the pictures on the blog won't do them justice, but here are some...

I always have a little vase of them in the house somewhere. The cosmos have not started blooming yet, but I'm looking forward to them.

Lastly, my sister told me about an app for your phone that identifies bird sounds. It is called Merlin (through the Cornell Lab) and it is amazing and somewhat addictive. It is free to install and then all you do is hold your phone and let it listen to the bird sounds wherever you are. It identifies the bird and gives you a little information about it and you can listen to recordings of the bird's different sounds it prove to yourself that it is indeed, that bird. You can make a "life list" of the birds you have heard. Here are a couple of screen shots of birds that I have heard.

My daughter now has the app, too. She's the one who showed me how to make the life list. If you enjoy backyard birds at all, I encourage you to try this out. (I get no money from promoting this at all, it's not a sell job, I just really like it). If a bird name is highlighted in yellow, that means that bird was being heard at that time. 

Happy August to you all, those who are still kicking around in blog land. I always think of August as the last hoorah of summer and associate it with vegetable garden harvest and the sound of crickets! 

It's July!

 It is now the second day of July and we've had some lovely hot days as well as some big rains. This year I planted my vegetable garden in rows, instead of my usual blocks. When you plant in blocks, you can fit more in, but I wanted a traditional look to my garden. 

As a result, things are growing and getting bigger. I still have many barriers in place to keep the bunnies at bay. They especially love tiny beet seedlings. I have replanted a couple of times. 

Underneath the "ghost" are two zucchini plants. I have had problems with cucumber beetles for years now, to the point where I don't even bother to grow cucumbers. But I have enough fabric that I can cover the zucchinis and just lift it to pollinate and water, if necessary. 

Something different that I did this year was to plant a double row of zinnias and cosmos. I just put the seed in the ground in very late spring and they are coming up very well. I can't wait until they start blooming! I planted all of my tomatoes inside and had grow lights on them. I did the same with my peppers, but I did buy a four pack of jalapeno peppers. 

I also have green beans, yellow beans, two kinds of lettuce, carrots (they are not coming up so well), onions, beets, potatoes, basil and dill which self-seeded from last year. I did plant some strawberry plants but they are only just getting established. I will have to wait until next June to get some berries. 

Anything I didn't or can't grow, I can just procure from one of the many Amish farm stands in my area. How is your garden growing?