Little Acorn

Oh, Canada!

Tomorrow is Canada Day and we'll be celebrating our great nation by painting the small upstairs bedroom. Not how many people choose get festive on their day off, but I'm looking forward to it. After that room then there is just ONE ROOM LEFT in our renovations. ONE! It started out with nine and soon it will be ONE! I'm pretty psyched about it as we've been at it for years (with lots of breaks, of course). Our fuel for the day will be a candy that truly makes me proud to be a Canadian, the Lowney's Cherry Blossom.
These are a very nostalgic sweet treat for me. Neither the product nor the yellow box with the cherries has changed since I was little. They're not a very adult taste and if you didn't grow up with them you might not like them as they're on the edge of being painfully sweet, but I love them. As far as I know they are just a Canadian thing, although they may be a Canadian and British thing, I'm not sure. I do know that they're delicious and their drippy sugaryness makes me feel like I'm 5 again every time I eat one.

Milk chocolate with both peanuts and coconut, cherry syrup, cherry cream and a maraschino cherry. Yum. I don't suggest you cut them in half before you eat them though - it guarantees a huge mess. Cherry Blossoms are not meant for sharing! I guess that's why David bought 5!

This Post Rated X

There's a lot of romance out in the garden lately. The birds and the bees, you know. But when I came across this display of raw animal invertebrate passion, I just had to go in for the camera. Yes, that's right - I caught snails doing it. I admit it - I was fascinated. The snail population in my yard is a little...dense...for my liking, but I just couldn't break these two lovers up. Oh, the slithery embrace. Oh, the slime.
I watched for a really long time...

Little Acorn?

It's hard to name a blog. Really hard. There were a LOT of contenders, but none of them were just right. David made insane helpful suggestions like "Petting Zoo Fire" but in the end it came down to Little Acorn. So why Little Acorn you ask? Or maybe you don't ask, but I'll tell you anyway. Well, there is my unabashed love of squirrels and all things squirrely. Squirrels/acorns - it seemed to fit. Then there is my love for the band The White Stripes. They have a song called "Little Acorns". Not my favourite song, but nothing else White Stripe-y seemed to belong as a blog title. But mostly there was the first Little Acorn... In 2005 David and I fostered Mama kitties and their babies for the summer. We got all the joy (and mess and craziness) of a house full of kittens and then would tearfully happily send them off to find their homes. We were the only  suckers do-gooders who would take in a mother and daughter cat duo with their 7 + 3  kittens. Yep, that's right. 2 adult cats with a total of 10 mental kittens between them. David and I said we wouldn't, but of course we named all the kittens and we loved them fiercely for the time they were with us. Mostly when it was time to go, I'd get a little sniffly and then send them off. But our last group of 3 kittens was...special. There was the Mama kitty - her SPCA name was Patches, but when my Mom decided that she would give her a good home she became Belle, the prettiest, cuddliest, most affectionate and lately the ROUNDEST calico on earth. She had three kittens - Tenzin (after Tenzin Norgay, because he loved to climb), Ember (a sooty tortoiseshell with just a few flames of orange) and Acorn... I don't know why or how Acorn got her name, but I know I gave it to her and it was just right. She was a mottled nut brown and her and I just connected. David loved crazy-kitty Tenzin best, but Acorn and I... Okay, those of you who aren't cat people won't understand, but she was just THE ONE, you know? I loved Acorn so much and when she went back to the SPCA I cried and cried and cried. I wanted to run back there and take her home where she belonged, but I didn't and I've regretted it ever since. Acorn should have been my cat. Not that I don't love Musette and Zephyr of course, but I never should have let sweet Acorn go. I hope she is having a lovely life. I hope her people are kind and I hope they realize that they've got a truly great cat. I hope her world is full of treats, soft voices, loving touches and warm places to sleep. Oh dear. Now you're all going to think I'm insane. One of those crazy cat ladies. Maybe I am.
 
Oh - and if I ever have a band, I'm totally naming it "Petting Zoo Fire".

Forty garage sales later...

...and this was all we bought. One single ceramic squirrel container. 50 cents. I didn't even have to bargain. We stopped at 40 garage sales in about 2 1/2 hours and drove by many more. It was Garagellenium - an annual event where a neighbourhood in our city has hundreds of garage sales all on the same day. David and I are absolutely sure that the hundreds of sales we DIDN'T go to had all the good stuff and we were unlucky enough to just go to all the ones with junk. We haven't been in years and probably won't go again. I do enjoy my squirrel container though. Now what should I put in it? Nuts just seems too obvious.

Peonies, finally

Just about a month late, my peonies have finally started to bloom and I've brought in my first tiny bouquet. The pink which is just opening up is a very fragrant Sarah Bernhardt and the white which has been blooming about a week is a Shirley Temple. The Shirley Temple was mislabeled at the nursery, but it turns out to be one of the stars of my garden. It has huge white blooms just tipped in red here and there and the smell is heavenly. It only takes two peonies to make my kitchen smell swoon-worthy. Come in closer for a sniff...

Oh, that's right. Can't smell things on a blog. Too bad. Trust me - swoon-worthy.
The little cream jug this bouquet is in is from the Hotel Minerve in Paris. David liberated it for me from the breakfast tray on our last day in Paris way back in 2002. Ahhhh, Paris. David and I spent nearly a month there, seeing the sights, being crazy in love, taking a million non-digital photographs and getting rained on day after day after day (and NOT proposing or accepting a proposal of marriage, but that's another story). It was a record settingly cold and wet spring - but we were in Paris and in love, so the weather didn't matter. I love this little jug and all the memories it carries with it. Whether it's holding peonies in the summer or hot chocolate in the winter, it always makes me smile.

What's Blooming?

This is year three for most of the plantings in my garden and things have really settled in, spread out and started to bloom. There were some casualties though. Our harsh winter seems to have done in the calla lilies and I've lost the battle with the snails over the lupine. The large leafed hostas look pretty chewed up as well so they may get gifted to a gardener with less of a snail problem (or one who is more willing to go to war with them). The smaller leaved variegated ones are fine though. Who's to say what's super tasty to a snail?  What I like best about the finished area of the garden is that it's becoming quite low maintainence. My goal was to have no bare dirt, and without bare dirt after my big weedfest in early spring I really only pull the odd weed throughout the summer. Now that the plantings are established it doesn't need much watering and the shrubs are finally getting tall enough to start giving us the privacy we were needing. If only I could talk David into getting rid of the grass, then there wouldn't even be any mowing to do. Finally I can be out in that area and just enjoy it without seeing all the work to do. Of course there are still other areas that are basically wild right now - heaps of dirt, blackberries, binderweed, herb robert, dandelions, chickweed and other nameless weeds. Once my whole garden was like that though, so slowly it's being converted.

There's lots of colour out there right now, mostly from the foxgloves which blooming in white, purple and every shade of pink and from the Nelly Moser clematis, which is blooming it's heart out this year with huge dinner plate sized pink and white blooms. The one plant that is repeated in my garden a lot is Lady's Mantle (Alchemilla Mollis). It's just so easy care and attractive and it seems happy in every situation I've got it in, from hot and dry to partly shady and damp. It's a big blousy plant with interesting leaves and I love the acid yellow colour of the tiny blooms.
I'm still waiting on my peonies this year. Everything is late after our long cold winter, but the peonies which usually bloom around my birthday are still a couple of weeks away.

More Butterflies

Where does the time go?

Whew! I can't believe it's been so long since I've blogged! I guess I was just so happy to not be sick anymore that I had to get out of the house and start doing things. As soon as I felt like getting up off the sofa I wanted to do something better than just go get some groceries or any of the other errands I hadn't been up to before. We made a day of it and headed out for a day of butterflies, lunch, farm stands, thrift stores and aimless back road driving. We ended up getting a seasons pass last time we were at Butterfly Gardens and we really enjoy just stopping in for a little walk around and to take a few pictures when we're out that way. What you will not see is a picture of me after Butterfly Gardens. The humidity does bizarre things to my hair...

My garden is growing like crazy and we've been eating a fresh picked salad almost every night. Isn't the colour of this lettuce gorgeous? It's a french heritage lettuce called "Continuity" or "Marvel of the Four Seasons". It's fast growing, tasty and so very pretty. The flowers in my garden are pretty, but the lettuces really appeal to me in a way the flowers just don't. You will get flower pictures soon though, I promise.
We also fit in a little thrifting where I bought this wee dolls chair. David thinks I should paint it some fun colour, but I'm not sure if I like the well loved patina that it's got or not. We also bought a beautifully made vintage dresser that is definitely getting a coat of paint. I'll show you the before and after once I'm done.

David and I have had a burst of energy and motivation to get the last of our renovations done, so most nights after work and weekends find us plastering, drywalling, installing trim and painting. My bedroom is going to be sooooo beautiful when it's no longer the colour of pepto-bismol! Even last weeks heat wave didn't slow us down and Friday night found us in our underwear at 11pm painting. No -there are DEFINITELY no pictures of that!!!