Now I’m not all that interested in watching a golf tournament, but I do believe that I will be going. You see at the end of each days rounds, well the last three or four days of the tournament anyway, there’s going to be a free concert. Our passes are for Saturday July 26th (at Glen Abbey) and that evening Tom Cochrane and Red Rider will be putting on a concert.

I love Tom Cochrane’s music. I guess one of his most famous songs is Lunatic Fringe or perhaps Life is a Highway. I like all of his music and I’ve never managed to see him play live so this will be a real treat!

I just hope that I’m feeling well enough to go that day. My tum has been causing lots of problems in the last two weeks. Darn Crohn’s. I’ve had terrible fevers and lots of abdominal pain, plus I’ve been losing weight. It’s like I’ve been taking Phentermine or something the way my weight is dropping. That’s the bad thing about Crohn’s, well one of the bad things - you can really lose a lot of weight very fast when you are in a flare. It’s bad.

The last time my Crohn’s flared really bad and caused a lot of weight loss I lost about 40 pounds that I did NOT need to lose in less than a month. I hope that’s not going to happen this time too.

Anyway, I’m glad my brother got us the passes and I’ll be resting up over the next week in the hopes that I can go to the golf tournament and concert.

We took Midnight to Cherry Beach here in Toronto last weekend and I managed to take some pictures of her playing and swimming in the water.

It was her first time swimming, but being a true water dog she was right in there swimming around within minutes. She even swam out about two hundred feet from shore!

There were lots of other dog owners at the beach with their dogs as it’s one of the cities best leash free areas. So it truly was a dog day at the beach!

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Last weekend Chris and I and our puppy Midnight decided to go to The Brick Works. They were having a walking tour that discussed the Brick Works and the lost rivers of Toronto.

I think Chris got more out of the discussion and history than I did, but I was certainly enjoying the walk and the scenery. Midnight had a ball too - of course she kept wanting to jump in the ponds ( a no no for dogs at the Brick Works as it’s an ecological preserve with rare native fauna and flora) since she was so hot. She also wanted to jump into the water to catch the gold fish (not native, dumped fish) and a Mallard duck that was swimming by.

As you can see she really wanted to jump in. We had to hold her back!

Along with old buildings, native plants and native wildlife there are some beautiful ponds in the old brick quarry that was used to dig up clay to make a good portion of the bricks that make up a good portion of Toronto’s older homes (like ours!).

During our walk I spotted a turtle sunning itself by some native water lilies.

You can see more pictures from The Brick Works and some of the native plants growing there on my Gardening Blog if you’d like. Oh yeah, did I mention that the Brickworks is almost in the center of the city and that it’s only about a ten minute drive (or bike ride) from our home? Great place to go on a nice day.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

I hate it when the holiday falls in the middle of the week. Some employers give either the Monday or Friday off closest to the holiday to compensate for a mid- week holiday day, but there are lots of Canadians out there that had to work today - my husband included. He’ll have tomorrow off though and that’s the main thing.

We’re trying to decide what to do for the holiday. I already mentioned in my last post that we’ll probably have nice thick sirloin steaks and fresh corn on the cob for dinner, but what else will we do …

If you guessed go to see some fireworks you’re probably right. If the weather is decent we’ll likely head over to Ashbridge’s Bay to watch the fireworks. They load all the fireworks onto a barge on Lake Ontario and set them off over the water. It’s spectacular. Naturally I’ll try to take some pictures if I can - fireworks aren’t easy to photograph! BTW if anyone has tips on how to photograph fireworks properly I’d love to hear from you.

If you’re in the Toronto area you might be interested in learning about what’s going on in the city for Canada Day. I surfed the web and found some other bloggers talking about their Canada Day plans and some Canada Day Event listings. Here you go:

Canada Day Around Toronto - Although Ottawa is, bar none, the best place to celebrate Canada Day, Toronto is no slouch in the festivities department:. 8:00 pm, Mel Lastman Square — The official City of Toronto celebration. A concert and fireworks to music …

Canada Day Fireworks - Find out where and when to check out Canada Day Fireworks…

Canada Day - Coming soon to a more convenient day near you? - When I was a teenager, Canada Day meant gathering with my friends at Major’s Hill Park, drinking (sorry, Mom) and generally having a good time. The bars were packed, the buses were free after 10 pm (another something Toronto might …

HOLIDAY WEEK - Our Annual Canada Day Preview - Finally, if you want to catch me, please come down to the Harbourfront Centre in Toronto. Johnada will be celebrating the only way I know how - by attacking people with blow up donuts at the first Canadian Donut Olympics. Only in Canada …

I hope that all the Canadians reading this have a great Canada Day - even if you just stay home and relax.

Earlier this evening we went out grocery shopping. The stores will be closed tomorrow by the time he gets home from work since the next day is Canada Day so we had to get everything we’d need for the holiday today.

I’m so glad we went shopping. Our grocery store had grilling sirloin steak on sale so I picked up some for our dinner tonight and two for our dinner on Tuesday. They also had fresh corn on the cob. Now I can’t eat corn on the cob very often thanks to my Crohn’s - I eat it maybe once or twice a year and I often pay for it dearly, but I love it and there’s nothing better than fresh corn on the cob, especially when it’s a rare treat.

I also picked up ingredients for salad - organic mixed greens, tomatoes, cucumber and some light feta cheese. Plus they had berries on sale so I picked up fresh organic raspberries, locally grown strawberries and some blueberries.

As we left the grocery store we stopped in the wine shop and got their wine of the month - a lovely Australian Shiraz. Oddly enough that’s the only thing that I’ve mentioned that we didn’t have this evening.

Once we got home I quickly marinated the steaks with Montreal Steak sauce and prepared the corn, salad and fruit for our “strawberry” shortcake.

Chris grilled the steaks on the BBQ to perfection and as I said the meal was delicious. Steak, corn on the cob, a nice salad and a light dessert of fruit over a small piece of angel food cake. Yum.

At about 2:45 p.m. this afternoon severe thunderstorms hit my area of Toronto. By 3 p.m. the front lawn and part of the back lawn had several inches of water covering it and naturally our sunroof in our enclosed front porch started to leak because the water was coming down hard off the edge of the roof. That’s the only time it leaks.

There was also lots of hail. Not as big as last weeks grape to golf ball sized hail, but plenty of small pea to grape sized balls of hail.

It’s still pouring! Oh and there’s lots of thunder and lightening too. I’m not sure how much rain has come down or how much we’re expecting but there’s a lot of it.

I was reading the Weather Networks severe weather report a few minutes ago and apparently there’s been funnel clouds spotted over Toronto and nearby areas. Great …

I did take pictures of the hail and the down pour but since I’m running the laptop on it’s battery to protect it from any power surges and I don’t want to transfer the photos from the camera right now. I will post the shots later if they turned out decent.

I hope that most of you aren’t getting the kind of weather we’re having here … it’s been a freaky week of storms. Time for it to warm up and be more summer like I think.

Perhaps it was Father’s day that made me think of my roots. Both my parents have been gone for a few years and while I’m beginning to get used to that fact, special days like Mother’s Day and Father’s day still make me a little sad.

Anyway … what I thought about earlier today was growing up near the Experimental Farm and how great it would be if Chris and I were still going back to Ottawa regularly. Why? Well … I had this inkling that my puppy would just love to see the cows, calves, pigs and the big horses pulling wagons or fitted with their ornate saddles. When I was young I’d go to the Experimental Farm, which was basically a real farm in the middle of the city, quite often and I’d pet the calves in their stalls or go to see the cows in the fields. It was a fun thing to do as a kid.

When I think about it I know remember that a lot of people walked their dogs in the area. I don’t think they brought their pets into the barns, but certainly they walked them along the Driveway and down the farm roads. Midnight would love a trip to the Experimental Farm. I wonder if I could find a farm open to the public somewhere outside of Toronto?

I wonder if the Experimental Farm is where I got my love of Tulips too? Each May they hold a Tulip festival and thousands and thousands of people come from all over the world to see the fields of tulips.

The Canadian Tulip Festival has grown into the largest Tulip Festival in the world from a gift of International Friendship given six decades ago. In the fall of 1945, Princess Juliana of the Netherlands presented Ottawa with 100,000 tulip bulbs. The gift was given in appreciation of the safe haven that members of Holland’s exiled royal family received during the Second World War in Ottawa and in recognition of the role which Canadian troops played in the liberation of the Netherlands.

The tulips have become an important symbol of international friendship and the beauty of spring. They also have special meaning to people of Canada’s Capital Region. During the war, the Dutch royal family was hosted at Government House in Ottawa. Princess Margriet was born at the Ottawa Civic Hospital; her hospital room declared “Dutch soil” and the flag of the Netherlands flew on Parliament’s Peace Tower.

A few years after the Dutch tulips arrived in 1945, they became a strong attraction. Stunning pictures appeared in newspapers nation wide. More and more events began to centre around the annual bloom of tulips.

Isn’t it interesting how our tulip festival came about and how it’s now grown to the largest tulip festival in the world. Yeah … it’s no wonder I love tulips having grown up less than a mile from the Experimental Farm and the annual tulip festival.

So Chris and I got busy and filled out forms for another form of health benefits through the hospital where my husband works. However, we’ve just found out that that package is only for brand new employees. Funny that he never got the paperwork when he first started working at the hospital eh?

So now Chris and I are trying to decide whether it’s worth paying hundreds of dollars each month for prescription coverage and for other health benefits that we generally do not use often (massage, naturopath, chiropractor etc) or if we’ll just pay for my meds out of pocket. The first thing I’ve got to do is figure out how much my meds really cost us each month. While we’re trying to decide what to do - and paying out of pocket while we’re deciding, I think I’ll also look into some cheap life insurance. We lost some life insurance coverage when I lost my benefits package too. Groan.

Anyone know of some relatively inexpensive health insurance packages in Canada?

About 15 minutes ago we noticed that there was quite a bit of lightening outside. Unfortunately that’s when our Lab pup decided to ring the bell we have on our door to let us know she had to go outside to pee.

Since the storm was just starting I took her out, but it was kind of frightening. There was constant lightening and the thunder was only a few seconds apart which meant the storm was right above us.

Chris came outside too because we had a barbecue earlier in the evening and he had to close up the bbq.

Of course Midnight dawdled and we all ended up being soaked. She didn’t seem frightened of the brightly light sky or the thunder though - that’s a good thing.

Now that we’re inside the lightening and thunder is even worse. Midnights a little bit nervous now but we have the TV on and that’s dampening the sound of the storm a bit. As luck would have it she wants to go back outside. I’m not sure if she really has to relieve herself or if she just wants to see what’s going on outside - either way, we aren’t going back out there until the storm settles.

I just checked theweathernetwork.com and we’re under sever thunderstorm watches and tornadoes are even possible to the east of us.

I wouldn’t be surprised if we lose power! If we do I hope it’s not out for too long.

I just knew I should have taken pictures earlier today of all my roses that are blooming in my garden. I bet they’ll be destroyed by this storm!

Wish us luck!

As things go our our Saturday night plans fell through. We were supposed to go over to a friends house for a barbecue, party and perhaps even some early fireworks. Unfortunately our friends mother happened to call him on Friday and reminded him about the birthday invitations that they had on Saturday night. I guess it’s his great aunts birthday and the whole family is getting together for a big shindig.

That’s ok. Chris and I were busy enough today! We’re going to have a busy weekend so we got some gardening work done earlier today. I’m sure we won’t have time to do any gardening on Sunday or Monday! Tomorrow we’re going to a brunch at a another friends and then there’s fireworks on Sunday and Monday night.

I believe next weekend is the Memorial Day long weekend in the US. Do you have big plans for that weekend? And how about my Canadian friends - are you as busy as I am seeing family and friends this weekend?