I’m sure some of my American friends are watching the Democratic Convention, even some of my Canadian friends too since it’s broadcast here as well … but I hope you’re taping the premiere!

We are. We’ll watch the show in a little while once we’re both done blogging and answering all of the email that’s piled up in our inboxes. Oh and after I’ve paid the bills! We have a big car insurance payment to make by the 30th of the month. God I hate bills … well, paying them!

Chris and I didn’t really watch the first season of Prison Break, but when the writers strike started last year and all there was on TV were reruns we began watching Prison Break since it was a show that we hadn’t seen before and we both got hooked.

I must admit that I’m looking forward to next week. A number of shows that we like to watch are starting up again on September 1st and 2nd and others will be starting a little later in the month. I’m happy to see that many of my favorite shows are starting up earlier than normal. Maybe it will be a nice long TV season considering last years was so short thanks to that writers strike.

Are you a fan of Prison Break? What shows are you looking forward to seeing when they start up again next month?

Oops! Uhm … as I said above I was taping the show and hadn’t started watching it. If I had … well .. I would have realized it was the two hour season finale from last season, not the premiere. (((Blush))) The season premiere is September 1st (I believe). Sorry if I had anyone madly searching the channels for the premiere!

I say apparently because when I first spoke with the breeder on the phone she told me the puppies were born on September 7th, 2007, but a few days later when we drove out of the city to the farm and picked her out of the 12 to 14 puppies that were playing in the pen of a huge barn she gave me papers that said Midnight was born August 26th. Then … about two months later we finally received her official Canadian Kennel Club papers (since she was registered as a purebred Labrador Retriever) the papers said August 25th.

See why we’re confused? I think something fishy was going on at that farm. The parents we met were both yellow labs yet the majority of the puppies were black females. I know it’s possible for two yellow labs to have black pups, but with all the confusion about the date of birth we feel that the breeder probably had two or three litters on the go. Plus, as it turns out we got a very sick puppy! We discovered on the first full day that she was with us (November 24th) that she had a gastro infection, a heavy infestation of round worms and later she also developed an ear infection and an eye infection.

Here she is on her second day with us, November 25th, 2007, when she was just 13 weeks old:

I can hardly believe she was ever that small - and oh so cute! She looks like a toy!

I guess Midnight lucked out, because we treat her well. Took her to the vet on the first day she was here when we realized something was wrong and she’s fed dog food with only natural organic ingredients. She’s got it made!

So … what do you get a dog on it’s first birthday?

She has tons of toys and tasty treats … We were thinking that we’d have BBQ’d steak for dinner and give her a portion as a special treat. We have given her grilled steak and chicken before as well as plain veggies, but we don’t give her these kind of foods too often. Hopefully this doesn’t cause more gas - she’s still got that problem, I think it’s her hormones since she’s in heat right now.

I think Midnight started celebrating her birthday early …

We had her out in the garden on Saturday and she loved being able to roam around the yard while we sat at the patio table. She also enjoyed rolling in the grass!

Oh and this was Midnight on November 25th at 13 weeks during her first visit to the backyard. As you can see she’s exploring the garden. I think she found a small green pepper that had fallen off the dying plant (of course we took it away from her).

You’ve come a long way Midnight! Now if we can just teach her to stay off the home theater seating with her bones everything will be great!

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Yesterday afternoon and well into the evening I spent some time outside in the garden. It was a beautiful day so Chris encouraged me to bring out the laptop (since I was trying to make a few posts on my sites!). We also brought our dog outside with us to enjoy the garden.

It didn’t take me long to get out the camera. I hadn’t taken any photos of what’s been blooming in the garden fora while. As I was taking pictures I came across this big Bumble Bee nestled within some Phlox blooms. It was just taking it’s time collecting pollen so I was able to take several pictures of it.

There were quite a few bumble bees buzzing around the garden, visiting all of the flowers that were in bloom. Each year it seems we have quite a few bees, butterflies and moths fluttering around all the plants. There’s usually some wasps as well, but I try to stay clear of them!

I’m actually allergic to bee stings, but (crossing my fingers) I haven’t been stung since I was a teen! Hopefully my luck holds out.

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!

This weeks photohunt theme is Wrinkled and I love nothing more than the wrinkles that appear when my Lab Puppy lifts her ears.

See how the skin at the top of her head is wrinkled in this photo? I took this while we spent some time in the garden earlier today. I think Midnight was trying to stalk a bug or something. It certainly looks like she’s watching something intently doesn’t it?

Yes I could have gone on my own or perhaps taken a bus with my sister, but it was just too far to travel with my health being as poor as it is these days.

So earlier today I got a call from my cousin - my aunts niece. Her mother was my aunts sister and both of these ladies happened to have married my fathers brothers so there’s a very tight connection between those two families.

Anyway .. I digress. My cousin is still very torn up about the death of my aunt. She was present when my aunt died and she proceeded to tell me just about every detail. This being only eight days from the 5 year anniversary of my mothers death (Aug 28th) made hearing details that were reminiscent of what I experienced with my mother made me really sad.

It also made me angry. This was the cousin that told me so many times how close she was to my mother, yet in the three months that my mother was in the hospital dying she could bear to bring herself to visit her because it would just be too hard. Now she’s wallowing in her sorrow and feeling traumatized over what she witnessed and experienced with my aunt.

I’m angry at her for deserting my mom and I guess deserting my brothers, sister and myself yet calling today and discussing stuff that she had to have known would make me think of my own mother and everything that I experienced five years ago.

Chris and I were the only ones able to be with my mom when she died and I’ll never forget that experience. Yet it was marred by the fact that I was trying to call my only brother who happened to live in Ottawa to tell him our mother was dying and he said to me “Oh the doctors think that all the time- they’re probably wrong” and, as I sat by my mom’s beside watching her moan and in pain and go through Cheyne Stoke breathing patterns (that awful gasping or lack of breathing for a moment followed by a gasp that makes you think over and over again the the person has just passed), I said to him “I’m a nurse, I’ve been with people when they’ve been dying. Our mom is dying. Leave work and come to the hospital”. He still didn’t believe me and didn’t come until I had to call him back and tell him that she had died.

This whole conversation with my cousin this afternoon not only left me feeling down and depressed all day but it also made me realize that I’m still very angry with my brother. I’m mad at him for what he did when my mom lay dying before me and for several things that happened later. I thought that I had finally let it go, but I guess I haven’t and I think now that I probably never will.

So … I guess I’m having a bad day. Oh and the migraine that I was suffering from a week or so ago seems to be back. Ughh.

The one thing that I did learn today that I didn’t know was that my aunt was a big traveler. I knew that, but I didn’t know that she’d seen every US State! She completed her mission just at the end of May this year when she went on one of those Alaskan cruises with her two sisters (0ne of whom is my other aunt - I guess my only aunt now on my dads side of the family). I’m not sure if she saw all of Canada. I didn’t think to ask, but I suspect that she didn’t see every province and territory.

Have you had a death in the family that because of the actions of others left you with bad feelings that you might not ever be able to forgive or forget?

You know, my cousin made me feel so bad thanks to her bring up memories and feelings that I try to keep buried that I was more depressed than I ever get with my Crohn’s and other complaints that make me feel ill almost every single day. Thanks cousin.

FLASHPOINT is a drama that depicts the emotional journey into the tough, risk-filled lives of a group of cops in the SRU (inspired by Toronto’s Emergency Task Force). It’s a unique unit that rescues hostages, busts gangs, defuses bombs, climbs the sides of buildings and talks down suicidal teens. Members of a highly-skilled tactical team, they’re also trained in negotiating, profiling and getting inside the suspect’s head to diffuse the situation to try and save lives.

If you happened to have seen Thursdays show you’ll remember it was about a teenage girl who was being attacked by a girl gang. Near the end of the show the girl was filled with despair and had decided to commit suicide so she ran to the top of the large mall that she’d been in (the Eaton’s Center, but they called it the Paradise Mall on the show). The only thing is that she really wasn’t at the mall anymore. She was on the building across the street.

See the open scaffolding under the LG sign, on the right of the sign or maybe it was on the far left? That’s where the girl was when she was thinking of jumping. That building is the Gap store across from the Eaton Center at Yonge and Dundas.

Chris and I used to work right in that area. If you know Toronto at all, we worked in the tall building on Dundas Square - a tiny little street between Yonge and Victoria that’s opposite the Eatons Center. We worked and well first met there when we were both jewelers. That’s my husband in the forefront of the picture in the grey shirt with his back to the camera. He’s probably just on the corner of Dundas Square in this picture.

There’s always been lots of television shows and movies filmed in Toronto (I’ve even been in a few! When I first started my jewelery business I supported it by being an extra in commercials, movies and TV shows quite frequently), but seeing scenes shot in areas that I’m very familiar with is kind of cool.

It’s also kind of neat to spot their work arounds, like when they are driving down a highway or street and in the next scene their still driving, but it’s in the opposite direction on the highway or a different street, but the viewers are supposed to think it’s the same direction or same street. If you have movies or shows filmed in your city you might have noticed little things like that too.

Have you had a chance to see Flashpoint yet? I think it’s one of the hot new shows of the summer and I hope that I don’t have to wait until next summer for it to return once this season ends.

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Clematis Jackmanii

I think Clematis Jackmanii is probably one of the most popular Clematis plants. They are hardy, easy to grow and as you can see they produce lovely large purple flowers.

I grow several clematis, but this is my oldest and biggest. I grow it behind my largest rose, William Baffin. Each year I have to untangle it from the rose as it wants to grow on and through it, but I prefer the clematis to grow along the high wooden fence behind the rose. I stretch out it’s vines and it makes a nice leafy background along the top of the fence and when it blooms (two or three times a year) the fence is highlighted by it’s large purple flowers.

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!

This weeks Photohunt theme is colorful and this is the most colorful photo of my city, Toronto, that I’ve ever taken!

I took this photo last year, in early September while on a Toronto dinner boat cruise with my family. We were all gathered together for a week long reunion and this was one of the activities that we’d planned.

The photo is a little blurred because of the boats motion. The water was a little choppy that evening. I’d also only had my Canon SLR EOS 30D camera for a little under a month, not to mention the fact that I don’t take all that many night shots. It’s something I still have to perfect.

I like the way the lights of the CN Tower and the lights along the lakefront are reflected in the water of Lake Ontario.

Seriously, almost every big storm this summer has come with hail.

At around 1:45 pm I noticed that it was getting darker and darker outside. Suspecting that a storm was about to start I quickly got Midnight to eat her lunch (no easy feat since she’s been finicky about her food over the past week (we’re hoping it’s just because she’s in heat)) and then I took her outside to do her business.

Just as she was finishing up .. maybe a few minutes after 2 pm I started hearing things falling on cars, the street, the house behind me … I couldn’t see or feel anything yet - but I could hear it. It was hail.

Midnight and I quickly ran inside the house just as the rain and hail started coming down in earnest.

It rained and hailed heavily for at least 15 or 20 minutes and as you can see I managed to take a few pictures of the active weather.

The hail was approximately the size of M & M’s (it’s the white dots you see on the pavement in the photo above) and it was hitting the watery ground and pavement so hard that it bounced up and caused the water it had hit to splash.

I’m glad that Midnight and I were watching the storm from indoors as I’m sure anyone outside was being pelted by all that hail. I saw one woman jog by (she was dressed to jog - wasn’t just running in the rain!) and several people on bikes. I’m sure they were all trying to get out of the storm as fast as they could.

We have enclosed porches so when it rains and if you happen to be outside on one of the porches or if the doors are open you can really hear the rain as it hits the porch roof. It’s especially loud in the back porch because it’s roof is corrugated plastic (why I don’t know - bought our house that way - yuck). The hail hitting that heavy plastic roof was so loud! It sounded like marbles were falling on the roof!

I’m glad my puppy doesn’t seem to be afraid of rain or thunder storms since we get so many and as I said above because you can really hear the rain in this house!

I took enough photos during the storm that I decide to submit some to theweathernetwork.com for their My Weather section. So I’m sitting here with the weather channel on the TV hoping to see at least one of my photos in their “my weather” segments or on the site itself.

I hope your weather’s been better than ours! If this kind of weather keeps up I’m going to take one of those Vegas vacations that I’ve been threatening to take all year!

Oh .. I almost forgot - During the storm a funnel cloud was spotted in North York (North section of Toronto). It didn’t turn into a tornado, but that’s the closest we’ve been to a Tornado in the city this year that I know of.

I’ve been sitting here glued to the TV since about noon today. I’ve been watching news updates and footage of the massive explosions that rocked Toronto at approximately 3:50 am this morning. The explosions took place at the Sunrise Propane facility in Downsview.

I happened to be awake at the time of the blasts. I heard noises that I thought were either coming from upstairs or from my neighbors - they’d been moving all their packed boxes around to get ready for their contractor until 1 am this morning and definitely started up at 5 am again this morning … but I think the noises I heard were the blasts. I mean, people in Aurora and Niagara on the Lake heard and saw the plume of flames from the erruption and I’m a lot closer to the explosion site than they are so that must be the noises I heard.

Major highways (401 from hwy 400 to Don Valley) are closed in and around the blast area. It’s the biggest road closure this city has ever seen! There are three or four festivals going on in Toronto this weekend (Taste of the Danforth, Beerlicious, and the Chinatown festival) and I’m sure that people going to those festivals as well as trying to travel around the city are being severely affected by the road closures. Subway stations, buses and even one major mall in the area (Yorkdale) were closed down as well.

I even heard that they made an area over the blast site a no fly zone. I’m not sure if that’s still in effect but it was for several hours. I’ll bet this might have even affected people trying to fly in and out of the city between the no fly zone and all the closed major traffic routes.

Approximately 12,000 people in a 1.6 km area near the blast site have been evacuated. This includes my ex-brother-in-law, niece and nephew. I’ve already offered up space in my home to them if they need a place to stay.

Homes and businesses close to the blast site had windows blown out, roofs collapsed, and more than likely there’s structural damage to thousands of buildings. People were knocked right out of their beds.

People witnessed the blast from as far away as Niagara on the Lake (1.5 hours from here) and Aurora (about 50 min drive from here). Some said they thought it was a dirty bomb or nuclear blast. Looking at the footage and photos I can understand why they felt that way as it really looks like a war scene. It reminds me of watching footage of scud missiles hitting targets in Iraq.

This is rated as a 6 alarm fire and the city has gone into emergency response. I’m sure if I was working in the ER today it would be crazy busy! Perhaps not busy due to those injured coming from the blast area, but from ambulances with other ill people being diverted to our hospital.

Surprisingly they aren’t reporting many injuries. News reports say only about 8 people have been taken to local hospitals for minor injuries like cuts and bruises. However one plant worker is missing. It’s believed he was the person who initially saw smoke coming from one of the tanks and called 911. Also, a firefighter was found without vital signs and it’s now been reported that he passed away. I’m not sure what injuries he suffered, perhaps he fell.

My husband also wrote about this massive explosion on his blog. In one post he has a Google map of the area affected by the blast. You might want to take a look at that to get a gist of the size of this! Toronto is the 5th or 6th largest city in North America and between the evacuated areas and major road closures a good portion of our city has been affected.

As I said the blast was from a propane facility. Initially there were evacuating people because they didn’t know if there were toxic chemicals in the air. I believe they now think that any toxic chemicals have burnt off and since propane dispels quickly they don’t think the air is toxic, but people are not allowed to return to their homes and businesses because they are still fighting the fires (trying to prevent a huge tanker full of liquid propane from exploding) and because buildings close to the blast might have major structural damage.

My heart goes out to all of those affected and or displaced by the explosion. If there’s anything I can do please let me know.

The photos that I used in this post were borrowed from the My News section of CTV.ca. You can visit that section of the news site to see more photos and videos sent in my area residents who witnessed the blasts.