The Neighborhood

A nice relaxing long weekend

September 2, 2008 by Tricia

Doesn’t Labour Day weekend being over make you feel as if summer has ended? After visiting several blogs earlier today I get the feeling that a lot of people seem to begin to think of autumn and winter once the last long weekend of summer is over.

I’d like to say that we had a busy weekend, but we really didn’t. It was Chris’ last weekend of his two week holiday and now he’s returned to work. So we did some of the things that he wanted to do, like going to this really divvy bar called “The Wally” that he’s always wanted to go to ever since we moved into the area. We’ve been in this neighborhood for 7 years now so I guess it was about time that we went to the Wally.

We went to the bar yesterday afternoon and sat on the patio. It has an enclosed patio that you can only access by walking through the dark and dingy bar so we couldn’t bring our dog Midnight. Chris is dying to find bars and restaurants with patios that are dog friendly- of course Midnight needs to settle down a bit more if she wants to come out with us regularly. We each had a beer (ok Chris had two) and ordered French Fries and Onion Rings. The servings were huge! If we’d known how big our little snack was going to be we’d only have ordered one or the other.

The Wally has lots of good reviews for it’s food and atmosphere and I must admit the prices were very good and the snacks tasty. Our total bill for three beer and two very large snacks came to just over $16. Not bad at all.

If you’re dieting or taking Fentraphen it’s probably not the place to go as I doubt that they have any low calorie food items, but it was a nice thing to do on a beautiful summer afternoon.

We didn’t do much on Sunday, but on Saturday we took Midnight to a place called “Sunnybrook Farm” which is really part of a huge interconnecting park network here in Toronto. Chris wanted to see how Midnight would react when she saw the horses that they keep at the stables there seeing as her first few months of life she lived in a pen in a large barn where horse were kept.

There were a lot of flies bothering the horses, this one was rolling in the sand to try to get rid of the flies.

I think she liked seeing the horses. At first she tried to get under the fence, but when we wouldn’t let her she just sat and watched as they milled around their coral. After that we went for a long hike on some trails and through the forest. Chris took Midnight into a little creek twice on our journey so both he and the dog got to cool off a bit while I stayed on the creek bank taking photos.

After our outdoor adventure Chris had wanted to go for a beer on a patio with the dog, but we couldn’t find any dog friendly patios to visit so when we got home we all went outside into the backyard and Midnight played in the yard while Chris and I had a drink at the patio table.

At one point Chris picked up Midnight (not an easy feat as she probably weighs about 70lb now) and put her on one of our Patio chairs:

She has that “Help me, I don’t really like being up so high” kind of look on her face, doesn’t she?

If you lie in Canada or the US you had a long Labor day weekend too – what did you do?

What is with the weather?

August 15, 2008 by Tricia

Ok I knew we were supposed to have storms on and off all day, but what’s with the hail?

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.

Looks like a storms a’comin’

August 2, 2008 by Tricia

Grab the Photo Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Clouds

I took this photo at about 7:30 this evening. The clouds were low, dark and ominous.

We had some rain earlier in the day and the weather channel had said we were supposed to get thunder storms but so far there’s been no storm. Just the dark dark clouds.

We’ve had a very wet summer here in Toronto. I’m not sure how much rain we had, but it was something like 292 mm or more and that total broke all past records by a long shot! It seems like August might be damp as well.

Watching my neighbors become thieves!

July 28, 2008 by Tricia

It amazes me how the lure of something sweet has made so many people in my neighborhood become thieves lately.

Our neighbor across the street has a peach tree.

I remember the first year we moved into our house (June 2001) I could see orange blossoms and then what appeared to be some kind of fruit in the tree. I never did investigate what it was as we were so busy renovating that year that I barely had time to look at my own yard let alone the neighbors. However I did see people walking along the street stopping at the house and reefing on the tree branches to pull off what I thought at the time were pretty flowers.

I think growing Peaches is a little iffy in this area. For most of this decade winters here in Toronto have been fairly cold with little snow. I’ll bet that’s not that great for a lot of fruit producing trees as they likely get a lot of winter damage.

You see, I don’t think my neighbors tree has produced any fruit since that summer of 2001. I know I watched for the tree to bloom the following year or two and I didn’t see anything special, nor did I see people in the neighborhood paying particular attention to that neighbors yard.

This past winter we had a ton of snow. I guess the neighbors peach tree liked it because it’s just covered in fruit this year. So much so that there’s peaches all over the sidewalk and half the street in front of the house!

One reason why there are so many peaches on the ground is because at least 20 people a day seem to be stopping off at the house, walking into the neighbors yard and yanking on the branches of the tree.

Most of the people doing this will knock down a number of peaches yet they’ll only take one or two peaches leaving the rest to rot on the ground.

I have no idea if our neighbors mind these peach stealing intrusions, but considering how rough some of the people are on the tree I think I’d mind if it that tree was in my yard. Plus they have to clean up the mess that the thieving neighbors left behind.

The raccoons are having a great time in the peach tree too. I have to be careful each night when I bring my puppy outside to do her business as the last few days I’ve seen several raccoons prowling around.

Of course when I’ve watched they eventually head over to that peach tree, climb up and then start throwing peaches down onto the neighbors recycling bin. Then the raccoon will climb down and go over to where it’s peaches landed and eat them right by the neighbors back door under their security light. Smart eh? At least the raccoons hand pick their fruit and then eat what they took off the tree unlike their human counterparts!

If you had a neighbor with a fruit tree and you wanted some of the fruit would you just help yourself when the neighbor didn’t seem to be around or would you wait and ask permission to take some of the fruit?

Car flipped over just down the street

July 23, 2008 by Tricia

I was outside with my puppy, Midnight, at about 4 pm trying to get her to do her business. As usual she was dawdling around smelling everything and trying to eat the grass and any plants that were nearby …. Sigh ….

Just after she’d finally done her thing and we were about to go back inside the house I heard a loud bang and I knew right away that someone had gotten into a car accident just down the street.

I looked down the street towards where I’d heard the sound and about three blocks down – just far enough that I couldn’t fully make out the details with my bad eyes – I could see a shiny silver flash and then I saw that a car had flipped over in the middle of the street. I guess the car was still flipping over as I looked!

Traffic kept going by me and at first I couldn’t tell that they were turning at the intersection just before where the accident had taken place, so for a few minutes I thought I’d been mistaken. Of course by then there was so much traffic going by, considering that rush hour had begun, that I couldn’t tell if there really was a car flipped over anymore or not. All I could see what the line up of vehicles.

So I stood there with Midnight peering down the street. Then I started hearing police, ambulance and fire sirens and figured that yes indeed I was right … a car had flipped over.

So I went inside to put on better shoes (I’d been wearing slippers!) and got the keys so I could lock up the house. I would have brought my camera with me but I decided to take the dog and since I didn’t put her harness on she’d be a handful (even with her harness she’s a handful). Then I went back outside and started to walk down the street with Midnight towards the accident. Actually considering I was with Midnight is was more like I was dragged down the street …

When I got to the scene of the accident some residents that lived nearby were standing around watching. I still don’t know exactly how the accident happened, but a black car must have been turning onto the main street from a side street and he either went too fast to make his turn before an oncoming car or he was hit by an oncoming car. His car then hit a silver car that was parked on the street and flipped right over into the middle of the street.

So there were three vehicles involved – two with drivers/passengers and luckily one that was empty at the time of the accident.

It didn’t look like anyone was seriously hurt, although the EMS were there and I’m assuming they would take the drivers to the hospital that’s only two blocks further down the street from where the accident took place. I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended with whiplash.

I was hoping that I’d see some EMS workers or Firemen that I knew. I know quite a few of them being an ER nurse. Unfortunately I didn’t recognize any of the guys to talk to, still I’m pretty sure that no one was seriously hurt. It’s certainly lucky for them if they weren’t hurt.

Frankly when I got down there I was expecting to see someone still stuck in a car, but both drivers were out.

My curiosity sated I let Midnight drag me back down the street towards home. Walking her, especially with a lot of people around, is certainly a work out. i had to keep her on a short leash most of the time so she wouldn’t jump on everyone we passed. So she was hot, panting and thirsty by the time we got back in the house and I was hot and sweaty. You wouldn’t think that short walk would do me in like that, but you haven’t met Midnight! 😉

Gee there’s so many things happening around here lately … I wonder what will happen tomorrow?

A nice relaxing long weekend

What is with the weather?

Watching my neighbors become thieves!

Car flipped over just down the street

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