Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Looks like the weather is getting better

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The weather is getting nicer. Finally! April was cool here in Toronto. That probably wouldn’t have been that bad, but when April turns out to be cooler than March and has snow when March didn’t .. well .. I’m happy that May has arrived. So are my plants! My garden is looking lovely.

The other day is was nice enough out that I spent some time working in my front yard. I was weeding the garden beds and fixing up the look of the front boulevard. I have a planted boulevard, but crab grass was starting to grow in the flower beds there so I spent a lot of time pulling it out. Hopefully it doesn’t grow back.

Everyone was enjoying the nice day when I was working in the garden. Lots of neighbors were outside either working on their own yards – cutting the grass etc, or out walking around. I said hello to a lot of people as I worked on my garden. One of the people that passed me was wearing one of those funny t shirts that made me laugh out loud .. but I can’t repeat what it said on here .. it was bad! I just about fell over into a bush when I saw it!

My front yard looks great. Now all I have to do is work on the back yard! The back yard isn’t that big, but compared to my front yard it’s a lot bigger – it will take longer to tidy up. Perhaps this weekend if the weather is nice. How is your yard and garden?

What an amazing Spring

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I can’t believe how well my garden is doing so far this year. If I didn’t know that it was the 22nd of April I’d swear that, just looking at my garden, that it was nearing the end of May. My garden is just that far ahead of itself.

Glory of the snow blossomsOf course it’s all because we had one of the warmest winters we’ve ever had this past winter. Barely any snow, much warmer than average temperatures. Hey I was was wearing shorts some days in March. I even watered the garden a few times in March. I’ve never ever done that before. I mean, I live in Toronto – part of the Great White North!

In the past I could rely on my raised garden beds to put my garden ahead of others by a week or two because my garden beds, being raised, would warm up a little earlier than ground level gardens, but I didn’t need that advantage this year.

Oddly enough March was warmer than April has been so far. In fact I hear that we might even get some snow tomorrow. Imagine that. It was so warm for a couple of weeks in March that I could wear shorts and people were wondering if we skipped to summer and now here we are expecting snow. Well I did say I live in the Great White North. A place where you learn to expect the unexpected. I should not be surprised!

O’ Canada Indeed!

Canadian Flag

 





What a gorgeous day

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It was absolutely gorgeous today. Here it is only March 22nd and it reached 26 Celcius today and with humidity felt like 30 Celcius (86 F). Considering that I’m in Toronto, Canada and it’s usually only about 4 Celsius at this time that’s pretty remarkable.

What’s even more remarkable is that it’s been pretty warm for over a week and well, all of this month has been well over normal temperatures, in fact the whole winter has been a warm winter. I think they said on the news that it’s the second warmest winter on record for this area.

My garden has all kinds of plants coming up and even blooming. My crocuses came up last week. I think it was the 14th when they first appeared and now they’re pretty much done. The heat did them in. My hellebores are blooming as are my Glories of the snow and Snow Drops. It won’t be long before my tulips and Daffodils and Hyacinths are blooming too, most of their leaves are already almost a foot high and I’m sure I’ll see flower buds soon. Half my roses have tiny leaves and my two honeysuckles vines are already leafed out as well. Several of my Clematis vines have leaves already too.

I swear my garden doesn’t normally have this much grown until the end of April most years!

I actually went out and watered my lawn and garden this afternoon!

Now if only I had a wooden swing to sit on and enjoy the lovely day it would have been perfect.

Waiting for decent sunny weather to arrive

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The weather here in Toronto has been so crazy this spring. It’s been rainy and damp and then it will start to get sunny and warm up and then just as you start to think that maybe the weather is beginning to finally get nice a huge wind storm will come up and then the rain and cool weather will return for a week or so.

Sigh … I give up!

I tired of this weather and I can’t wait for it to warm up and for the sun to stick around. My plants on the other hand seems to love this weather. They’re getting enough water with all the rain and I guess the cooler temps is just right for my Spring plants. It’s like my garden was reading anabolic halo reviews or something because every time I look out my window at my roses they get bigger and bigger!

The biggest rose plants are along the fence that is going to be replaced next week by our neighbors. See the last post for the back story on that … yeah I still don’t even know how high the new fence is going to be … but I do know it’s going to be very similar to the fence one of our neighbors put up across the street, according to a conversation my husband had with our next door neighbors a few days ago so I guess I can put up with how it will look … but if they’re going to do it they’d better do it soon because my BIGGEST rose is on that fence – literally ON that fence, it’s called William Baffin and it’s a thorny monster and every single day it gets bigger and more brutish .. it’s going to be terrible to put up a fence around it next week!

Later today I’m going to go and knock on our neighbors door and ask some questions about the fence that they are so generously paying to put in or replace. On one hand I’m appreciative that they are paying for the new fence because we cannot afford to pay for a new fence between our houses at this time … and the current fence is truly falling apart – we’ve been repairing from our side for three years now. But on the other hand I’m simmering with pent up anger that they haven’t had the decency to come and do a face to face meeting between my husband and I to tell us exactly what kind of fence they’d like to put in and to get our input. It is after all on our shared property line so we do have a say in it’s height and design.

I don’t think they mean to be inconsiderate, they probably think they’re being helpful and that they’re doing us a favor and they’re partly right in that the old fence will likely fall down by next year if it’s not replaced … but I’d like some say in a fence that I’m going to have to look at daily. OF the four of us (my husband and the other couple) I’m probably the one who will look at the fence the most since I spend the most time in the backyard working in the garden or just plain looking out the window at my garden and thus the fence … so it’s very important to me. Whereas for the neighbors I think it’s just a fence.

Anyway .. back to the weather. Are you starting to get good weather in your area or are you longing for solid sunny weather in your area too?

It seems we’re getting a new fence – free

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Well … it seems sometime in the next week or so we’re going to be getting a new fence. Well, to be more clear – we’re going to be getting part of a new fence.

What’s really happening is that our neighbors, the ones in the house that’s attached to ours (semi-detached house) are getting a new fence and they are replacing the part of the fence that we share between our houses. They’re paying for it and uhm …. we don’t know exactly what kind of fence they are putting in. Can you tell I’m a little uncomfortable with that????

Uh huh … I think we need to have a talk with our neighbors. My husband did talk to them about our noise problems last weekend and their daughter has been a lot quieter this past week. Thankfully! Unfortunately … when he was talking to them about the noise – last Sunday after I fell down the stairs due to exhaustion thanks to a week of no sleep (yes I’m severely bruised!) he never did get around to asking them about the fence design. I guess if worse comes to worse we can always just say no as the fence people are trying to put the fence in. That wouldn’t be that nice though.

I’m not super concerned about the design. I think that my neighbors really like the fence that another neighbor had put in last year and if I’m right I think they’ll get something similar and if so that will be perfectly fine with us as well.

The only thing that bothered me about the whole thing is the fact that they aren’t telling us much and well we have our roses along that fence and when I mentioned my concerns about them getting damaged the woman actually had the gall to say “Which ones can you live without?” Uhm … you just don’t ask a gardener that kind of question … especially when the roses in question are pretty much irreplaceable! Wow! I’ll be pretty upset if they kill my roses. The good news is that because of the trees in both yards they can’t dig new holes for the fences so they have to use the existing holes so that means my rose roots likely won’t get damaged.

They have one of those steel garages right up against the end of the fence and it borders on the end of our yard … it’s starting to fall down .. I think it might fall down when the fence comes down … that might be interesting. LOL

Anyway, I’ll take some pictures and let you guys know how things progress with the fence dilemma. I’m sure I’ll have a story to tell!

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