Tricia's Musings

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



You are here: Home / Archives for Recreation

Craving for something sweet

by

I have a craving for something sweet. Strawberries. Strawberries dipped in chocolate. Doesn’t that sound absolutely delicious!

If I had all of the ingredients I’d make my own at home in my fondue pot, but for some reason it seems that no matter what kind of chocolate I buy it never hardens correctly so I might as well buy chocolate covered strawberries from a store. They’re much better that way. In fact, I even came across Sharis deals and discount codes so that we can all get some chocolate covered strawberries if we want some. Doesn’t that sound good?

Holiday season is definitely here

by

You can always tell which neighbors are heading out of town as soon as the kids are our of school, can’t you?

Most lower schools let out here in Toronto on Friday and I wasn’t surprised to see several people packing up their cars with camping gear and even a few big trailers in the neighborhood. Obviously some people are planning some big trips – maybe cross country trips. Hopefully they bought motorhome insurance before they left.

My husband is on holiday right now too, but we aren’t going anywhere this summer. We’re just sticking around home. There’s plenty to do in the city. There’s the jazz festival down town right now, and it’s Pride week if we want to see what’s happening with that, it’s certainly fun to watch the parade!

Are you going on holiday this summer? What are you going to do?





Waiting for decent sunny weather to arrive

by

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

by

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!

My garden has lots of new Spring growth

by

I’m so happy that Spring is truly here after the long cold winter that we had here in Toronto. We had some rain this weekend and even some Thunderstorms on Sunday morning but once things started clearing up it warmed up outside and my husband and I took advantage of the good weather to get some much needed yard work done.

I had actually been out on Friday afternoon because I had a doctors appointment downtown and by the time I got back home it was quite nice outside so I brought the dog out to the front yard and I started cleaning up the front garden beds. Just taking the dead maple leaves off the garden that we’d put on the garden beds in the fall to protect the plants made such a difference and it was nice to discover how many plants were already growing beneath the leaves. By the time my husband came home from work on Friday I had the whole front yard done and he was surprised.

I usually don’t like working in the front yard by myself all that much because so many neighbors stop to talk. It’s not that I don’t like talking to them, it’s just that when I’m busy working on something, talking tends to slow me down and since I’m usually not feeling all that well I’m working outside on limited time anyway … so they eat up the time I can work on what I’m doing. Plus … being a nurse … I always end up having some strange conversations with people. I guess everyone wants health advice. Someone always asks me about a pain or health problem they’re having when they catch me outside and I’ve even been asking about things like what’s the best progesterone cream to use LOL. Hey … I answer what I can and advise them to see their doctor for the rest.

When the weather was clear enough my husband and I worked on tidying up the backyard garden beds and we managed to get all of the flower beds cleared of dead leaves too. Everything looks great now. I can’t believe how much green was hiding under all the dead leaves! There are so many plants coming up! Everything from Snowdrops to Lilies, to Monkshood, strawberry plants, Daffodil, Hyacinth, Tulip and Iris leaves are all coming up too. Most of my Crocuses, at least in the backyard, are blooming and soon I’ll have quite a variety of other spring flowers blooming. I just love spring.

Is your garden or yard coming back to life after the long cold winter?

Meta

Search this site

Tags

blog blogs camera Canada Chris computer crohns dinner dog Family flower flowers Food friends funny garden Gardening Green Thumb Sunday Health and Fitness Health Fitness and Beauty holiday home Home and Lifestyle house husband IBD Inflammatory bowel disease Internet Music neighbors pain photo photos plants puppy Shopping sick sleep spring Toronto TV Video visit website Wordless Wednesday