Garden Buddies

This time around we have these two lovely garden buddies for feature presentation. Of course my latest sunflower plants have yet to get to maturity so in case you guessed, these are from two years ago. Thought the pics of my sunflower and its buddy the pea plant looked pretty cool. The lighting that day was really dramatic so I took several pics at different angles. Plus it kind of makes you feel like a little busy bee from that close up view. Over all I was inspired by the folk tale of "the three sisters". So, every year I plant my version in my share of the garden pots. In the pots I first plant a sunflower seed, then I put in a small amount of carrot and dill weed. Evenly distributing them in the pot so that the carrots will grow big and not piddly. Last but not least I plant a couple of pea seeds when the sunflower is at least 5 inches tall or maybe taller, but sometimes only one comes out. By the end of the year, in Sept or Oct I'll have these lovely colourful and sweet crunchy carrots to enjoy and share not featured here. YUM!😋

 

 

 

Got geese?

Its almost spring! Hooray! OK its a few weeks from now but who cares! 
Anyways here's some more spring related pics of a couple of geese perusing the neighborhood in I think 2018. Not exactly top notch imagery but still fun. They remind me of lawn ornaments only they fertilize people front lawns. 😜😁 These were taken in my neighbourhood and they just went from house to house eating the finest lawn grass. They seem well mannered and adjusted. There were a few times where they seem to beg the neighbours across the street for food. I think it was my dad's fault. He did hand feed them a few times. 

Welcome to the mushroom forest.

Found this interesting little forest of mushrooms last season growing all around a former beloved old peach tree we had to cut down a few years ago. As always, a little behind on things such as this "show and tell" thing. 
Oh well, enjoy. 😊

Sorry the quality couldn't be any better but I can only do so much with this old digital camera.
 

A house all decked out

A lovely pic of a decorated front lawn in all kinds of Christmas related characters. This guy sure has some excellent airbrushing skills. Not to mention a great eye to produce these wooden cut outs. Could have looked much nicer in Christmas snow but even without, its a really great set up.
Oh and bonus for once I took this shot most recent as in not from 2 years ago. 😜
Their house is very pretty too. 😊

 The conductor guy from The polar express. 🔺

  Scrooge 🔺

 Baby Jesus and family with the Polar express train in the background.  🔺

Winnie the Pooh and friends.  🔺

Little big flood.

While the other parts of the world were having their own natural disasters including north America mainly with those big and nasty hurricanes and parts of Canada with those fires, we had our own little disaster here too a few weeks ago. So I just had to post this so yeah for once this is fairly new stuff. 
Lately for the past few years we've been having lots of things such as floods here. I forgot about the small one we had last year. I remember that day we went to a mall. Not the one that flooded but another one. I had purchased a black stylish hat that day. This year however we got one of those 100 year old floods. It flooded our basement for a second time since our family has lived in this house. The last time was only a few years ago. I think in 2010 was the last time. I suppose we're now going to have these more often now. Sign of the times I guess. 
So anyhow most of the summer we struggled to get some rain so it ended up fairly dry around here. When we did finally get some substantial rain, boy it really rained. And rained and rained until our naighbourhood began to resemble a system of rivers and ponds. After awhile it started to seep in though a wall in the fruit cellar. Later I noticed that when I checked on our sump pump, it was on non stop and I started to get that panicky feeling of "here we go again". Then it started to bubble up through the drain in the floor and that's when I started to run around like a chicken with its head cut off. I'm sure, though out the city this was happening people were probably feeling the same way. I think we were pretty lucky for not having a downstairs toilet which would have probably resulted in sewage in the basement as well. None the less I got as many of our things off the floor as fast as I could on to higher ground while my dad tried to go out to look for tubing for our extra pump. After doing all that I could downstairs, I went outside to the porch and took a few pics of the craziness.  (see pics below post)After taking a few pics a neighbour came over with urgency and asked for assistance. There were many cars getting trapped in the rising water that day and that guy's, van was no exception. So along with a few of the guys and me being the only woman we pushed the van up I guess his driveway to safety. So after a bit of socializing with the neighbours I walked back home. Found out my dad came back home without success. The stores were all sold out of hoses. There was only one way out of this. Compromising. My dad had to Macgyver the feed hose that we used in the fish pond for air and water circulation and use that for our extra pump. It was a bit of a mess considering that thing was all full of long strands of green alga and who knows what else but we had no choice. We hooked up the thing, fed it out one of the closest windows to the main sump pump and pumped away. The water finally started to let up around 7pm in our house and the neighbourhood as well. At its peek we had about 3 to 4 inches of rain water in the basement. It was a long day. Tomorrows day would be just as tedious. Removing wet rugs, placing them outside and the arduous task of re-mopping the floor. I had already done that weeks ago and was not happy about this. We were pretty lucky (or unlucky depending on your perspective)over all compared to some of our other neighbours. They had to redo some parts of their soaked basement and its pretty uncertain if insurance would have covered it fairly. (We have pretty lousy insurance coverage here in our humble and normally boring city.) The next day it was pretty evident how the flood impacted everyone in the city with the gargantuan mounds of trash piled high at the end of almost every driveway from flooded basements. To this day, its sill being collected by our diverted garbage and recycling trucks plus extra trucks from Toronto. They finally got to our street just yesterday although they still have the rest of the city to get to. Not easy when only about 10 houses can be cleared of debris at a time before they have to dump the load at some temporary depot. Ironically at our only and last GM plant which closed years ago and was torn down recently. So much for motor city, now rat city, garbage city and a city loaded with lots of sad and grumpy people. No wonder they all want to desperately smoke pot. 
Yup sign of the times.  😒

A view of our flooded park, parking lot and street from my porch. ⇱

 A view of our flooded park, parking lot and street corner from my porch and the corner of our front lawn.
Some guy decided to take a dip in one of the large and apparently deep ponds that formed in the corner of the park. I wonder if he realized that there was a sewer grate there.  ⇱

Our front sidewalk that leads from our porch. You can see the river that was our street. You can see a wake from a passing van. Many people didn't care that they were speeding and that would cause more water to go in peoples houses. ⇱

I liked how the water looked on our trees. Like sparkling diamonds. ⇱

A view from our dining room of the park and street. ⇱

A view from our dining room of the park and street. Another van goes whooshing by. ⇱

A view from my bedroom window. You can see a few cars stuck in the water at the far right. The same spot where me and some guys pushed a van up a drive way. The water was about up to my knees. A few feet worth. ⇱

Figment

Its pretty amazing how such a scrawny little tree in a pot can produce such a giant fruit. In this case a fig. I would trim the poor little neglected tree if I could but its my dads plant and well you know? He still see me as a small child. Sigh.... And yet when I was a little kid growing up playing outside on a lonely hot summers day by my self and looking for something to do, he let me play with things like blow torches and an ax on occasion. Go fig. Makes your head shake sometimes.

As for the fig tree, I wonder if, although scrawny, small and in a pot, my doves might have contributed in some way during the winter in the garage? They were in and out of the pots and you know doves they always like to leave a little gift where ever they go. Who knows......

Just in time magnolia blossoms

And we went backwards with spring, in terms of weather but I guess every once in awhile a year has these disappointing below normal temps. Oh yes you have noticed there are some on time perfectly appropriate pics for the season. For once I'm not showing leftovers. ;)

I shot some nice white magnolia blossoms before the wind totally knocked them over for another season, for reference of course. I already have a bunch of lovely shots of tree fulls of them I made a few years ago. Despite the fact I shot those on a cloudy day, the pics still really look impressive.

Sometimes taking pics on a sunny days is overrated any how. 

Sorry for showing my hands but it was a windy day after all.

Looking in to the mirror of Bob’s Burgers

I’ve been watching Bob’s Burgers.  Cool show. Its funny but not in a raunchy way like Family Guy (hate those family of cartoon shows) but it does contain the occasional toilet jokes which I don‘t mind but again I find funny.  I find it really reminds me of my childhood and my childhood best friends and neighbors. We use to do some of those crazy things as kids like fool around with the tape recorder and we’d take turns being obnoxious with their Casio keyboard. You know the one where you can record a noise of your making and make a musical instrument out of it. We had hours of fun with that thing. But no, no one was actually in the burger business or any relation like that. All of our fathers were in the auto industry. My father had the machine fixing trade while my neighbor’s father was working in the office. Two different worlds but at the same time the same world.  But there is a character in that show I really can relate to. It’s the character Tina. She looked a lot like me when I was 7to8 years of age although my hair was more light brown at the time. It use to be a blond in kindergarten. I think another best friend at the time was more closer in the looks department to the character Tina.  She had dark almost black hair. But we both had the ball point head hair or helmet hair. But none the less I remembered this pic I have of me at 7-8 years age. It was taken in the late spring time I think. I was wearing a red-ish dress but it looked like a skirt and a red shirt. Anyways it had a flower on it too. I also had with me my favorite school bag. It had this kangaroo on it with a chicken peaking out the pouch.  I just loved the surprised and bewildered expression on the roo which is why that bag was my favorite.  I let this girl borrow it one last day of school on good standing but apparently she thought she could keep it. When I asked for it back, which was like pulling teeth btw and she gave it back to me will all kinds of her scribbles and sigs on it. I really was disappointed, angry that someone could take advantage of my kindness and I think I held back a tear or two back. So I ended up giving up the bag to her since it was ruined anyways.
Anyways back to the photo. I was also wearing an disappointed expression because yet again I had to go back to school and the fact that summer vacation was still too far away. I hated school for obvious reasons. I might explain again in another post. So anyways I have this photo and decided to see what I would look like as an Bob’s burger character at the age of 7-8 years old just for fun. Since we both had the same look and share the same name.  And hear are the results. 

I think I would make a great cousin or friend character don’t you think?
I added the deely-boppers too even though I never wore those till about 85 coming home from a vacation in Europe. It seemed like a really popular thing during that time. Kind of like the beanie I guess.

I was pretty tall for my age but not the tallest in the class.  ;)

New project that you can do your self featured in my web site. Also featured at Instructables.com. Its basically a repair job that you can do your self to replace those old worn out foam covers on your headphones. Its not much to look at but its really suppose to be practical any how and for your info.

Pretty typical of me not saying anything for a while but I'm back for a while or maybe not. Who knows? Any ways some of my recent highlights, a few weeks ago the family van broke down. We had that thing since 88. I kind of think it has seen its last road. It was as old as my cat that also recently died. Because we really needed a new ride we got one. A new black Buick with all the extras, like a years worth of GPS and 3 months worth of Sat radio. I'll probably take a few pic when I actually get around to it. My dad put the licence plate with my name on it on to the car. It’s really nice and all but I know it’s really not my car. If I could afford it mine would have been a cute Volkswagen Beetle, either a yellow or a green one. Of course I wouldn't mind a nice scooters, you know one of those Vespas you see in Europe. I saw a cute pink one a few years ago in a parking lot. But for the most part I would rather have a new kitty any day over any of these things.
But one thing that really upset me at the time and made me kind of depressed was that he said that it would probably be the last car he would ever purchase. :_( What a big downer to an otherwise supposedly happy experience. Kind of like adding salt to your jam instead of the sugar. He was always a bit of a downer for the most part.
Its no wonder why my mother went off the deep end like that several times in the past.

Any how, since its once again that time of the year when our peach tree is full of luscious peaches, its time to enjoy them. This year I tried my hand at canning and making jam out of them. I only hope that they turn out tasty and don't turn in to botchelisim. I'm pretty sure I sealed the jars OK I'm using a few of those old-fashioned jars with the flip top lid that later get sealed by means of that clamp. Can't wait to try that peach jam. I'm sure with in a few days, I'll probably be sick to my ears with them.

I opened a Cafepress store just for fun. Good for a side thing and still have to put up a few links to it. I have a few things in there and will add something else for Christmas since I already have it. I only hope people will be interested in my stuff.

Last but not least, went to a cat show yesterday. My first one. I only wish my mom was a bit more understanding since she sort of got me to go at an earlier time. Oh well I told her so. I only wanted to be there for a while like a half an hour but we ended up staying for hours. Totally unnecessary. Oh well, it was cool any ways since we got to see all kind of breeds, some of the judging and the souvenir venders. Pretty well disciplined cats if I do say so my self. I think the most interesting cats were the hairless ones and the Persian. The little white persians had eyes like owls. There was this black a white Scottish fold that reminded me of penguins. Sadly I was not able to take pictures since the room had low lighting and I try to avoid using the flash out of the respect of the animals.