The invasion of the tomato snatchers.

Behold, the creepy squishy and oh so big green tomato caterpillar. Creepy for some. Not really for me. Found the little buggers crawling all over our tomatoes naturally over the summer, turning our plants and the fruit into Swiss cheese. Since then, I found alternatives for them to munch on instead of our tomatoes. Not to mention I like to live and let live if you know what I mean? Of course at the time I let them munch on some extra leaves and stems of our tomato plants to their hearts content. Till they of course turned into moths. I guess not all caterpillars turn into beautiful butterflies.  Surprising the tomato cuttings started to grow into their own plants. Something I didn't know earlier but interesting to know none the less. Another name for the little pests is Tobacco worm. But I prefer the latter.  I found out that they also enjoy our night shade weeds so since then I've been feeding that to them. They're welcome to them any day cause you know, they're weeds. 

In the pics it looks like they're munching on our geraniums. But because the tomato plants were so long in the half cut water bottles and I kept them close to the flowers, it made them look like they were enjoying them too.  Not true. Its the tomato plans they were after. None the less they really look pretty among the geraniums even if they're not eating them.

Anyways an update on the mama cat. Our timing was finally right and we caught her a few weeks ago. Surprisingly, its much easier to catch a stray cat then it is to catch a person. Afterwords I tried to contact our local humane society. I couldn't even get a person on a phone as to the regards of our kitty catch. Yeah our HS sucks! But I guess it might have to do with our many institutions that are grossly underfunded. Shame! I guess its another sign of the times. So for plan B I made contact with our former vet that I used for our late kitty Meetso. Thomasina got all "fixed" up and no more potential kitten explosion. Which is a good thing since we have a lot of bad neighbours that would love to do something vile to those poor kittens not to mention all those poor cats. That's not how we treat life. We respect it. All life deserves to have a life and not just dogs. Even the vilest such as some of my neighbours. Anyways yeah we had to keep her in the cage/trap for another 24 hours after her surgery and she was free to go. Before her surgery she had to be in there for a day and night till her appointment. Couldn't have been pleasant being in her own mess all night. Luckily she just peed a little and it was easy to clean up. At least the closet downstairs  where we kept her was pleasantly warm despite it being in the basement. I guess she saved the pooping for later. 😵😁 After she was freed, she did come back a few days later but has a bit of a long road for things to be back to normal. It was after all traumatizing. But soon enough she'll be back to her old self maybe even closer to our little family. 

Hope you enjoyed the latest offering of pics. Hoped you enjoyed the story too. Later!.......

Its a Sign!

Yup you guessed it. Its an actual sign. OK not terribly exciting but pretty neat to me. Last season in August, at the end of the month I think, but the actual news article got published in Sept. The park across the street finally got a new sign. It was since that time we moved in to this neighborhood, sometime in 1998 that the old one was knocked over from age. It was never really that durable to begin with. Just your typical wood used in a common wooden fence around someone's lawn. None the less the new sign is not much better from the original other then they added a reflective coating so you can reflect it at night with your car's headlights. I guess the city was trying to save some money. But did they have to place it in the exact spot the old sign was in? I mean every year there's a pretty huge and deep puddle in that spot because of unscrupulous bone heads who either park their cars there for a soccer game or take a joy ride though the park when we're all sleeping.  I wouldn't be surprised when one day I look out the window and see it knocked to the ground. Anyways there was a bit of a revealing ceremony soon after. Apparently it was in honor of some woman's father. Even had a footage crew, a reporter or two here along with the mayor and other family members. You can read it your self in the article posted here. As for whats happening with the world right now, lets not talk about it. Just enjoy some peace. 
Thanks. 😌

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. ⇱

The butterfly bush or weed

Just some lovely pics I took last year of my butterfly bush/weed. They had finally made it to blossoming after many seasons of frustrations. First I just couldn't get the seedlings to survive after insects and other critters ate them in the small pots. Or was it just not the right type of soil? Not sure but the next year I decided to use a soil that wasn't loaded with compost. That was successful. There were other problems after that too. By the time I tried again in another season I was left with one successful seedling that actually grew enough to be planted.  Good thing, I was only left with one last seed. So after I planed it and it grew to a nice plant, thinking it was just another weed, my dad nearly killed it off. I was pretty disappointed at my dads kill happy hands. Well another season goes by and in the spring I get a surprise. The plant came back and this time later in July I think with a crown of beautiful bright orange blossoms. So pleased that finally after my hard work and persistence I finally got my butterfly bush. 
So far it really hasn't attracted any butterflies but a few hover flies and other things.
This year it made even more blossoms and the only thing it managed to attract were lots and lots of aphids with their keepers the ants and one ladybug. No seed pods this year because of the infestation. 
Oh well there's always next year. 😏

Holiday detour ahead.

A little post Christmas pre NewYear detour of postings. I just have some of the latest pics of my updated Nativity and some Christmas lights. Haven taken any new ones for a number of years. Not much as changed other then some new angel figures I got recently. Although very nice and flashy but in my opinion cheaper in quality. Yes you have much more flashing action but at the price of the battery power. Oh well. 

Below is a pic of our dining room table with a mini light up Christmas tree without the chandler on. ⇓

Another with changed lights.⇓

Again with the chandler on.⇓
Here you can see our our traditional wreath of Advent and traditional to my parents people, wheat grass grown in small containers. Normally these should be decorated with red, white and blue striped ribbons wrapped around the wheat grass. These unfortunately got a bit sickly. Probably a lack of proper watering, sun or maybe just disease. Oh well, my dad tried.

Little Christmas lights look like little "goal" lights from a hockey game. They twinkle on and off red. Its around this wreath on the window in our dining room. They make a nice starry pattern behind the curtains.⇓

 Another mini Christmas tree. In the dinning room as well, at a corner on top of a glass table.⇓

What our Nativity scene looks like with the main lights out. You can see the small plastic angels shining different colours. Just got the two bottom ones this year and already the batteries are being used up with all the light action they do. Unlike the better quality angels I have at the top that change their lights more slowly.

You can also see the starscape my dad has behind my royal blue starry back drop I made out of a piece I bought at the store once. I also airbrushed that a bit.
We have this displayed in our living room.⇓

The following are various angles of our Nativity scene. Here you can see my hand made palm trees made from foam, cardboard, raffia and discarded nylon remains I collected from my previous job working on site for an inflatable company. Currently I work for my self as a freelancer. 
Any how, the human figures are original from when I was a kid. I had repainted them since the original was just poorly done. The sheep are from various place like dollar stores and fixed up.⇓

As you can see, some of the things I made don't always turn out. That cardboard pond did not stay flat. That manger is something my dad made when I was a little girl. It lights up inside too. A few years ago my dad covered the walls with white papery tree bark. He also covered the roof with water reeds. Looks really cool.

The twin paper angels use to be a Christmas bag from one of my mother's friend who has since past away.⇓

 Another perspective.⇓

From a plastic sheep's view or a plastic sheep dog.  ⇓

You can see that our main and big angel, a former tree topper has lost her shine. That's alright. We'll figure out a solution eventually.⇓

 A final look. ⇓

The end? Probably not. 
Happy NewYear every one. 🎉🎄🎊🎆🎇😺

Wild flowers and Evil Squirrels

Sorry for the long post.

Time for an update on my summer since I didn't do a whole lot of blogging cause of the craziness of it all. Yup it was crazy and its the end of summer. Boooooooo Hissssssss. But on the upside there are only a few more months till spring. I would rather avoid thinking about the misery months to some. That's what I like to call them.

Lets see, there was my poor kitty Meetso. He got really sick. So sick I thought he was going to kick the bucket. The poor guy got so sick he stopped eating all together. So I brought the poor guy to the vet. He hated it of course but at least he's not a mean cat. He does have great manners after all. So he had a blood test to make sure he didn't have any major diseases. He did not thank goodness. He ended up getting a shot and some antibiotics that I had to orally give him every day twice a day. Also not fun especially when you need two people and the person does not follow instructions well making the situation worse. But then finally he was all better. All up to snuff and a terror of his domain. 

Also did I mention my doves, my sneaky doves pulled another fast one and made two more babies. Didn't expect them and neither did I expect them to be speckled again. One white with peach colouring and the other white with regular colouring. I'll have to take some pics when I can. Probably when they're indoors for the winter. Bright little fellas. Btw they are boy and girl. They always come that way with doves. Also they learned all kinds of things really fast too.

A few weeks later if I remember correctly one night when I when to feed Meetso after taking my bath. About 3am I noised water on the floor in the basement. Not too unusual when its warm outside and cool inside especially downstairs. But then it was coming from underneath a door to the water heater room/ small storage. I go and open the door and there was water spitting out of a pipe onto the ceiling if you would call it that on to the water heater. I was a little worried that it might damage the tank. But I guess it didn't after my dad repaired it the next day. Luckily every thing worked find and the pipe hasn't leaked since.

Then we ended up find out we had a huge wasp colony in our fruit cellar. I first noised something odd when I went in there to get a pop. At first I thought it was another water leak of some kind. So went outside to see if there was a leak outside since we do have a water faucet there. But then I noised lots of yellow jackets coming in and out of a little hole in the wall. Hummmmm Then went back inside and I went closer in a corner of the room to take a so called closer look. I made some noise by knocking on the wall and sure enough realized that we have a very large and angry colony. I also noised that there was a certain spot on the ceiling where the drywall was very thin. I was very concerned about the whole thing but nothing was done about it till it was too late.

A few days latter mom was the unfortunate one to go there and take care of some business but didn't get too far. The wasps apparently finally broke thru that spot of concern and were now flying around the cellar. Luckily she didn't get stung. But unfortunately one family member got stung indirectly and unintentionally. Eventually every thing was brought under control and the whole colony was killed off as a result of a nasty and expensive insecticide spray. It was then after leaving the room to its self for a few days and pulled out a sample of the hive when we realized how large the mass yellow jackets were.

I think they were there for at least 2 years.

But of course as a result we had another problem.

Poor Meetso came home one night, the same night we took care of the big wasp problem. So he came home from one of his kitty adventures only to be licking his tail area profusely and acting strange. He ran straight inside like a cartoon kitty. He wasn't acting any better the next day and then after that stopped going out all together. Forcing him to go out and get some fresh air wasn't any better since I noised he would go nuts when any mosquito or other flying insect would land on his butt. No one believed me and I think no one believes me still that he can act so strange and all of a sudden. Of course I knew that it might be a possibility that a left over angry wasp had stung him at night when he when to explore the bushes at the front as he brushed by. So there fore any flying insect especially mosquitoes would send him in to a tizzy. He would even try to bite them in mid air. It was just crazy.

Well none the less this summer fiasco lasted several weeks. I think it was a month's worth of trouble for Meetso but just a few days ago he finally got out of it. He seems now back to his king of the jungle self. In fact he landed him self a tasty tidbit with wings the other morning. A morning dove. Unfortunately I found the evidence of his messy dinner all over his favorite dinning spot.

Speaking of things to eat did I mention the squirrel invasion? No I don't eat squirrels but I do or rather we as in the family like to eat tomatoes. In recent years they managed to eat all of our peaches but this year there was none. It was the bad winter we had but my dad mentioned that it also might be the age of the tree. So anyways the squirrels decided that they would help them selves to every beef steak tomato growing our vine, ripe or not whether it was too big to carry or not. When it was too big or behind a fence they would just take a bite out of it to claim it as their own. That was the last straw! That and the fact they then tried to eat all the seeds in my doves cage. Some how they little thieves got their little stick paws in there and snatched out every seed. By morning my poor doves had nothing to eat. Oh yeah did I mention they mooched all the wild bird seed I put out for the wild birds too.

So yeah, I decided that it was time to do something about the most annoying creatures ever besides mosquitoes and do something about it. I when to the store and bought a small trap. A nice little humane trap to trap the little buggers. So then I set up the trap which was fairly easy and filled it with extremely tasty things like peanut buttered bread, some peanuts, some acorns, sunflower seeds and a trail of bird seed leading to the trap. I set the trap in a small area next to our garage and under a pile of wood, piled up near a wall and then waited. I didn't wait long till it caught one of the little buggers.

My dad then helped me oust the guy leaving him at a nice wooded area with sparsely populated with people and farms. A really nice place for a bunch of little bushy tailed jerks. Too good for them really but what ever. So far I caught 4 of the little jerks. I'm still aiming for two young trouble makers still hanging around. So you heard me little bushy tailed thieves, I'm coming for you.

Oh and actually I do have one thing that wasn't so crazy that I found. It was another interesting weed that's edible. So I took a few pics of it. It looks a lot like rhubarb only its not.

Apparently its another European import called the Common Burdock.

You can eat the boiled roots in its first year and in the second you can boil and eat the stocks and flowers with some salt and butter. Neat stuff! Sounds way better then rhubarb any day. Yuck!

Oh yeah I heard you can candy the flowers or something. I guess for more uses go look for the info online of course. 

Burdock's just about to bloom. ^

Burdock's blooming. ^

Have some leftovers. They're still good.

New year but leftover photos from last year.

Hoping for a better year this year but it seems I say that every year and it only gets worse and worse. Sigh....... oh well. But still hopeful.

Yeah I have some photos yet to be shown form another one of my walks which were taken late fall if I remember correctly. And here they are. They are of some flowers that are in the same family as the sun flower. Found them in a small park with a few areas that have some brush, trees and a few backyards of some houses. The flowers are called The Jewish Artichoke. Not sure why that is because they look nothing like an artichoke. But they are edible. The root the most edible, is very much like a potato and can be eaten like one if boiled or eaten raw like a cucumber. At least that's what I saw in a foraging book. I have yet to try that.

That bit of info could come in handy someday or maybe something you wanted to know and try out of curiosity. But the best time to dig up one of these is just after a frost so you're out of luck this time. In the book they recommend to locate one in the summer then soon after the first frost dig up and then use. Sounds good to me.

When I took these pics, there were even some bumble bees still on them but very sleepy from the cold.

Even managed to save a few seeds in a bag. Going to see if I can grow some in the back yard this year. 

If your wondering what I was up to during the holidays, not much. Made a fruit cake inspired by a fruit cake I ate last year that my mom bought from church. Normally I don't like fruit cake like the majority of society because of those dried citrus peels, other crap and over all heaviness of fruit cake. But this one was the best I’ve ever eaten. So I tried to emulate it and it turned out pretty great but it just didn't have the punchlines of the other. Understandable since I didn't exactly have any real rum or bourbon on hand. I had this not even real, ancient extract of rum that's been in the cabinet for who knows how long. Mom and her love of artificial extracts. Oh well, hopefully I can get some of the real stuff next year.

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.  ;)

To the watering hole

Sunday was a great day for Meetso to take a break from hunting in the great jungle that is our back yard and relax by our busy little watering hole. The water fall babbled while the light from a bright sunny day danced on the water's surface. The koi fish large and small frolicked in the water causing the new addition of water plants to move from their places. A spider's web hung like a shiny chandler just above the water probably constructed last night to catch supper for a spider.

After that I when in to the downstairs kitchen and made my last batch of strawberry jam for the year. I burnt half of my hand from a exploding jam jar. I had freshly boiled strawberry jam poured in to a jar and then when I went to screw the top on tight, it exploded on me and all over. I was burning in pain of course. So luckily I was very close to the sink. So I ran the cold water and placed my hand under the water. I then filled a near by pot with cold water and place my throbbing hand in that. Later my dad came down the stairs to see how my jam was progressing and saw me in my predicament. He handed me a ice pack from the near by freezer and I placed it in to the pot of water and stuck my hand in again. I held it there for at least 15 mins or more till the pain wasn’t that bad. Then next day things were back to normal. Thank God!. This is like the 3d time I had something searing hot fall on my skin. I healed quite quickly with no real residual effects.

All I want for Christmas is my two red shoes. LOL
Here are two links to the story, Red Boots for Christmas.
The first link is to a script to the story in case any one is interested and the story.
I'll try to see if I can find the cartoon too.

Play
Story

Enjoy.

Oops I forgot to put in the link to the MP3 version of the Happy Prince.
Enjoy.

Who say’s Christmas has to be expensive?
It’s the season of giving so its time to share some link goodies based on some pretty rare Christmas stories and or cartoons I remember from child hood. At the time I found them somewhat corny but then I saw the beauty of the stories. Very unique and un-cookie cutter like compared to the usual fair of Santa Clause related stories.
These are great Christmas stories for the young ones in your life and the kid at hearts such as your selves out there.
First link and story is called the Happy Prince. It’s about a statue that is really not so happy.
There are several ways of downloading this story and bonus it’s free.
It was first introduced to me as a traditional animated story in grade school.
The Happy Prince




Another bonus; there are a few more interesting stories by the same author as well.