Awesome Gardener

"Mom, please come to dinner and bring lots of plastic containers. There are berries to pick."

Raspberries are new to Aw; so is her very own garden.
She didn't know about either of those things in Thailand, where other people did the food shopping and the garden-tending and she inherited a huge raspberry patch in her new Canadian place.



The Pad Thai was fabulous as always and she also served something I couldn't pronounce that was essentially a curry dish poured over rice. It was wonderful.

Fully sated, we set to work. Now picking raspberries is enjoyable but it was a dampish evening and the kamikaze mosquitoes were out in force, probably carrying some vicious new flu strain that will wreck my coming trip to Cuba.



We picked seven pints. Awesome always insists on photographic evidence to send home.

She picks up on customs so quickly but she stands firm on the business of watering the garden. Sprinklers are too slow. End of discussion. Therefore she stands, all five feet of her, hose and nozzle firmly in hand while she gives individual attention to every plant and bush.

You go, sweet girl.

Varmints and Canada Day

I made this cake for the annual Canada Day family party and they all agreed the maple leaf in the center looked suspiciously like Cannabis.
It's a jelly bean Canadian flag is what is is.

On an entirely different matter, some critter chewed right through this heavy- duty plastic barrel that stored the bird seed.


Personally I blame the squirrels. I used to love the little beasts before I moved to Toronto, where they are in almost as large supply as pigeons.
There is absolutely nothing lovable about a squirrel. Albert Schweitzer would have been hard-pressed to think of something nice to say about the litle rodents.
Anyway, when I packed up and moved from Toronto a few miles west to Waterloo, you'd think I left a trail of bread crumbs and now they're here. Multi generations of them.
I bought a steel can for the bird seed. let's see them rack up a dental bill on that.

What A Difference A Month Makes

This is the bed closest to the house, taken last month, just about the time I regret not keeping notes about what might pop up in various spots.
That also accounts for all the poppies I've ripped out mistaking them for weeds.

Now we are a bursting with bloom and I'm slowly making inroads on the weeds.
I'm waiting for the forget-me-nots to finish blooming and then, by golly I'll do some serious thinning.
And not a minute sooner.
In the meantime I'll just admire it from the porch swing.