phooey

They've finally stopped playing with our street, but it won't be recovered in black top until October or therabouts because they have to finish digging up the rest of the town first.

There's a hole in the front yard where the new water cut-off valve is.

The snowball bush that was in the way has been run over twice. The theory is that it (why do I want to say 'she'?) will recover.

There's a very large swath of dirt where the engineer dug up the back yard to determine what kind of septic system he'd recommend.

That's only the beginning of course, because we still have to have someone trench from the house to the new water pipes and connect us, and actually have the septic system done (as opposed to just research and recommendation). So there's no real point in reseeding the lawn at this point. It'll just get dug up again in a month.

It started raining in the middle of the night and hasn't stopped yet.

And I had NOTHING to wear this morning.

Thank the many gods for Diana, who is also having a bad day. Shared misery and all...

More thanks to the Universe that it is friday, after all, and I can sleep in tomorrow.

And that my first beefsteak tomato came off the vine this morning. :)

Karen

Garden again, and eating locally

This little scarlet flax flower is compliments of Canadian Tire, free with purchase. While I had absolutely no expectation that they'd grow, if someone's going to give me free seeds, I'll probably find a place to plant them. :)


I haven't the foggiest what flower is - do you? It certainly doesn't belong to the tag that's behind it.


Close-up of the lavendar. It's such a pretty plant, and smells so good. I've heard you can cook with it, but that seems so strange to me.


I've been trying to join Pocket Farm's One Local Summer challenge, but I'm having the darnedest time finding the local meat suppliers. And we're not vegetarians.

Today's brunch was french toast and sausages. Only the bread was reliably local. The eggs, milk, cinnamon and sausages were all bought at the big chain grocery store so who knows where they came from? It's kind of frustrating.

But I did just find this set of pages for Eating Locally in Waterloo Region, so stay tuned. All it takes is a little more effort, right?

It's possible that I'm overthinking this too much. We got some steaks from a nice store just around the corner and they said the butcher is over in Guelph, but they didn't know where the cow came from. Probably not that far away but still... if I don't know, how can I claim it's local?

And of course, I am being my usual nitpicky self - I want to do a 100km radius just because we use the metric system up here in Canada and I can't even think in miles anymore. Given that y'all are using 100 mile radius in the USA, I'm making it even harder on myself. If we do the math, 100 km is approximately 62.14 miles. See why I don't want to remember some odd number?

It shouldn't be that hard, I'm smack in the middle of Foodland Ontario.

Fussy, fussy girl....

Karen

This is our street on drugs.

In a manner of speaking, of course...

A few days ago, they dropped this big monster of a thing off in front of our house.


These are the pipes that will go in the hole the big monster will dig.


This is what the end of our driveway looked like when we came home tonight.


It dwarfs the house. Heck, it even dwarfs the motherwort.


*sigh* And this is only the beginning of it. We need to replace the septic tank this year too, and there's some .... co-ordination required.

I'm lucky 'though.... the hubby does project management for a living. He actually likes to sort out difficult details and schedule things. It's one of those personality quirks that I completely don't understand about him, and adore.

Karen

still more from the garden

Lavendar and feverfew. Well, one of the many plants that are apparently called feverfew. I wonder if this is the right variety used for brewing a strong tea that can help ease headaches.



Closeup of the flowering parts of Motherwort. It's a stunningly tall plant at close to 7 feet in height! It's been an absolute delight to watch grow this year.



One of the newest additions to the garden. I don't know about where you folks live, but in this area of Ontario, 99% of the daylilies are orange or yellow. Very overused. Neil wants to acquire every other colour just to be different.

On the Merely Annoying Front: the powers-that-be are digging up my street to lay new pipes for the formerly private well that serves 1/3rd of the this small town. It's a long story but it starts with another small community, criminal stupidity and government overreaction and ends with each of the affected households in town paying out a miserable amount of money to have the Regional government take over running the well.

*sigh* Almost as much fun is the neighbourhood's overreaction to the project at the last minute, and trying to stop it. But it's underway now, and surprisingly, all hell has not broken loose. Gosh.

Karen

more from the garden

One of the many many daisies in the garden.



This is my front window.



Roman chamomille, golden marguerite, and alkanet. Both alkanet and golden marguerite are dye plants, giving grey/purple and yellow respectively.



Daisies in the front garden.

Two cherry tomatoes have ripened and so far, I've eaten both while standing over them in the garden. :)

Karen

Tomatoes, redux

So... what are y'all planning on doing with your bounty of tomatoes?

Me, I'm boring. I'll probably sauce the whole darn bunch and freeze them for pasta sauce. We eat a lot of pasta in this household.

But I'm open to new ideas and recipes for other ways to use them. I can almost taste now....

Karen

tomatos!

These are where my tomatoes are at - how are yours doing?

*tap tap tap*

Are they ready yet?

Karen :)

Happy Canada Day!