In the garden and the living room

This is one of Neil's pictures. He says the birds act funny when they know their picture is being taken. :)



This is largely what I blame for the last month's worth of fatigue. Imagine if you will, because I don't have a 'before' picture, the trim is 50 odd years of layers of white paint, and the walls are a pale taupe.

We've been renovating. And please don't get me started on hiring a person who said he'd get it done in two days, and didn't, leaving us to spend weeks finishing it.



Of course, the garden has been a pretty busy place as well. Neil keeps bugging me to post larger garden pictures - this is the round garden, the triangle garden, and the tomato garden in the background. Three for the price of one picture! Remind me to take another one like it in the fall when all the annuals are at their peak.

The long promised tomato experiment

Before:



After:



The Problem: The already established 'veggie' garden is right out by the fenceline, to the right of the 100+ year old maple tree. Said maple tree is currently reduced to about 1/4 of it's root system (due to road and driveway work) and it's all in the yard. In the past few years, I've tried growing tomatoes out there, but they fight with the tree roots for nutritients and don't do as well.

Plus..... that garden space is increasingly being taken over by flowers and woad. I'm running out of room!

The Solution: A new garden space, in a raised bed, with fresh soil. Obsessive hobbies are fun. :)

Squirrels and Chipmunks and Birds, oh my!

Okay... I've had these pictures and the Garden Notes paragraphs at the bottom of the post ready for two weeks, but without any other content here. Then I got busy.

It happens. Apparently... somewhere between June of last year, and June of this year, I managed to forget to take my vacation time. The workplace gets a little annoyed with things like that.

Anyway, the bird feeder has delightfully increased the life in our yard!

We have squirrels....



.......chipmunks,



....cardinals,



and blue jays, oh my! And I am having a great deal of fun with the new lens for the camera.



Now, the flowers here have come and gone, but they were beautiful as usual.

This is Fritillaria Imperialis - it's an interesting flower. It hangs down, as if from a pedestal, and in it's early growth - it stinks. The banner for my blog is a snippet of the flower from two years ago. It seems to be a reliable perennial.



Tulips, of course, are the mainstay of many Canadian gardens. This yellow-red combination is fairly common.

I had some beautiful pink tulips along the fenceline at the sidewalk, and some inbred redneck teenagers appear to have alternated between snipping them or ripping them up and leaving them on the sidewalk. It certainly makes me understand the urge to violent revenge in the human race - if I could catch them, I'd be tempted to do some damage to their heads.



Last year, I dug up much of the grape muscari that had multiplied and spread it out in a different area - lots of colour! I think I'm going to find some more and continue this line down the garden.



Garden Notes:
Temperatures unusually high for this time of year, but we're still getting the occasional frost warning for evenings. This is Canada, after all. I haven't bought any annuals yet. That's next weekend's project, I hope.

Planning a raised bed for the tomato / green pepper crop. Haven't figured out where to put it yet. (Have done it - next post :) )

Last week and this week

Okay, I'm behind on last week's photos and getting ahead of this week's photos.

Chokecherry blooms and house - I really like the depth of field. I can't remember whether this is one of the wedding trees or not. I think so.



Okay....the weekend before last, we headed off on a new adventure in Peterborough. A friend arranged to have her teacher give a private class in wheel thrown pottery and a grand time was had by all!

This is the very first thing I've ever thrown on a wheel! It's not yet dry or even trimmed in this photo. It's a little lopsided.

But I love it. I loved throwing pottery! I came home from the weekend and started looking for classes/studio time here in town.



These are the hubby's hands doing his own thing.



We came home from the weekend to the neighbour, with a large branch of the maple that's just over the property line on her side down in her driveway. Close inspection proves it was a lightening strick! Neil volunteered to chain saw it and take it away. He's a sweetie sometimes. Or very politely deranged. Your choice.

And two fence sections torn out by the wind. Shame that isn't as easy to fix as a bit of chainsaw activity.

But on the bright side... two days away and I swear all the plants grew six inches!

First tulip of the season! (Don't worry, there will be many many more.)



Yellow Primrose....



Apricot blossoms with the church steeple in the background..... again, a beautiful depth of field.



And just for fun - my new view at work! After 18 years...... I finally have a window!

Before and After

Playing with Photoshop today....

Before:


After:


Any thoughts?

Karen

Spring birds and flowers

Playing around with the new telephoto lens again. I wonder if it will be enough to capture dolphins on our next trip to Iceland.

Both this photo and the next one are cropped from the original for a tighter frame.

Strangely enough, I found all the photos of the yellow finches on the feeders just slightly _over_ exposed. My usual problem with this camera is that it generally _under_ exposes pictures on automatic.

Perhaps it was the way the light glinted off the bird feeder? The sparrows (all hiding in the brush like this fellow) didn't have that problem.

Now, a slightly different problem with the sparrow picture is that it is just slightly out of focus. The brush is somewhat further away then the bird feeder, and this is an even tighter crop then the yellow finch picture. It's harder to tell just exactly what the camera is focussing on when one takes the photo.




Crocii, yellow. Second blooms of spring. :) The snow bells always come first. It is very very nice to see - it was a very long hard winter for some reason.

Canada Blooms

Last weekend, we made our annual pilgrimmage to Canada Blooms, Canada's largest garden show. It's draw is a strange thing to me.

Is it the new ideas in gardening? the forced blooms giving hope for spring? The chance to stay in our favourite hotel - the Cosmopolitian? To photograph the city?

Forced tulips....



Water feature.... I love 'em, but I don't have the energy to maintain them in our yard.



I love calla lillies, but this picture is actually about me discovering another feature of the camera - being able to change the ISO to accommodate the low lighting on the show floor. I hate using the flash. I think it's rude to the people around me and I never like the results anyway.



Photographing the city.... usually it's the CN tower for me - either up from the ground or down from it's observation platform. But this time, it was the Royal Bank Plaza. On bright sunny clear days, it really comes into it's own.



The Cosmopolitian - delightful as always, but the food in it's companion restaurant is becoming more.... normal. We have another unexpected opportunity to be in Toronto in mid-May - could anyone recommend some high-end eating? I'm interested in a quiet peaceful atmosphere, in which the food is utterly divine. The ethncity of the food is completely unimportant to me - I want to try new things!

Spring!

Spring is finally finally really.... almost here.

Forward Into the Past is almost upon us on April 4th. Go.... check out the website at http://www.treheima.ca/fitp
and if you're local enough, come on out and join us for the day.

We had a high of 12 degrees celsius here and I got some yard work done. I burned a bunch of wood. You have to see the yard to know why that made such a little dent but still made me feel good.

And there are buds on the cherry tree.

Birds and Spring

Neil and I are having a light debate about two photos - perhaps you can help us.

I like this one better - I've lightened the colour balance, although it does seem to flatten the depth in the picture a bit. I like the compositional balance - birds, clematis and fence all seem to be in good space to each other.



Neil likes this one the best - he likes the profile of the birds and feels that the clematis detracts from the simplicity of the birds. I tried lightening this one, but it seemed to make it too light in some spots. Although the depth of field is better in this one, I feel that the third bird being right on the edge of the photo ruins the compositional balance.



Which one do you like better?

--------------

We went to the Stratford Garden Festival on the weekend with my folks. I don't know what everyone else's reasons were - it was very crowded - but I desperately needed a hint of spring.

Usually I can manage to hold out til the Canada Blooms weekend (that's in two weeks) but this year, the yard is a horrible mess and winter seems to be just dragging on.

If we had geothermal energies all over the place like in Iceland, maybe we'd have more recreational greenhouses to get people through winter.

This wild exhuberance of blooms was almost enough.



But these darling little things in my own garden the next morning are tipping over my sense of hope. :)

Another week, another post

Just in case any of you are wondering why I'm posting more frequently, almost predictably, and the photos have been relatively inane of topic....

I'm trying a new thing, suggested by the hubby, to aim for taking and posting one new photo a week - just to work on my photography. Posting to the blog and increasing the readership is just gravy. I hope.

So....this week's topic is my workplace. I don't talk about it much. It seems somehow.... like a bad idea. But I've got a few pictures to show you. :)

We're planning on some renovations (mostly just moving people around into new space) and wonders of all wonders.... I'm told that I will finally get a window! I could have plants! This is the view a few days ago when there was still snow on the ground.



It's important to make sure that this fellow comes along for the ride. It's the gift of a former student - he's been on our whiteboard for 3 years. What's in the thought bubble keeps changing. "Goðin Dag" apparently means "Good day" in Icelandic. I'm a closet Icelandophile.



And should the view not pan out, and the turtle needs to go away.... as long as they don't change this nearby feature.... I'll be okay. His name is Porcellino.

Sunshine!

So... a few days after the fog, after months of dreary overcast winter skies.... the sun came out to play on the weekend.

Compare this picture of the front fenceline to the foggy one of the last post. Sunshine is good, but the colours in the picture just aren't as interesting.... the lights don't stand out in the same way.

Much less snow 'though.... this is a good thing.



On a sunny day, I guess the birds don't mind as much if I take their picture while they are eating...



My hubby gave me flowers for Valentine's Day (and took me out to dinner - twice!) - isn't he the sweetest?

Foggy day, and fiber

We had a foggy day a few days ago. It created some fantastic shots.

But first, getting something out of the way that I've been meaning to post for a few weeks now.

Nina (and any other fiber artists out there) - this is the wall hanging that I did for my hubby's office a few years ago. The warp is junk yarn, and the weft is unspun roving. It's the inspiration for what I want to do next - lots of thick thick yarn. But I'd like it in both warp and weft, and much better colours.

I want to get something up on the loom that is simple and quick - something just to get me started again. Any recommendations for the right kind of fiber? Think really really thick...



This is our front fence line - interesting the way the coloured lights stand out in the fog, even turned off.



The birds tried to hide in the lilacs, waiting for me to go inside so they could help themselves to the freshly re-filled bird feeders.



Freshly re-filled, since the squirrels seem to love getting at them and dumping it all on the ground! Could anyone recommend a good type of grease for the pole?

Boat Burning

Friends gathered, camera settings were played with, tripods were needed. Wishes were made, memories guarded, and family remembered.



And a boat was burned, keeper of our thoughts. What was once, and will be.

Do I have enough hats?

Left to right.....

Crotchet, crotchet, knit, knit, knit, naalbinded, and naalbinded.

Unknown wool, acid dyes in spinning class.
Cotton/aycrlic, commercial.
Cotton/aycrlic, commercial.
Variegated aycrlic, commercial.
Variegated aycrlic, commercial, and it now (after the pic was taken) has a pom-pom on it. What can I say? I'm a dork. :)
Icelandic lopi, dyed with madder and I forgot to loosen the skein knot in the dye pot so it's got these little undyed spots that make nice polka dots in the hat.
Icelandic lopi, dyed with.... something natural. I forget.

My husband prefers the second one, and I'm currently wearing the fifth one. I like the red one too, but I find the lopi a little itchy.

The brightly coloured one in the middle that I was working on last week turned out too small.

Karen

I'm doing it again

I think I've picked up an additional hobby, rather unintentionally. Knitting seems to be contagious.

It's not that I don't already have 5 or 6 hats around the house in a variety of naalbinding, crotchet, or knitting. But but but....



Oh, by the by....some recently acquired knitting knowledge:

Ripping back one's knitting to fix a mistake is considerably less satisfying then ripping it back because you have an artistic difference with reality.

New tricks for some Auld Phartes

The new year is bringing in a few new tricks for some of our favourite folks at Treheima.

My big strong man takes things into his own hands....


....and made this step stool for our aging doggie. He's having trouble getting up on the bed these days - the arthritis in his hips is sometimes troublesome.


I took up my knitting needles for the first time in 25 years.... and made this scarf and hat, inventing what passes for a pattern as I went.


Karen

2008 in review

Once again, Alda at the Iceland Weather Report leads the way and I shamelessly theft an idea. :)

It's 2008 in Review!

January

Tired of being frustrated by the spinning wheel that Anti-V had kindly loaned me (to create space in her own house), I decided to sign up for lessons. Although I started the classes in December 2007, January finds me reporting on what I'm learning.

February

February was all about the new elliptical machine and a recommitment to exercising. I wanted to be healthier for my trip in May. Yo... husband, stop laughing out there in the background.

Not blogged about at the time but I also started a new job in February. More on that through the summary.

March

March saw us in Toronto for Canada Blooms, and a stay at our favourite sinfully luxurious hotel - the Cosmopolitian, an annoying confrontation with NYPD helicopters, and the single finest meal I think I've ever had.

April

In April, I'm sure there was a lot going on in the garden, but apparently I was too busy getting ready for my trip in May to blog about it. My big excitement seems to be updating my blog with a gorgeous picture in the header bar.

May

May saw us heading off to Scotland and Iceland for the whole month, for our long overdue honeymoon. Perfect weather, lots of ancient places to explore, and just so much to see and take in. Iceland even gave us a rather memorable send-off with an earthquake on our last day there.

Believe it or not, I'm actually rather shy, so I didn't introduce myself to distant relatives in Scotland, or to Alda while I was in Iceland.


June

June saw me getting back into the garden, and trying out the One Local Summer thing again. I eventually got off the One Local Summer thing - while I was still eating locally, I found I didn't have the stick-to-it-ness to blog about it weekly. The whole year has seen my blogging diminish considerably from previous years.

The new job mentioned in February is a mat leave position, and I ran into the first major kink in June when my assistant moved on to another position. I can't blame her - this was temporary, and what she moved to is permanent, but it did create some instability and extra work for me.

July

July gives us some reporting from the garden, and the fiber side of life. We held a get together in the backyard to make glass beads in a new smelter that Neil's working on, and I co-opted the firepit to put some dye pots on.

Ahh yes... and Darrell delivered the bird feeder.

August

Birds, gardens and squirrels - oh my!

I also started with that Facebook thing - very absorbing.

And then there's that pesky job thing. The person hired to replace the assistant who moved on, moved on himself! It's August, on the cusp of the single busiest time of the year and I'm training someone new again!

September

September disappeared into a black hole. Literally, I have no memory of anything but getting increasingly short of hair available to pull out. I was very very very busy.

October

Marginally better, work-wise, in that the new fellow is working out well. But my laptop at home started to malfunction and it took weeks to get fixed. Actually, we finally discovered that the repair place was nuts, and it was just easier to get it replaced entirely.


November

November brought a new challenge at work when the guy that my position is a back up for, got sick. Very sick. Of the not yet back variety. And I've been doing two jobs for two months now.

I'm surprised that I blogged at all in November, but I'm not surprised that it was a meme. Brain power is something I that had little extra to spare.

Oh, and the snow hit us early and hard. We still have mulch in the driveway that wasn't distributed and leaves that never got properly collected or mulched into the lawn. I didn't get a chance to plant bulbs, and the two trees that came down are still largely in piles in the back yard. I'm going to pay heavily for this in the spring.


December

December was better job-wise, mostly in that the students all start to get focussed on exams and leave us alone for awhile. Perhaps somewhat in that I might now have the hang of a few things. And I got some reason to hope that things will get better in the new year - but more on that in the New Year. :)

At home, Neil bought some skyr from Palssons in Manitoba - the only place that we know of that makes skyr in Canada. I've been trying to make more at home, and not having a great deal of success.

More on making Skyr at home

But first, a recap - here's a summary of all previous posts that mention Skyr, including the recipe that I'm working from, and previous results.

We get our skyr shipped from a small grocery store in Arborg, Manitoba, by the name of Palsson's. As far as we know, it's the only place in Canada that makes and sells the stuff. They make it in their dairy section.

When I have it, I keep trying to make some more. I just tried again yesterday - draining the results tonight.

*sigh* Let's just say I don't have the hang of it yet. 4 quarts of milk reduced to approximately 2.5 cups of something that only vaguely resembles sky and tastes ...... Neil kindly says "not bad". I didn't like it.

Seven things

Nina tagged me with a meme (bless her heart, I did need a kick) - 7 previously unknown things about me.

1. I've never bought a gadget direct from one of those tv infomercials.

2. But I have been tempted, and found at least two of them in a store later and bought them there. The indirectness of finding it in the store later saves my geeky pride.

3. The Perfect Pancake, and the Quick Chop, in case you were wondering. One's been useful and the other a complete flunk.

4. I don't own a Klingon dictionary. ;)

5. But I do own at least two of the Nitpicker's Guides - a) for Deep Space Nine Trekkers and b) for Next Generation Trekkers.

6. I prefer the term "Trekkie".

7. I just started knitting again, after nearly a 25 year hiatus. And I blame the Yarn Harlot. :)

Darn, it's October already

I swear that I'm still here.

The first two weeks of September were a blur - all psychotic work stuff, all the time. Things are calmer now, but my laptop starting freezing and went to the shop and it's been more then a week now and I'm going crazy.

Yes, there is another computer in the house but it's in the smelly boy infested basement office and all of the settings and bookmarks are different, not to mention the weird keyboard and mouse thing.

The husband in question has kindly been letting me use his work laptop in the living room (we really need to renovate the basement) and it at least has a normal keyboard and mouse but all the settings and bookmarks are still different! My husband and I really have different brains about what works for us on computer settings.

I really really want my laptop back.... soon, I hope. I have pictures on the camera, but I can't blog unless I go down to basement office. His office laptop doesn't have Easy Thumbnails or Adobe Photoshop. *sigh*

Karen