12 Friday Jul 2024
Posted in family, food, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
air, air conditioner, barbecue, Barbie the Barbecue, big girl pants, blessed, delicious, garden, grandson, hot, moments, nature, option, weather, widow
it has been very hot here for the last few days, with no rain, woohoo…
last night’s supper was pork tenderloin with potatoes, onions, and mushrooms and asparagus…
all cooked on Barbie the Barbecue…
nice to have an option for preparing supper in this heat…
sadly, it appears that the air conditioner has shared its last cooling;-(…
10 Wednesday Jul 2024
Posted in garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
bachelor buttons, big girl pants, blessed, flowers, garden, inukshuk, moments, nature, overcrowded, pictures, poppies, widow, wildflowers
this morning I discovered a number of poppies and bachelor buttons were blooming in the wildflower pot;-)…
apparently, a couple of the poppies had slipped under the fence and grown up between the bricks in the neighbouring yard, lol…
it was fun to get a photo of all of them beside the Inukshuk;-)…
the pot is overcrowded so I hope that more will bloom before a space problem arises…
09 Tuesday Jul 2024
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
babies, big girl pants, birds, blessed, food, garden, happy, hover, moments, nature, sparrow, testing, widow, wings
we’ve come to that time of summer when the sparrow babies are testing out their wings…
it can be a dangerous time in the garden, because many of them believe they can hover, like hummingbirds, lol… which they can’t…
they come very close to my head as they manoeuvre around trying to follow their parents and land without injury…
they think they can have dust baths on cushions and land on a dime…
but they still want mommy and daddy to feed them…
08 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in garden, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, cascading, filter, garden, moments, pond, pump, waterfall, weather, widow
on Sunday, I put out all the cushions as there was no rain in the forecast;-)…
the waterfall was running very slowly so I climbed into the pond and cleaned out all the muck that had accumulated in the filter of the pump…
then I trimmed up some of the plants in one of the floating baskets as the fish swam around my legs, completely unconcerned…
now the waterfall is cascading beautifully;-)…
06 Saturday Jul 2024
Posted in food, garden, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, develops, food, garden, moments, nature, plants, shade, shade garden, tomato plants, veggies, weather, widow
this morning I spent some time in the veggie garden… formerly known as the shade garden, lol…
there are peas starting to fill out the pods and the bean and cucumber plants are stretching up to the arch…
I’ve been doing some reading on tomato plants and decided to trim back the bottom leaves to give them more air…
I was surprised at how many branches were removed…
I guess we will see what develops…
05 Friday Jul 2024
Posted in business, food, garden, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, garden, hamper, moments, nature, plants, protection, shopping, strawberry, vanish, widow
so far I haven’t had a single strawberry, although at least two were nearly perfect when they vanished…
tonight we ran out to the store and picked up a folding circular hamper…
I cut away the top and popped the whole thing over the strawberry plant, pot and roller… fit perfectly;-)…
maybe I will get some strawberries now…
02 Tuesday Jul 2024
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
Barbie the Barbecue, big girl pants, blessed, family, garden, grass seed, grow, housemate, moments, nature, rain, soil, sprinkled, water, weather, widow
Monday, while supper was cooking on Barbie, the barbecue, my housemate sprinkled grass seed over the non-grassed areas in the garden…
it had been raining off and on all day and was supposed to continue all day today…
after putting down the grass he used the last of the soil to cover everything and then raked it over…
now I have been directed to water every single day unless it rains;-(…
01 Monday Jul 2024
Posted in garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, caterpillars, garden, leaves, miffed, milkweed, moments, moved, nature, plants, stem, stripped, widow
yesterday I moved five monarch caterpillars from one area of milkweed, where all of the leaves had been devoured across the path to the group that were caterpillar-free…
this picture is before every single leaf had been gobbled up…
I used a stick to move them because I didn’t want to get injured, lol…
at least one of the caterpillars was miffed because it opened its mouth wide and felt like it was hissing at me…
I guess they also travelled on their own, because today I discovered eleven on those plants… and I moved another one that seemed to be trying to eat the stem of the stripped milkweed…
hope there are enough leaves to get them to the correct size to move into the chrysalis phase;-)…
29 Saturday Jun 2024
Posted in garden, health, life, moments, nature, Photography, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, decimated, family, garden, happy, milkweed, moments, monarch caterpillars, nature, photos, plants, pond, twenty, widow
on Tuesday we counted twenty monarch caterpillars on the milkweed in the garden…
they were all over the newest batch that was recently planted and have nearly decimated all the leaves…
they were also on the ones near the waterfall which were planted last summer… we’ve now taken out all the poppies so there is more room to be able to see the caterpillars…
there were none on the ones from last year which were located around the edge of the pond… these were the ones that I planted in a spot where I could see and photograph any butterflies, eggs and caterpillars that came along, lol…
there were some chives next to them so when Hilda the Gardener was here the other day I had her take them out… maybe the butterflies don’t like the smell…
so excited to have so many;-)…
28 Friday Jun 2024
Posted in business, family, food, life, nature, retirement, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, cacao, family, fish, gardener, koi, moments, nature, plants, pods, producing, The Leaf, widow
spent more time at The Leaf on Tuesday morning before my daughter headed home… it is such a wonderful point of happiness for me, and my daughter…
we discovered, after chatting with Linda, one of the gardeners, that the second cacao tree has now got two cacao pods on it… this is very exciting as only the first tree had been producing pods…
we spotted a little lizard on the third tree… apparently it arrived with one of plants, lol…
Linda was very excited to show us the mango tree that had just been planted…
we also learned there are fifty fish in the pond, and all the smaller ones were babies from the largest ones… the excess fish have been moved to another location to keep the population stable…
herbiggirlpants 