20 Wednesday May 2026
Posted in family, food, garden, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
. soup, bbq, big girl pants, blessed, chicken, family, food, Glowy, grandson, homemade, moments, spatchcocked, widow
on Sunday we (well, my housemate) cooked a spatchcocked chicken on Glowy for dinner…
afterwards I took the leftover bones and meat and started chicken soup…
finished it in the morning and had a delicious cup of soup for lunch;-)…
19 Tuesday May 2026
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, boards, cleaned, eavestroughs, family, garden, grandson, ladders, moments, sails, weather, widow
my middle grandson came over on Saturday to help with some projects…
it started with removing the virginia creeper from the house and garage eavestroughs which involved a few ladders, big boards, buckets, and a number of yardwaste bags, lol…
from there he worked with his brother on adding copper mesh to boards to go along the garage to keep the squirrels out… hopefully it works…
the final piece of work was helping with getting the sails up in the garden…
happy we got so much done, particularly since then the weather has been cold🤪…
12 Tuesday May 2026
Posted in life, moments, retirement, technology, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, family, grandson, housemate, moments, noisy, repaired, Technology, threshold, video call, widow
for many, many, months the threshold on the front door has been loose…
this week my housemate removed the metal and the old wood…
there was a bit of laughter regarding the tiny size and rustiness of the screws that were taken out…
a new piece of wood was positioned, which sits on the top step of the stairs and should provide more strength in the future… stronger screws and the metal strip reinstalled…
looks great and there is no longer any movement when it is stepped on…
woohoo;-)…
of course, this all took place while I was on a video call with my kids in Ottawa… there was hardly any noise, except for drilling and hammering 🤪…
11 Monday May 2026
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
spent time in the garden Saturday morning…
the job was to level out the ground as much as possible…
soil, compost and sand were mixed by the wheelbarrow full and then dumped and levelled across the grass using a handmade levelling rake…
it took quite awhile but eventually the space seems much flatter…
next, a mix of grass and clover seed was spread over the entire area and then gently raked in…
finally, the entire area was watered…
now to wait for it to grow…
08 Friday May 2026
Posted in business, family, food, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized
last week I bought a lovely scarf at The Leaf…
today, while I was working my shift at the Mediterranean Biome exit spot, I watched a woman unfold a purple t-shirt in the Gift shop which is just outside the exit and perfectly in my view, lol…
so at the end of my day, I went and found one for me…
it is lovely and I know I will enjoy wearing it this summer;-)…
I may have to stop looking through those doors, lol…
a bit later, after I got home, a friend stopped by with a delicious piece of cake… we’d talked earlier in the week about this exact dessert… a lovely treat and visit…
I did share it with my housemate;-)…
pretty fine day…
03 Sunday May 2026
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, garden, grandson, grass, moments, planters, pump, raking, reading, tarp, weather, widow
spent time in the garden on a lovely day…
used the pond pump to empty the water on top of the tarp and then took the tarp off the pond…
took a few minutes to lay it out on the grass to dry out…
we moved a few planters to new places and will see if they stay in those spots…
did a little bit of raking of leaves, but there is still a lot to do…
and also spent some time reading in one of the chairs which recently came out of the shed…
30 Thursday Apr 2026
Posted in family, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
appear, big girl pants, blessed, bonsai, family, grandson, Japanese Maple, moments, nature, plants, slow process, widow, wire
had fun watching my grandson start to work on his Japanese Maple bonsai…
we picked up the Japanese Maple last spring and it lived in the garden for the summer and moved into the living room in the fall…
over the winter it lost all of its leaves, but new ones have just started to appear;-)…
lots of bits were trimmed off and quite a few types of wire were used to begin the process of bending branches to new spots…
this is the second try as the first one he worked on didn’t make it…
kind of exciting to see how it will turn out, although it is a very slow process…
21 Tuesday Apr 2026
Posted in business, family, food, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, birthday treat, blessed, blizzard, chilled, Dairy Queen, delicious, family, food, gloves, grandson, moments, weather, widow
was treated to a blizzard to celebrate my birthday…
was kind of funny, because I was cold after getting chilled in an air conditioned restaurant…
so I sat there eating the blizzard in my winter coat, with the seat warmer going, and gloves on…
but it was a wonderful treat… and half of it did go into the freezer for another day, lol…
05 Sunday Apr 2026
Posted in family, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, drawer, family, grandson, moments, nothing, pass-along, repair, struggle, warped, widow
a while ago, when I opened one of the drawers in the dining room, I realized that the bottom was coming away from the sides…
this had nothing to do with the weight of the dishes in the drawer🤪…
I mentioned it to my middle grandson, who advised he could fix it… he’s been a few times since then, but it finally worked out when he was here yesterday, for Easter dinner…
I had emptied the drawer before he came to help speed along the process…
it took a few trips to the basement for tools and a struggle with warped wood, but he got it fixed…
still waiting to put things back into it, after I remove some of the items that had been in it…
obviously there will be something for the pass-along box;-)…
30 Monday Mar 2026
Posted in garden, health, life, moments, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
arm, big girl pants, broken cover, F1, family, fix, garden, grandson, hot tub, moments, Suzuka, widow
was out for a hot tub at 2:00 am, Sunday morning after the F1 race at Suzuka, Japan ended…
it was lovely, although overcast, but the trees were completely still and the temperature was nice as well…
then, when I got out, it became clear that the back hinge on the right arm had disconnected… yikes…
I tried a few ways to get it to close, but couldn’t get it done…
came in with one side left open… will have to see what we can do to fix it, sigh…
later in the day, my housemate was outside and was able to haul it back onto the hot tub…
now to figure out how to solve the problem of broken arms, sigh…
herbiggirlpants 