Garden Journal Excerpts
My garden is
in constant revision, as you may notice my web page is, also.
This will be a way to show some of the updates and revisions I make to the garden throughout the years from my garden journal entries. I have several books of written garden journals. In June of 2012 I began to keep sporadic notes of my time in the garden on my computer.
Monthly Excerpts from the Garden Journal of 2017
SYNOPSIS of the year
The summer of 2017 was very dry and hot. We had very little rain in June, July and August. There were hugh wild forest fires all over the Province. Watering the plants took up most of my gardening time, and still things were parched and dry.
1. The year Davey Tree pruned and topped the hedges: Dan and his helper took the hedge by the deck down to eaves height and trimmed some of the Pees side of the hedge. They topped the hedge between the driveways on the west side at about eaves height also, and pruned the sides. That hedge is really sparse now. Hopefully it will grow in again. They cut back some of the higher branches from the hedge by the back cutting garden. This should let more light and rain onto that area. For some strange reason Billy Bob went nuts about this work they did and began harrassing me, cutting out my plants along by their sidewalk and scrapping the grass off my grass path at the front with his weed eater. I had to call the Police when he was calling me names and aiming his weed eater at my face. The shithead continues the stupidity with throwing cigarette butts in my garden pond and other idiotic things. Constable McNamara says its a civic matter and to build a fence, and to 'walk away'. Well, perhaps the fence will be built soon. And then we will see how close they can put a clothes line to the property line, and just where that property line is located. I need a retaining wall on the west side of the property also. No doubt a nice looking fence will add to the value of the property. I am thinking stone fence, as there are lots of them in the neighbourhood.
The garden in 2017
2. Renovated the front flower bed by the stone path at the front. The cement David fell over and Pat set it back up for me. I have a wooden shim to help level it. I removed the michaelmas daisies, and added milkweed plants from pots, some perennials (sages and a French lavender) and some tulip bulbs. The bed is heaped up with the addition of a bag of compost. There is more renovation required in this flower bed around the water meter.
3. Renovated the flower bed bordering the old sidewalk by the old garage at the back; from the stepping stones to the holly tree. Again, I am digging out michaelmas daisies and some old worn out campanulas. Replaced these plants with more milkweed and fennel and a few other perennials that I had growing in the milkweed pots. Added tulip and hyacinth bulbs along the sides. Hopefully the milkweed and fennel will attract butterflies. I hope to get some monarchs next summer. Most of the pots are empty and put away in the old garbage bin.
The milkweed project from 2016: The milkweed project has one showy milkweed from Dave that is in a pot and will be food for monarch larvae if I get monarchs for release next summer. There are a few more milkweed plants from seed that Dave sent. They bloom in orange/yellow. I have one tuberosa milkweed growing in the cutting garden. I got 2 swamp milkweed from Cannor and have them potted up in gallon size pots. They need lots of water and should bloom in pink and be fragrant. In addition I have 3 or 4 more plants of the showy milkweed variety that I grew from seed from a Nursery in Oregon. I hope they cross pollinate with the big one from Dave.
Monarchs to order stuff:
Monarchs to order stuff
4. Davey Tree also removed some of the lower branches of the sweet gum tree in the front. Tomorrow (Jan. 9, 2018) they will be taking out the old yellow plum tree by the pond, and the pin oak from behind the old garage.
Jump to bottom of page
January 2017
January 01, 2017
Sunday, January 01, 2017
We had a bit of snow over nite. It is a couple of degrees above and the snow is melting. There is sunshine. Early morning pictures of the trail in white. I am still doing blog posts of 2016 so will not move into the new blog until I am finished the 2016 stuff.
Monday, January 02, 2017
Only 1 degree, it froze lightly last night and there were high winds. Today is sunny but still cool with a bit of the biting wind. Some people lost power due to trees coming down. The humming bird was at the feeder. Did a Dec. 6th blog post.. have a couple more to do, and then I get to the snow photos of December 9th when we had more snow, that disappeared in the rain in a couple of days. Vancouver and the lower mainland have had colder weather and storms for a few weeks now, with nasty driving conditions.
Monday, January 09, 2017
Yesterday we were to Gwen's place for a RR potluck. I had spent hours frying up chicken breast parts and we bought some plum sauce to take to the lunch. I used 4 breasts and made about 50 pieces. We had Dan C. with us since he had been over the day before to get his truck part. While we were at Gwen's place it snowed, and was snowing when we left to take Dan to the CoHo. It was all melted at our place and down town.
This morning we had sleet at about ten o'clock. It was melted by noon. Last night about 4:00 I saw the deer along the road.
I am slowly getting my blog posts caught up to the end of 2016. I have yet to do Snow photos from Dec 9th.
Tuesday, January 10, 2017
Cool day. Made lemon/thyme scones. turned out very good. Got a blog post done.
Wednesday, January 11, 2017
coolish today. I got the guest room bed made up. Did the laundry. And have 7 photos ready for the blog post. Actually made a blog post.
Thursday, January 12, 2017
Freezing over night and only up to 3 degrees during the day. The hummingbird was at the frozen feeder, so I put out a new one and brought the older one in to unthaw.
Monday, January 16, 2017
Was 8 degrees today. Sent Pat off to lunch with his friend Paul and had breakfast for lunch and was out in the garden by 12:30 and in by 3:00.. Raked the leaves off of the little plants, the thyme circle and the grass. I don't see any crocuses up in the crocus field yet. So the perennials need to be cut back and the roses pruned. Maybe some fruit tree pruning. The pump has been running fine all the time. There is still some ice acround the waterfall. Moved more thyme from the rock path to the circle and hope it fills in the bare spots.
Tuesday, January 17, 2017
warmish.. about 8 degrees, but raining. Need to rake the leaves off the back grass and the little rockery, and maybe add some manure to the garden. Got the last of the blog posts for december done today, so they will actually be listed in the 2017 blog. Left my wedding band at the Jewellers up the street for resizing to a size 6, and my engagement ring to have the claws redone on the diamond. The guy is hard to understand. He had to cut the ring off my finger as I could not get it off over my knuckle. Got groceries, drug store and LB store and banking done as well. Finally finished this stuff at 3:40. Just about time to start the supper. Guess I will clean up the light garden tomorrow.
Wednesday, January 18, 2017
warmish and rain. Cleaned the light garden, and watered all the plants and trees. The yellow orchid has 2 more blooms on the same plant that was in bloom a while ago.
Thursday, January 19, 2017
warmer day, buckets of rain, got the ironing finished, made an apple pie. Pat peeled all of the apples.
Friday, January 20, 2017
warmish day, got a few photos of August done for the gardening page of my web page. Groceries, made dinner for us and Paul Greening, lunch at the Artisan Bistro... yummmm. We will be out for Chinese dinner on Sunday with Paul. .. I think its Sunday. and Wednesday with Art and Marlene at the fireside grill. There was a deer track in mud under the plum tree in the crocus field. There really should be crocuses up by now, but I don't see any. I had to dash out first thing in the morning and take out the blue box... kinda put me off my game today.
Saturday, January 21, 2017
10 degrees, some sun. Did not go out in the garden. We are going out to dinner tomorrow. Finished tweaking the August photos for the web page. I will be using the little photo album program where I can change things in the html. Pat and I walked over to the Jeweller and picked up my up sized wedding band and the engagement ring got new claws on it. All for 135. They are very shiny and the wedding band goes on over my knuckle very nicely.
Monday, January 23, 2017
Yesterday was a bit drippy looking outside. Pat and Paul went up Island and visited Jeff Hopps tractors, so I had the day to myself. I got the August album made, and have started the editing of the html. We went to the sechuan chinese place for supper. Very good buffet and so they are terribly busy.
Tuesday, January 24, 2017
Fed banna peels to all the roses. cleaned up a bit on the deck planters. 8 degrees today. Cleaned up a bit on the deck.
Loaded the August album to the web page. It went wonderfully well.
Wednesday, January 25, 2017
9 ° and overcast. Took the chopped up banana peel and put it on the rhubarb, cut back a few michaelmas daisies. There are little bulbs poking up. Starting the September album photos.
Saturday, January 28, 2017
about 8 degrees for the high, some sun and overcast. Got the laundry done. Paul left for home yesterday. We had pork chops here for supper the day before he went home.
Sunday, January 29, 2017
Was 10° today and overcast with light rain. Did not get outside except to take out the compost pot. All the apples I last threw out behind the garage for birds and beasts have disappeared again. Guess they are being eaten by some sort of critters.
We went to the IMAX and got our new annual pass, then went to see The Little Giants or some such name. It was about the mouse in the Sonora Desert and the Chipmonk in the forest surviving. Great cinamatography in 3D. I particularly liked the snowflakes at the end. Every one was different. Amazing creations! http://hdmovie2k.co/watch-tiny-giants-3d-2014-online-putlocker-solarmov-primewire-free
I have uploaded the August photoalbum on my old web page and have started to tweak the September photos. Seem to have a lot more photos from September than there are in August. I really must get close ups of the Lily of the Nile next year.
We will have another dinner out with Tom and Diane tomorrow, at the Spaghetti Factory. They are over in Victoria to look after Ferry who had another fall and broke some part of her... hip? and was in hospital for a few days. She refuses to go into a care home and so they need to look after her and be sure she is getting everything she needs. She has caretakers visit her every day, I think. Guess they arrange these workers and her food delivery, too. and all the other stuff she needs. They were taking her to their home over Christmas, with the grandkids around, etc; but that did not happen this year.
Monday, January 30, 2017
6 degrees (°alt plus 0176) and overcast. Watered house plants and trees. Thinking of using one of the brown pots for milkweed, if I cannot get any tall black pots from the nursery. One of the orange trees lost most of its leaves. Went to Lee Valley and got seeds for Mammoth Russian Sunflowers, Royal Family Mixed Colors Sweet Peas, Early Sensation Mixed Cosmos (3 ft), Nasturtium, Dwarf Jewel Mixed (12 inches) plant in poor soil, Milkweed, Common, Asclepias syriaca, Dill, Aneth, Swiss Chard Rhubarb chard, Arugula, rockette 3ft. Seeds cost about $16. Then got markers at Cannor 100 - 5 inch cost $11.50.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Sunny, 6° Out to dinner with Tom and Diane.
February 2017
Wednesday, February 01, 2017
5 degrees, cold windy. Made French Onion Soup for supper. Have finished tweaking 4 rows of 5 photos on the Sept album. That is one page plus one row. There will be 24 rows when finished so there will be 8 pages. 4 rows done, 20 to go.
Mark Perry marked me as a friend and invited me to a private facebook page that he is running... npegusa.. it is only for USA people. He got the wrong Margaret Meehan. Told him I would keep him in mind for megashot when we finish version2 and left his private usa group. kept some links... have no idea if they will work again since I left the page.
Friday, February 03, 2017
An inch of snow this morning. It is slowly melting in the 2 degrees temperature. Still snowing and melting all day.
Have finished 6 rows on the September album. So have 2 pages of the 8 finished tweaking.
Had a look at Rising Artists page on facebook and find that it is run by solidcodeus.com Have to figure out how to do a message to add one of Joshua's photos to the Rising Artists page -- waste of time... did not figure it out.
Saturday, February 04, 2017
Sun, 6 degrees, snow is melted.
Got 3 more rows finished in Sept album (page 3 out of 8) .
Sunday, February 05, 2017
Today I did a few changes to the Sept choices of photos and then finished another 3 rows to complete Page 4 of the album. It is about 5 degrees and overcast. Super bowl football game.
Monday, February 06, 2017
We woke up to about 4 - 5 inches of snow and it is still coming down a bit. It is just above zero so it is melting very slowly.
Tuesday, February 07, 2017
Over night and yesterday afternoon we got about another foot of snow. It is heaped up on the water table, and on trees. There are great globs of snow falling off the trees, at 11:00 but the temperature is only about zero with sunshine and a very light breeze.
Finished Page 6 of the September album. Starting 7...
Wednesday, February 08, 2017
11:00 it has started to snow. It is just above freezing. Finished Page 7. Starting 8... Went through the Flicker folder and found a whole bunch of signs and a few manipulations. Pictures at 4:00 and the snow is still coming down. There must a foot of it piled up on the water table. I put the hummingbird feeder out as the snow started to fall and it must have 5 - 6 inches of snow on it now at 4:00 o'clock. Stopped snowing about 5:00. Finished page 8 - the last page, of the album for September. Now I need to do the HTML. I made a butternut squash for supper and have 6 seeds stuck into little starter pots. God knows what I expect to do with them... need plastic or peat pots to grow them on, i guess.
Thursday, February 09, 2017
It has begun to rain. And is 6 degrees. The snow is slowly melting and gone to slush on the streets. I have made the September album and am now in the process of adding titles and description to each photo. I have 26 of the 120 finished as at 5:00. We go for won ton soup at Jack's tonite. At 8:30 I am half finished this stage of the album. More snow has melted and it is to stay at about 4 or 5 degrees to do more melting and probably more rain, over night. I am feeling pretty good about getting the September album done. I have also been sorting a few photos for the Manholes, the Hydrants, Wood, and Manipulations. Making plans for the renovated front Magnolia bed and beside the entry way... Hollyhocks, they should like the limey soil. and maybe delphiniums. I can stake them, if need be. Should move the pink pots arrangement under the magnolia tree and plant them with African Daisies, and other annuals... the annuals can be changed seasonally, maybe. I have 30 peat pots where I will plant the new milkweed seeds. If they grow, I will cut off the bottoms of the pots and put them into the renoated bed by the holly tree. Will take out the old Michaelmas daisies and campanuals and put the milkweed pots along there...The bulbs that grow there will be added back into the bed for spring color.. It can be edged with pinks.. they too are fragrant.
Friday, February 10, 2017
5 degrees, cool, breeze, and some rain. Most of the snow is gone. We have been fortunate again. The storms and piles of snow in Vacouver and the interior have been horrendous. The kokohala was closed over night and people just got moving this afternoon. Piles of snow and the roadway was like a sheet of ice. It has been similar in Vancouver for a couple of weeks now.
Finished the titles and descriptions on the September album, now need to check all the spelling etc and then do up the HTML.
The Cattleya Intermedia (Oriata x Aquinil) has opened its bud today. It is pale yellow with a magenta tip on its long round petal. There is a phalenopsis with 2 pale yellow flowers open.
Sunday, February 12, 2017
7 degrees and sunny. Made Borscht and have 2 saved in the freezer. Am getting the September album finished. I have the album made, and finished the HTML on the Index pages with new September indexes. Have yet to do the HTML on the 120 photo pages. The butternut squash seeds that I popped into a small seed starter 6 pack has started to sprout already. I will need some of those bigger peat pots for them, too. I shall start other seeds, I think. I just remembered Mom using wooden seed flats for starting her seeds. I cannot remember what time of year she started them or where she kept them so that they got sun and did not make the house or counter tops dirty. Pictures of the blooming cattleya today.
Monday, February 13, 2017
Was 9 degrees. I was out from 2:45 to 4:45. The sun is still shining. I cut back the Gertrude Rose quite a bit. I hope to do all of the roses to give them a good start to porduce some new good stems. clipped back the Irish heather and the other one in front of the bamboo. I cleaned up around the newly renovated bed taking all the clippings and lots of the leaves to the bin. Tomorrow is suppose to rain again, so was good to get some stuff done. It does not take long. I started to cut out the old branches of the honeysuckle hedge. It can be taken right down to a few inches off the ground, I think it will produce more new leaves. I stuck a boxwood clipping in the first few inches, thinking I would replace the honeysuckle, but I think it will be fine to just let the honeysuckle grow again from the bottom. There are a few early crocuses up and snow drops. Clipped back the iberis a bit, too. And the rock rose.
Have started to do the html on the photo pages. There are 120 of them, so this might take a while.
Wednesday, February 15, 2017
oh dammit. I find I have to start over changing the html for the September album... Start with changing the index html and then drag them out to make the September (index), then need to do the large photos html files. I find that the titles have not been added to All of the large photo html, so to be sure I have it right, I will use the New Folder ones that I had the fore sight to make...must check all of the large photo html to see that they have titles and captions.
otherwise, I am getting laundry done today. It is 11 degrees and raining. There are 4 butternut squash germinated. I will put them into peat pots once they have their second leaves.
Thursday, February 16, 2017
It is 12 degrees with a bit of breeze that makes it feel cooler. Pictures of the first yellow and light blue crocuses that are up, and snowdrops. Grocery shopping after lunch and now I must have a nap.
So far I have 3 september index files finished.
Friday, February 17, 2017
Was out for 3 hours today. Overcast and 8 degrees. Cleaned up more of the michaelmas daisies at the back in the fig tree bed. Cut back the fig tree and the grape a bit. Pruned the rest of the roses and clipped back the cedar under the sweet gum tree. Clipped back the heather there, also. Cut back a few more honeysuckle pillea and put boxwood clippings in. Put some boxwood in by the Pees garbage cans. That area needs compost... maybe the stuff from the old compost bin. The green bin is almost full of clippings and leaves. I filled the peat pots with potting soil and have four upstairs to transplant the butter nut squashs into. Sure hope they are able to be pollinated and produce vegetables. I love butter nut squash.
Sunday, February 19, 2017
It is 11 degrees and overcast with bits of sun. I won't be getting any gardening done as there is a VCCC car run today. There are a few crocuses up and snow drops.
I am finished the HTML on photo pages of the September album up to 35 of them. out of 120 pages.
Monday, February 20, 2017
Its about 8 degrees today. Took a drive out to Langford to the big grocery store where I think they have pretty good produce. Got vegetables, bread and frozen vegetables of two kinds of mixed. Got home about 1:00, had left over fish for lunch and a hot green tea. Then went out to garden in the heavy mist at about 2:15. Did clippings of perennials in the inner front garden, cleaned up two of the brown pots and added a bit more potting soil to the top, set them up by the front of the garage. Moved a bit more thyme to the cirlce and picked off some of the leaves. Pulled up the montebretia dead stems, and clipped back the Siberian irises and the michaelmas daisies. Have half a wheel barrow load of leaves and clippings that I crammed into the green bin with the big hammer. came in about 4:15 and made a hot toddy. There will be an easy supper of pizza and salad tonite. There was a female downy woodpecker looking over the blueberries I had left out on the deck railing. It did not seem to want any of them. The humming bird was zipping around me in the front garden. This morning, about 4:00 there was a deer walking down the road and into the neighbors yard. They do not bother my stuff.
I now have 61 pages done and hope to get yet a few more finished today.
Wednesday, February 22, 2017
Coolish out at 7 degrees. Took out compost and brown apples. We don't have very many left. We are eating the apple sauce up with yogurt at lunch time and with any pork dinners. It is disappearing. Yesterday I loaded the September album to the web page. Had a look around the site. Not bad for an amateur.
Sunday, February 26, 2017
cool day, only got to 5 degrees. Over the past few days I have learned how to change a doc made in Office into a pdf. I have made a page where I can add any pdfs. I did this so I could add a link to them from the JE2014 page. I have made the one for the plant sale in 2014 when I took plants to the VIRAGs show and sale. So, have been spending a lot of time on my web page in the last few days. As I remark on any renovations I will have this stuff show up on the albums for the yearly garden pages Like com/14Garden, etc.. I finished the September album and loaded it, and have started collecting October photos, and November. Reading the Steve Jobs book, watching some TV. AND we have made a decision to go for the 2017 Unity on a 2016 chasis..it is the twin bed. It is in Kelowna and Pat is dealing with the Rick guy by email and phone. It might be available in July. Pat has sent $5000.00 deposti over the phone on the credit card to hold it for us. We are to get the contract or whatever it is called tomorrow, Monday by email, I guess from the guy. Nothing on Skype or about MegashotS.
Monday, February 27, 2017
We got about 2 inches of snow this morning, with 3 degree temperatures it has been melting. It is mostly gone by 4 o'clock. Finished the pdfs page with music. Must remember to click the Sounds folder on the right side when loading a tune.
Pat finished the deal to purchase the Unity/Twin Bed/2017 chasiss with 2018 build, originally start at 2016 prices. Final price of $161,678.00. Sent $5000.00 deposit leaving $156,678. Expect delivery in July... no one is holding their breath for that delivery .. may get it in August.
March 2017
Wednesday, March 01, 2017
It is about 10 degrees and over cast. Dr. Cuthbert appointment this morning. After lunch I planted 11 peat pots with Showy Milkweed.. Asclepias speciosa, and 6 pots of arugula (spicey lettuce stuff).
Doing some Megashot stuff. I am the only one on this new URL with the builders and Cyrus. They are getting the contests done.. black and white is the only one just now.
Have made the pdfs page, loaded all the pages with the new pdfs link on them. Am getting Journal Entry 2014 done.. am up to June to code. Have decided that when I do each yearly album the renovations will be in each year.
Friday, March 03, 2017
rain, 10 degrees. Finished the JE2014 page. Have yet to check it over yet. Did some updates on the About page. Yesterday downloaded the ap on ipad for the Unity Leisure Travel. Took forever and then the sound was not playing. Figured it out the next morning. The intermedia ? Cat is finished its blossom. The butternut squash are starting to get the third leaves. They are going to be huge by the time it is warm enough out there to transplant them. Maybe bigger peat pots? There are 5 of them.
Saturday, March 04, 2017
The arugula has germinated. a bit of snow on the deck this am. It was sunny and about 6 degrees. Was to the orchid show and brought home a pitcher plant (noted under orchids list) and an onc. Twinkle Fantasy. $7.00 to get in $15 for the Onc. and 22.00 for the pitcher plant. I have the guy's website to look up his plants and their care. Pat dropped me off and picked me up again when I phoned him about 1:30.
email from Rick the Unity guy at Kelowna. We have new specs for the 2018 build of our mercedes manor. He called up back after Pat left word... The new standard for 2018 allow us to drop the glamour package and we picked up a wifi extender for about the same cost. They decided the other optionals we do not need. We have white suede exterior, chestnut cherry cabinetry, corian is a dark speckled greenish one.. forget the name at the moment, leather is pebble, fabric is wheat. All of the above in brownish tones except the corian. The extra bed will disappear. Apparently they are making the seats more compfortable, the cupboard hinges and doors get some kind of upgrade, as does all the lighting, it seems, and something changes on the bathroom door... I think the door just slides around the curve and disappears in its own track instead of standing open and blocking one of the beds closets. This stuff won't be shown on the web site until all the 2017 ones are finished ... or the 2016.. can't remember which. We get mattresses, and a bedspread! Wonder if the sheets come with, too. probably not or they would mention them. I could get this stuff on my ipad, way better than the crappy pdfs in the email... don't know why.
Wednesday, March 08, 2017
Have been working on web page stuff. Almost finished the JE2014 and learned a bit about .pdfs and added a page for them on my web site. We have been having rain and cooler temps until today .. it is a bit warmer, but might shower any minute. Had a bit of a walk around the back. Cigarette butts in the pond. Those fish have taken up smoking? Bloody hell. I think I see the spaghum moss growing in the moss garden. So, I should not need to get any from a commercial place. I might get a terrarium and set it up with moss growing in it, so I can take my little pitcher plant on the road with me. No way it will survive without daily attention. But don't get direct sun on the terrarium as it will fry the pitcher plant. Perhaps I could just make a terrarium out of a larger plastic jar. I will try that. Must get out and clean up the moss and the rest of the perennials.
Thursday, March 09, 2017
Coolish and raining. Grocery shopped and made swiss chard enchilades for supper. First cooked the black beans and the brown rice. Have some of both left over and have half of the enchilades left over and frozen. Tomorrow I make swedish meatballs and the cucumber salad. Have loaded the JE2014 to my page and started the JE2015. The milkweed seeds are just starting to push up leaves. Got a seed catalogue from the Medicinal Seed guys from whom I bought the milkweed seeds. Interesting little business they have as well as their web page. http://www.strictlymedicinalseeds.com The squash plants are dropping their baby leaves and growing the second set of leaves. The arugula is up but still on its first leaves. *See the original for notes on Megashot.
Tuesday, March 14, 2017
It has been raining for the last few days, although it has been a bit warmer. The curly hazel nut bush is in flower. There are crocuses up. Daffodils in bud. I have 2 plastic juice jars of rain water for the pitcher plant. It does seem to like this water better. The butternut squash - 5 of them - have 4 new leaves and the baby leaves have died off. They are about 5 - 7 inches tall. I must get them into gallon pots and start fertilizing them. I think I could keep them in Rachels room on the counter as it is starting to warm up outside. I could turn the temperature up a bit down there. Or maybe keep them on the floor by the patio door in my room. I do have another plastic tray to keep the pots in.
Yesterday I had to fix my google aaccounts and get them synced on the phone and the ipad. Fianlly everything is nearly back to normal. And for some strange reason most of my files on desktop went to pdf format and could not be opened. Well, eventually found that if I deleted the Adobe acrobat reader thing, it would fix it, and it did... they all went back to how they were except the note book and the word pad ones. So, click on open with and go to open with word pad or notebook to get them working properly again. Now I am having to sign into all my banking stuff again as the password change of my google account lost all the saved pass words. Google with its privacy stuff makes it damn near impossible to get a password reset. GODAHMIGHTY.
Was about 13 out there today. Was out from 1 to 4. Got a lot of the twigs by the garage cut up and in the bin. Cut the top 10 – 15 feet off the eucalyptus tree by pulling it down, holding it down with my foot while I cut the branches off. Also brought down a long firethorn branch. The fawn lilies have leaves coming up. There are some blue bells up so I must get after them. The smothering seems to have worked for now, as there are none up where the cardboard with leaf mulch was put, back in the wood land. I filled 5 one gallon pots with dirt and have them inside to warm up, so I can put the squash in them. Then I can keep these squash on the plastic tray by the light garden... move them when i turn lights off and on. Have moved the 4 milkweed that are up onto the light garden. They are so long and stringy. Have some moss in a plastic container and it sits under the plants on the microwave stand by the patio window/door. Must keep it watered before I put the pitcher plant into it. I clipped back the perennials in the front rectangle bed. The peonies have little sprouts coming up. Cut some of the pillea honeysuckle hedge down to the ground. This has very old twisty branches, so I hope to renew it and also adding boxwood to it. I have about 5 feet of the hedge trimmed down. Cut back the french lavedar quite a bit and hope it sprouts out again. The crocuses in the front strip are not doing very well. The leaves look like they are clipped off and the flowers are small and mostly bent over. Pat figures the rabbits are eating them. The crocuses in the strip at the front with the thyme and other herbs in it, are doing much better. So the rabbits or deer theory is probably right, as the animals do not like herbs. Got the perennials cleaned up but did not pull out the achillea. If I get a golden one, I will pull out some of the old ones when I plant it. There is a lupine coming up in front of the ratty little hedge. Probably both of them will be up. The green bin is full and at the curb for the pick up tomorrow. Someone left dog shit on the crocus field. pigs. Clipped down the autumn joy sedum. Ran out of energy before I got to do the st. johns wort and the virginia creeper.
Thursday, March 16, 2017
was a lovely day out. The pond was losing water fairly fast this morning. I went out and moved the rocks around on the waterfall. Also found more cigarette butts in there while cleaning it up. I ran the water to fill it again and overflowed it. I see the overflow is by the side that drains under the new cement blocks/viewing spot. The water level did not go down in the pond again. Something must have moved the rocks to make the water fall lose water out the back. I am seriously thinking about gettting a plastic waterfall perhaps from Capital Iron.
I brought the 5 - one gallon pots up from downstarirs and transfered the squash out of the peat pots into these gallon pots. They look pretty good. I have them sitting by the deck door to get sunlight. I have only 4 of the 11 milkweed germinated and they are long and stringy looking. Have moved them to the light garden, and hopefully they will grow some more leaves. Perhaps I could move the African Violets out of the light garden onto trays, on the floor and use the light garden for the flower and plant seed starts.
Friday, March 17, 2017
Having all kinds of trouble with my PC. A folder went missing from desktop.. the one I had the photo editor stuff in.. After searching for it for ages, I remade it. Checked some music I found in the recycle bin and just dragged them all back into music. When I went to my pdfs page Chrome would not let me see my pdfs saying I needed a security certificate... and to enable my pdf viewer... which I could not do. So, a work around was to add someone else's pdf viewer. The pdfs work in Firefox which I up dated recently. Well, now it works on Chrome, too... so there Google. I had to delete the adobe acrobat reader cause that made all my files change to pdfs.. Get it together ADOBE shitheads. I wonder if there is a substitue for the pdfs made by adobe.
Sunday, March 19, 2017
yesterday we had a nice day out with the Antique chapter of the VCCC. We picked up the Finlays and Neil (whoever) from the ferry and went to the Vic golf club for the meeting and lunch. Then to Pete Sewards place to see his newly refurbished old car, then to Pat Houle's place to see his cars and things he is working on, including the Hoffman's (Doris and George) honeymoon and first date car. They found it somewhere and Pat is putting it all back together. Was an interesting day. We had Sandy nee Hoffman along with us back to the ferry, as her parents were going to be doing more stuff on the island and she wanted to get home, I guess. She was gifted one of Vern Wellburns old cars a few years ago, before he passed away. She has a steam operators ticket. Was a sunny day, but no gardening got done.
Today the sun shone also, but only up to about 8 degrees. There was ice on the water table so it froze lightly last night. We went on a VCCC run, and bowled at the end of it. We did medium at bowling. I could do more of this! In the garden there are big crocuses everywhere except the crocus field. Pat thinks the bunnies have eaten them off this year. The ones near the herbs, that is in the thyme and lavender areas have not been eaten. So, I think the wildlife does not like the smell of the herbs. I must let thyme grow into the crocus field. Might be way better than the pathetic grass that has to stay tall until the crocuses leaves harden off. In the house, the squash have survived the transplant. There are only the four stringy milkweed seeds germinated out of the eleven pots. Guess I should stick more seeds in the pots and see if they germinate.
I tried to determine why Pat is having such trouble with slow connection on his tablet and got looking around at the useage. It seems they still have us down for a connection to the suite, which we do not use any more. And then did an on line chat with Ryan who tried to sell me up to their 3 month up grade for more mbps per for download and upload. He said we pay $62 for what we have now and at the test I did I got 15.38 download and 1.09 mbps upload, over our optimum limit, he said. the offer they have for $45 per month is way way over what I am getting. So how does this make any sense? Long term customers pay for their lure to get new customers signed up? This sucks. We are suppose to have high speed internet??? GAWD AHMIGHTY!! What's wrong with this picture. Also their speed test needed me to download the latest Adobe Flash. Google is now in a battle with adobe about their products. Apple does not let any Adobe products on their iOS. There is a reason for this. WTF is wrong with Shaw?? We need a good substitute for Adobe....who could care less about the fact that their Flash is nothing short of a tool for hackers and a main cause of privacy breaches.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Have finished with doctor and lab stuff for a month. It was coolish and overcast today. About 8. The daffodils are in bloom. Hopefully I can get out in the garden tomorrow. Have been working on the Journal Entries for 2015 and am up to May 18. I tried to load the adobe acrobat reader again and got the same result as before, so had to delete it again. The on line bank said they needed it to read the statements. Well hell... If chrome does not work, Firefox should. The new little pitcher plant is growing a couple of new pitchers. I brought in some spaghum moss and it survives. I now need a decorative pot for the moss and I will move the pitcher plant into this moss, so it can grow and spread. I am spraying it with rainwater. The squash plants are in gallon pots now. There are still only 4 milkweed seeds germinated out of the 11 seeds. I will plant more in April. The MW and the arugula are very tall and thin. I need gallon pots for the milkweed, I guess. Maybe there are peat pots of that size for them. Maybe I could line the plastic pots with newpaper so that the plants will be easier to remove from plastic pots, with less disturbance to the roots. I need to get out and take pictures. And do some blog entries.
Wednesday, March 22, 2017
Out to take photos today. Brought in a few daffodils. The garden is looking pretty drab. The crocuses are either finished or eaten by the critters. The hyacinths are opening buds, the primroses, wind flowers, also. It is 12 degrees but feels really chilly to me, so am not going out again. There was all kinds of bird song when I was out, including a cooing dove of some kind.
Thursday, March 23, 2017
Fed and watered plants and trees. It is 13 degrees but feels chilly to me.
Friday, March 24, 2017
Topped up my telus mobility from green bank for $112.01.. one cent was some crazy error in my transfer... let them do with it whatever they like. I have a new balance of $191.35 with the $91.35 carried over from before. Text msgs are .30 each and phone is .50 for calls. Am doing laundry.
Thursday, March 30, 2017
Was a lovely day out 15 degrees some sun and clouds. There is still a cool bite to the air. The garden is full of fragrance from the Spring bulbs. Hyacinths, daffodils and arabis are in bloom. Some tulips in buds. There are mourning doves calling. Lots of other birds around. My squash plants are in gallon pots and are way too big. The 4 milkweed that germinated are very spindly and are under the light garden. The arugula is hopelessly flopping around. I have been doing some work on the Journal entry pages. Learn how to make it jump to the bottom of the page; that is, to the beginning of all the links to the annual gardening pages. I might have photo albums for earlier than 2012, but might just add photos from each year into the one album with the photo pages sorted per year. I did get my first digital camera in 2000. Have been setting up accounts for all this on line receipt of statements, etc. Its going ok, but it is more work for me to look after this. It does cut down on paper coming in the mail, for sure. And the possibility of the postman misplacing our mail.
April 2017
Monday, April 03, 2017
Made cornish pastries from the potatoe book... meat pie made with mashed potatoe, mashed turnip, onion and sausage meat. Made the excess dough into little cinnamon buns. Lovely warm sunny day. While looking at the pond I saw another cigarette butt in there. Went out to fish it out and ended up out there for about an hour. Cleaned up the moss garden. At least picked leaves off of the moss. Have yet to gather up the leaves and put them in the bin. The moss is looking really lush. I have 3 hepaticas growing in that bed. One of them is pink. They love the moss. The epimedium looks good under the curly nut shrub. Its leaves are reddish and the catkins on the tree are gold. The hepatica in this vignette is sky blue. I see that the rock fern grew quite a bit bigger over winter. Its by the cement of the deck support post. The moss is really lush right now. The wind flowers are in bloom, and the hyacinths, the daffodils, the arabis, the drumstick primrose is looking good. The rest of the primroses are coming along. The pink pots look good where they are. They have a primula in bloom and several tulips with leaves. Sandy Smith's plant is doing great in the front garden. The other day I found a couple of plastic bottles on the thyme circle and under the smoke tree. Some pig... might this be the same pig as the cigarette butt pig? There was lots of bird song, but no mourning doves. Perhaps they are nesting now.. The plum tree at the back is covered with blooms. There was a bumble bee zipping around, looking for a home. Good to see it. Last year it nested in the old compost box. Hope it finds a home somewhere where the lizards cannot get it. The little lizards are out ... the sun brings them out. The Battle of the Bluebells has started. Pulled a few out in the moss garden and around the pond edges. The yellow fawn lillies are out in force and seem to be winning against the bluebells. Pulled a few out out that bed. But the woodland needs more work. The bluebells in the front need to be all dug out too. No more leaving the little pink ones and white ones. They too spread like mad.
Have got a lot of stuff done on my web page recently. September, and Journal entries for 2014 and 2015. Added more links to the annual garden photo albums. Learn how to make a jump to bottom of page... only the jump goes to where you want it to go. Adding music to the JE pages.
Did vacuuming.
Tuesday, April 04, 2017
Overcast day, about 12 degrees. Made Califlower Thai Curry soup today. Used Loveage from the garden rather than cilantro. Have 2 pkgs for freezing.
I see that I have missed the VIRAGS show and sale... and I think it was about Primulas too, on March 17th The chocolat lily (fritillaria - indeginous) has buds. The rock fern is looking good next to the post that is a support for the deck and has a cement block to anchor it. I guess the fern likes the cement block.
We have a Unity, Twin Bed camper van on order with a guy in Kelowna. We are to expect delivery in August. Have left Rick with a $5000. returnable deposit. It is going to be a 2017 chasis with a 2018 build.... meaning we got to change our cabentry to chestnut cherry, and get the extended wi-fi instead of the fancy glamour package lighting stuff. We get lava rock (grey with colored speckles) corian counter tops, the decorator interior stuff changed to wheat, which is good... just textured instead of swirly patterns, the outside is white suede, as we wanted before. When the lower mainland people were over for the Antiques meet, Pat talked to Peter Trant about his order of a Unity.. might be a murphy bed. We are ahead of the curve, Rick tells us, cause we took over a pre ordered unity. We also got a good deal on this buy, we think. This Friday we go up to Nainamo to the RV show and Dean, the Unity guy, will be there to show off a few of their camper vans. I think this one is 5 feet longer than our present Pleasure Way, wider, too; and oh yeah, stand up room for Pat! Bigger fridge and freezer, lots of storage, a table arrangement that we could leave standing, and no need to make up the beds, which have a real mattress on them. No carpet on the floor, so we might like a runner to go to the bathroom etc. We would be able to wash the runner. It has a convection oven/microwave above the Fridge so I may just bring along my very cool toaster/convection oven... there is tons of storage. A deisel generator, a shower that is separate from the toilet and sink. Lots of other really good stuff.
Final Price $161,678 (the tax on this price adds about $173.23.) We only paid $5000 downpayment. So, now we owe $156,678 when we go to pick it up in Kelowna. They are built in Winkler, Manitoba. Plus we get a few extras like full tank diesel, and propane, water hose and pressure reducer, toilet chemical and adaptors, 2 nights holiday park RV resort orientation, and a spin to win.. whatever... Would be nice to get some bedding. :))
Wednesday, April 05, 2017
Overcast and raining. Spent the am trying to sort out my books into categories on my ipad. Had some success but not finished yet.
After lunch I started laundry and making the italian sausage meatball and savoy cabbage soup. In the middle of this stuff got a call from Adam Withrow about my site having malicious malware on it. Wanted me to remove it. It cost me 200.00 to have him remove it and then bought their Site Lock firewall for protection. the whole thing cost me $781.69 USD... must check my master card for the damage in Canadian money and transfer sufficient money out of the chequing account to cover it and a couple hundred for gambling. I got dinged with $3.50 last month on their cash withdrawal. Canadian: $1048.64 Transfered $1050.00. Feel like I have been rolled over by a road grader. Then Pat found a 2015 LT van for sale.. a twin bed model with all the stuff. The wood is the white stuff. and they have a dog. I don't feel like jumping at it, even for the $30,000 less than what we paid. We go up to Nainamo on Friday to the LT RV show. I do not want to cancel that and go to Chilliwack to see this one advertised.
After getting my site lock firewall set up and running my old fTP would not connect.. the site has a new ip and I cannot figure out how to add it to the old FTP. So, I have spent hours learning how to use the site uploader. it is 3:30 and I finally got the September corrected. I had deleted some files, thought the old upload would kick in .. but noooooooo...it was messed and had to manually go back and load each friggin file. also got into more trouble trying to sign in to Google... GAWD AHMIGHTY... my gmail got lost and kept going to an old margaret.mmmee instead of the maggie.mmmee I was even sending a mail from modeltpat at one point... scary stuff. Finally got it all sorted.
Thursday, April 06, 2017
Was a truly lovely day. Too bad I had to meet it with the volitile modeltpat gmail password change. Maybe Pat should have a new tablet/phone thing. Hope he can have a look around London Drugs. I have a coupon from them for an $85. Flex 2 fit bit. Might be fun to have one. Went to my computer after that and looked at an email from godaddy guy. Oh yeah being ever so helpful. Well getting the site lock firewall should keep the hackers off my site. I hope someone at Sitelock knows about nuking them when they show up. There is soo much of this shit going on. I should check my yahoo account and see that I change my password if nothing else. I still have a lot of photos up on Flickr that I really DO like... the old Victoria Grid stuff. Changed the password. I deleted a bunch of old bookmarks on my Chrome... still needs more work. It seems faster, now.
Was about 15 degrees today, some sun some cloud. A perfect gardening day but I had to recover from the marathon technical (for me) adventure of last nite. The buds on the plum tree at the back have opened and we have a glorious white show over the deck railing. The primroses are showing great colors, and the daffodils, hyacinths, , fawn lilies. I need more abretia. The moss is looking really fluffy, and is filling in a little more towards the rhodo at the edge of the deck. The hepaticas are loving the moss and beginning to spread a bit.
Sunday, April 09, 2017
On Friday in the rain we travelled to the York St. diner for our lunch, and on to nanaimo to the RV show. The TB unity did not appear in the show as the owners took delivery of it and did not let Dean use it. Pat met Dean in the MB van and they chatted some. Pat measured the hitch height on another model and figures he will need another hitch for the trailer. After the show, we went back to the Dorchester hotel to our reserved room and had cattos before dinner at about 5:30, then to our room to play on gagets and watch tv. Breakfast in the morning and a slighty rainy but nice leisurely drive back home. Supper at home about 5:30... no lunch. I got working on my wretched FTP for my web page and managed to find some of the Jan. 30th malicious maleware files and deleted them, of course. Still have a few to find, yet. Was up til 2:30 again. Am getting better at this FTP think, but not good at SiteLock Smart Scan thing. I emailed that Adam guy about it today and hope to hear back from him, as I need help with the FTP password vault, and how to add sitelock as a user on the FTP... they don't like the name or password I assign to them. Particularly picky about their security... of course they are in the business.
Beautiful day out, but I am doing this web page crap and a bit of laundry, meals, and I need a nap. There is men's world curling the final game for the gold on tonite at 5!
Tuesday, April 11, 2017
It is a lovely 12 degrees day. I cleaned up under the sink and the compost pot this am. Yesterday I started adding the SiteLock badge to my web page and taking off the ssl certificate stuff. Put chrome to its default settings and need to clean out more bookmarks. I never go there anyway. I should just delete them all. Was out from 3:)) to 4:30 and weeded the moss/stepping stones path from the old sidewalk to the beginning of the Japanese garden area. The moss is lovely and lush. The chocolat lily is in bloom and the primulas. I really must get photos
I have more mistakes and pages that do not load on my web page. So, I need to go through all the albums that are finished and check everything on each. I need to load the pages folder directly to the pages folder on the main web root, and the same with the images and the thumbnails. July and August both appear to work. Maybe sitelock hasn't finished with them yet. I gave them 90 minutes for a session... maybe they need more. As I was correcting the Lambs pages, I could not move one of the files cause Site Lock was on it... GAWD AHMIGHTY. Well, now that I think I know how to do this FTP upload of the albums, I shall try correct the series ones that seem to be broken. So, more pages to add the SiteLock badge to, and delete the SSL script. These are all html pages so I will reload them to the main web root folder.
Thursday, April 13, 2017
Yesterday was a nice day with some showers. We were to see Michael at the RBC. We are doing great. Pat told him about the Brompton Split Bank and its high dividend return. He got quite excited about it. Went for lunch at the Bistro. After supper I got a few more things figured out on the FTP. Loaded Sounds and redid the Links page and loaded it. It seems to me there is an extra bit of code at the top that lets my music play. I was having such trouble with Google. It seemed to me that Google was no longer letting background music play with the coding I had. Firefox plays it, so Firefox is now my default browser. This is good. In checking my links I read a bit on Trevors blog... and he says that FireFox does not allow Adobe Flash... YEAAAA. Now I just have to get these pocket bookmarks into an available spot for all my recently used URL. Have to learn how to do that.
Its a 13 degree day out there, but looking like it might rain a bit. We had a lot of rain overnight a couple of days ago, and a bit yesterday. I have 6 1.89 L jugs of rain water saved for the pitcher plant. One of the butternut squash plants that are in gallon pots, has bloomed. Has two blossoms on it. Am considering setting up the screen by the Pees garbage cans to plant the sweet peas next to it. I could tie it to some stakes. Its a good sunny spot. I can add some potting soil along there as the soil is mostly clay. The yellow plum tree has begun to lose its petals. The magnolia has buds opening. the arabis is all in bloom. I need to move some more of it under the magnolia tree, as they are in bloom at the same time. The arabis is evergreen also, so this will be a nice ground cover for that area of the front garden. Hyacinths are in bloom all over the garden. The rabbit has been cropping off the crocus leaves. The pasque flowers are in bloom and look very good. The little trillium is in bloom at the front. The primulas, chocolat lily, and hepatica are looking good along the mossy stepping stones in the back garden. Made 3 packages of root vegetable and apple soup today. Very good. Have some for supper. In the afternoon we went out to Lee Valley to try and find filters for the compost pot. None there, and none at Canadian Tire out there. Am tired. Got out after supper about 7:00 and got some photos.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Have made the public_html folder in web root. Have begun to load files to it in this manner: up load the html file to public_HTML folder, then delete the html file from WEB ROOT. Have to do this to get the files out of web root where the only one that should be in there is the index one, i think. When loading album folders, be sure to load the pages, thumbnails and images FOLDERS separately... each to the coresponding WEB ROOT folder.. that is: pages to web root pages, images to images web root images. It is a matter of having the right files open. If the pages do not work they can be transfered for each individual photo.html on the LEFT side of the FTP by clicking the file and then the move... they can be transferred in batches. I have January, January2, boquets, bridges, and 06 panama done. The last three being under construction files. I must see if I transfer the img. files of them into images web root folder.
Was out in the garden from 3:00 to 4:30. Finished weeding the stone path at the back from the sidewalk up the moss garden and around the corner to the big stone at the beginning of the dry stream. Dug out a lot of vetch and michaelmas daisies at the sidewalk end of the path. The mower would not go so I uplugged it and plugged it in again to charge up. It is quite cool out there, despite the 14 degrees and bits of sun. The breeze was wickedly cold. I moved some moss off the patio area to the cement edges along the pond.
Saturday, April 15, 2017
Another day of overcast some sun some rain and 13 degrees high and 6 degrees overnite. I cleaned the humming bird feeder, scrubbed off the deck table a bit, did a load of laundry, paid the water bill, watered some of the plants, plus all my usual chores, and made the capiccino all before 10:00.
Sunday, April 16, 2017
Happy Easter. Well I had that FTP on Godaddy just smokin today, after capiccino and lunch. I have nearly all the albums on Gardening working. I need to load the whole folder of which ever album and then transfer the pages and the images on the left side of the FTP. Finally making some head way.
Later put the duck and the squash in the oven. We had a good feast night. Pat had his old Model T out to the VCCC by himselt but did not do all the run. Seems the car ran well.
Monday, April 17, 2017
Was a nice sunny day in the am and rained in the afternoon. Talked to the SiteLock guys and got them to do their Smart settings. Talked to Godaddy, about the removal of the item.. which was the purchase of the one time scan to remove malware. No idea why they need to remove it, since the scan was done and the malware removed. Lost a nights sleep over this crap. Then that Gill Lyon sent me a link to join this messenger thing. It seems it is a face book thing, and they are moving off facebook and so want everyone to get their ap and join them to where ever they go... You get all your messages in one place. Well, I don't need it. don't want yet another set of security questions, passwords yada yada. We had a nice salmon loaf for supper. Watched a silly movie, then came up and loaded the June pages to pages and images to images. Sigh. I must get and learn how to set up and use File Zilla. I am just scared of it not working too. and being further embarrassed about needing help to set it up. Site Lock can now scan to their hearts content. I am still being evaluated by GoDaddy, as I have a complex page. Well, I found the page JE2015 was adding some ansi or whatever that stuff is to the bottom of the page. Tried to change the bottom of the page, but am still getting the crap on my on line page. But I do not get it on the new version I just uploaded. to hell with it, too. I have 3 more site lock badges on changes 1, changes 2 and changes3.
Tuesday, April 18, 2017
Well, my web page is looking a lot better on the FTP File Manager thingy. I was having fits about it being such a great mess last nite. I guess SiteLock made the mess and then cleaned it up. Hope I am learning how to operate this thing. I seem to have the main pages all working properly with music and all the pictures. I might have to fix some of the photo albums, but shall leave it alone for a while.
It was a nice day today, but said it was going to rain, so we planned to shop this afternoon. We finally found a filter for the compost pot. Got some cucumber salad made and some Tzatkiki sauce made. Its yummy. Going to try it tomorrow with our pork chops.
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Planted 7 more seeds of the showy milkweed into the peat pots where the seeds planted earlier did not germinate. The 4 that did germinate are on the light garden and are tall and stringy. The Medicinal Seeds information says they do not like to live in pots. They have taproots, so do not like to be transplanted. The arugula seedlings are stringy, and sit by the deck window. 2 of the squash plants have had 2 blooms each. The blooms die off very quickly... maybe 5 - 7 days that they are open. Perhaps they will get more blooms when they are out in the garden, if the soil ever warms up. I think I will transplant them by the oak tree in the cutting garden, but do not let them smother any of the flowers. The waterfall is running very well lately.
Friday, April 21, 2017
It is a nice sunny day and is 13 degrees at 9 am. The Pot. Lisa Taylor minature cattalya has 4 buds! The butternut squash plants are all getting blossoms. Crazy things. I hope they grow some squash fruit! Yesterday, Pat got batteries (2) for the mower. He had me take pictures of how the new batteries get reinstalled. I cleaned up the inside of the hood of the mower while he was gone. Chris at the all battery store said to: 1. Put the charger on for 24 hours after using; and 2. once a month through the winter. Do not leave it plugged in all the time. This must apply to the hedge trimmer, as well. Now I am planning to set up a trellis for the sweet peas made out of bamboo stakes along the Pees side. I can attach some light gardening plastic screening (black) to the bamboo with twist ties. So shall soak the sweet peas tonite and put them into little peat pots and they should be ready to go out the beginning of May or thereabouts. :) The back plum tree has lost most of its bloom petals around the back and is growing little fruit and leaves. Was out at 2:30 and got in about 4:30. Pat has fixed the mower, so mowed the grass back and front. Two bags of grass clippings etc into the bin. Weeded dandilions out at the back, weeded a bit in the iris bed behind the garage, lots to do there yet, dragged all the dirt bags into the garage, put the perennials I bought last fall (pots) and the milkweed pots up by the fig tree with the anemone and the pink scaboisia to the front garden by the magnolia bed. The maltese cross is tall in its pot. Weeded a bit in the irises by the herbs and the oak tree, more weeding to do there yet. Skimmed off the pond a bit. Had a look under the deck. The ferns are doing good. The skimmia has blooms again, the solomons seal by the Pees corner is coming up and will spread, as will the bit of white hellebore that is in that area. There is a fir tree that is getting quite big. I will need to top it when it reaches deck height and let it be a further screening from where the Pees thrashed the privacy screen/hedge. The bamboo is helping fill that out too. I will need another hedging cedar for the end of that hedge, as the one I planted there seems to have disappeared. Was very warm out there in the afternoon, above 16 degrees. not making much headway on fixing my web page after site lock messed about with the placement of my files... will make notes of all that needs fixing and then call the go daddy hosting people and ask them if they can delete the messed up photo albums and see if their FTP will let me reload them. I cannot seem to get it to overwrite the albums that give me the 404s. Tomorrow we will be away in the Bentley to Pt. Renfrew and back to Sooke for dinner then home. It is going to be a full day. Pat thinks we can come home after dinner. Well, we will see.
Sunday, April 23, 2017
On Saturday in the rain we took the Bentley to Sooke Chevron Station to top up the gas tank then on to Port Renfrew, to the new Pub for a good lunch of Seafood chowder. After lunch we go back to Sooke to the Petrocan station, as the Chevron had its systems down, to top up the tanks again. Pat figured that we did not get a great gas mileage rate. There were some backfires, and Dave Baron said he saw little sparks emitted also. He told a story of having blown a birds nest or something out of his tail pipe when his car was doing this backfire stuff. We take the Bentley home, freshen up a bit, change clothes and head back out to the meet hotel at Sooke. Nice place, good food and service at both places. After Marney Peeson decided to do a whole lot of the name place shuffles at the dinner table we ended up at the table with the Peeson kid and grandkids, and the Miln (nee Joanne Fane) 2 grand children. The Peesons are complete idiots especially in contrast to the Miln boys (twins of 15 years old) who were mature gentlemen. I must say they were far better company than the Peeson grand parents who were originally assigned to the table by the hotel staff, would have been. A few more people arrived later who were not on the list of the assigned tables, and they were placed at other tables. (Steve and Barb Harris, who were staying at the hotel, for 2 of them) Arthur and Thomas did not stay for dinner.) We were following Arthur's car on part of the run, and they did not appear to have brake lights.
In the middle of the night last nite I had decided to take down my web site and get re-imbursed for the hosting space. Then early this morning I tried the site on my ipad. Lo and behold, January was on line again, and the JE2015 mess has gone. I won't load the new page just yet. So, I have typed up the Fuel Economy run on the cars/rroc page, but there will be no album as there no stops and it was raining anyway. So, the page is on again. I should try to leave it alone for a while. May has yet to appear again ... and so on and s0 on.
Put 30 sweet pea seeds that I had soaked for 2 nites into the little plastic potting holes, added more dirt on top of them and watered them all. Have moved the African violets off the lite garden and have a tray in the black tray which is full of water at the moment. When it dries I will add these plastic pots right down on the black tray. Moved the African violets to the top of the tray by the deck door, and 3 on to the table. in plastic saucers with legs under them. I threw out a sick African violet. The Lisa Taylor mini orchid has 2 of its buds open and 2 more on their way. I hope it warms up soon as the milkweed plants are getting really tall and are ready to go out... one in the brown plastic box where I am going to trash the orange tree, and the other three into the ground in the peat pots with the sides cut open. Dave's milkweed plant is sending up shoots, so it looks happy enough in its pot. I might move the other ones that have orange blossoms into the ground to liberate another pot for a new showy plant I have some put into peat pots and they should be germinating soon... at least some of them might.
Monday, April 24, 2017
Sunny and bits of cloud, about 15 degrees. Pat took me to the Dream Threads place to have my pants hemmed up. I walked home. I went down the hill instead of back to Carey Road, attempting to find an way into the trail. The postman I asked said to take the next street over to get a way through to the trail. I did and the way through to the trail was a muddy path through the brambles and across the end of the Panama Flats water. It was muddy and barely passable. I got home about 2:45, after looking along the trail near our place. People are dumping leaves and grass clippings by one of the hydro polls. There are no fawn lilies up by the bridge, just ivy.. way way too much ivy and black berries. I might clean up the grass across the street and mow it. Must encourage the neighbors to think about helping out, since Saanich parks people seem unable to do this stuff. Must have been at least an hour and a half walk up hill and down and through the duckshit swamp. I must be a better person for it.
Tuesday, April 25, 2017
To Dr C's office. My blood counts are almost normal. She is going to keep on eye on me so I go for another lab in June and back to her office.
Made roast beef for supper.
Spent a bit of time locating the con jpeg files I need to upload for the travel page. I have photography done. I am finding that I will need to redo all the photoshop albums with the new little photo album maker that is built with css. I skyped Cyrus about getting solidcode to build me a photo album maker like this one but where I would not need to change the 'index' file to the name of the actual album... say January. Does not seem possible for him to do such a thing.
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
The Pot.Lisa Taylor Gallis 'Nora' (Bkc, California Girl x Sc. Beautort) orchid has 4 blossoms, on 2 stems. Has fragrance. Made english cucumber salad, made 3 pkgs of vegetable spaghetti sauce, and Harvard beets. Did a load of laundry. It is a sunny, breezy 15 degree day. I had to be in the house, though, to wait for call back from the Dream Threads lady. Am to go at 1:30 tomorrow. It is $17 for hemming 2 pair of pants. Got some con jpegs loaded to my web page and have started to finish the JE2016 page.
Friday, April 28, 2007
Watered and fed the house plants, watered the trees. Dragged the dead looking tree outside. I am going to empty it out of its pot, and use the pot for one of the new milkweed plants. Two of the newly planted milkweed seeds have germinated. There are 2 sweet peas showing little leaves also. Was out in the afternoon from 1:30 to 4:30. Mowed the lawn. The mower seems to have lost power. I am going to leave it plugged in and see if it is better next time. Pat thinks it might be worn out, and time for a new one. The only thing besides the battery that changed was the time I left it plugged in. Cut the orange tree off and dumped the dirt and roots out on the fig tree bed. Have cut back more of the honeysuckle pilea hedge along the Pees side. I am about 2/3 finished that side. I am adding more little cuttings in and hope they take hold. The branches were very knarly and I have cut them back to about 6 - 8 inches high. I expect they will grow out again to make a nice little hedge. I am cutting back the california lilac also. I have the green bin about 3/4 full. There is a rufus sided towhee nexting under the little cedar bush by the berengaria (elephant ears). The nest has 3 eggs in it. Hope they hatch out before I need to do the hedge trimming. The marsh marigold and the water hawthorn are in bloom, lots of tulips out now.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
It is a cooler day with light rain. After all my gardening, and sitting on the damp ground, I needed a good night's sleep, last nite and went to bed early and slept the night through. All muscles aches are gone. I am getting some work done on JE2016, and am up March in coding and correcting.. Also the Russian Files problem is fixed. Hurrah. According to SiteLock I have some header problems to fix... I will have to read this over again. The page still loads and runs fine... except for all the old photoshop albums that I need to redo in the little css photo album builder. Have pictures for the new January sorted out... I hope to end up with 45 pictures to make 3 pages of 15 photos for the new January. The height of each photo will be 600. I am settling down a bit with this SiteLock and the Godaddy FTP.
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Well, finally got the September album to work by loading the September1, September2, etc to the folder of September so that the URL path is now right as it goes to .com/September/September and takes me back to which ever page from the large photo. Whew... took me long enough to figure that out. Now I am going to finish the JE2016 and then get on with remaking the old photoshop albums. So... I should probably get File Zilla, some day. Not just ready for it now.
Its a warmish 13 degrees day with wind and some clouds and bits of rain. I saw the rufous sided towhee leave the nest and went out to get pictures, but could not find the nest. She must cover it with leaves or something when she goes out to eat. So, wondered about the garden taking a few photos. Looks like the few thyme I planted are finally going to take hold. I seem to still have half of the little honeysuckle hedge to renovate, yet. Picked off dandilion blooms and discared them off the garden. I need to get out and dig them all out. I really don't like that big white pot with the willow in it. I need to move it and the willow. Lots of weeding to do yet. The little daphne on the little rockery at the back is in bloom. Lovely looking little shrub and fragrant.
May 2017
Monday, May 1, 2017
Was up at 6:00 today after an early nite to bed and a good sleep. The towhee seems to spend quite a bit of time off the nest. I have 6 milkweed plants in the bigger peat pots. These seeds to not have a great germination rate, but if I can have these 6 plants survive I shall make room for them, with at least one going into the brown pot that I liberated from one of the orange trees. I have topped up the soil in these pots and moved them unto the bottom tray of the light garden. Also on this tray I have 11 sweet peas germinated in the small plastic pots, with more to come. I plan to plant them by the Pees garbage bins, with a row of bamboo stakes vertically and rows of horizontal bamboo woven into the upright stakes and tied to them, or perhaps I could build this fence and use the big staple gun to attach them. Can put the fence into the ground after I have the peas planted. This morning I put 9 mammoth sunflower seeds into little plastic pots and await the germination. I will be putting the arugula out in the garden in the brown trough, soon. The butternut squash plants have one blossom just now. I don't think these blossoms are getting pollinated. It is a rainy day, and about 12 degrees. Got the on line banking stuff done. Laundry and ironing done yesterday.
Salix repens 'Boyd's Pendula' The one in the tall white pot. An alluring specimen for bonsai, rock garden and container enthusiasts, this petite ground-hugger greets spring with adorable fluffy cream-colored catkins on slender naked branches. The slim prostrate twigs and branchlets divide into thinner curved reddish stems, weaving a unique pendent drape of tiny gray-green deciduous leaves sporting silvered undersides. Full sun ensures optimum growth.his dwarf trailing willow from China mixes nicely with trailing conifers in the garden! It also excels at cascading over walls, boulders and makes an exquisite bonsai. Small catkins on naked spring stems are followed by attractive silver green willowy foliage. 10” tall and 3’ wide in 10 years. An excellent container specimen! Sun to part shade, moist soils...rare and choice. Since it gets to be 3 feet wide and likes moist soil I need to plant it near the pond so its roots can get into the water... or make a hole lined with old pond rubber and raise the plant above this in a plastic pot with the bottom cut out, and stones or mossy stumps to hold in the dirt. It can cascade over the edges. It does not look good in the tall white pot. and it is in the way of walking around that side of the pond. Mine is rather straggly and needs to be shaped and pruned. So, its plastic pot with bottom cut out to grow in a mound of soil over a rubber hole that retains moisture.where the roots can extend into and yet does not water log the plant in winter. So, I will probably leave it where it is until we are back home.. maybe just before the rains start.
I deleted the old January files on the Godaddy FTP, and then I made up an under construction for the January album and have the photos found. I have yet to sort the 52 photos down to 45 for three pages of 15 each for January. I have copied the Hawai 1990 pictures into the album in the web page under travel, of course. I need to sort these into 20 good photos... I could have one page with 5 across and 4 down.
Tuesday, May 2, 2017
Was awake at 6:00 again, watching the birds out the front window. There was a flicker, house or purple finches, the female nuthatch, robins (one with a mouth full of lichens seemed to fly off to the Pees side, where there might be a nest), and the rufous sided towhees tending the nest (maybe they take turns sitting on the eggs). There were a pair of racoons, and people and their dogs. Way earlier there was a feral cat that seems to come from 2 doors down.
I cannot figure what is going on with my gardening albums that are done up with Adobe... sometimes they work, and different ones never work, most of them need pages or the large photos added... Site Lock does not seem to be able to put them back together properly. I will be redoing January for sure, as I have started on it by gathering up 52 files that I will prune down to 45 for 3 pages of 15 pics each... 3 rows of 5 in each row. 600 height and whatever for width. The albums made with the css photo album maker all work fine... I had thought I would be redoing them all, as the adobe ones are old technology and i cannot edit the pages with notepad. Adobe is no longer making photoshop, so I think I will stick to my original plan and just redo all the albums. The under construction for January does not work yet. I uploaded it yesterday. deleted the old stuff out of there with the godaddy FTP. So, guess I will have to get FileZilla and learn to use it. Must phone Adam Withrow and get him to help me start it up.
Planted 9 cosmos seeds in little plastic trays. I made chicken soup this morning and it turned out very well.
Wednesday, May 3, 2017
I was awake before 4:00 this morning, and woke Pat up. He meant to set the clock for 4:00 but had set it at 5:00, so he was just as glad to be awake. He had to get his stuff packed and ready to go pick up Jim and pack his stuff then get out to the ferry a half or an hour before their reserved spot for the 7:00 am ferry. It is a lightly raining day, with about 14 degrees and no wind. I was out to get photos of the bird's nest. They seem to have 4 little babies.. eyes shut fuzz that is not yet feathers. The parent birds are both feeding them. More photos of the tulips, the bleeding heart, the aubretia on the water fall, marsh marigolds, perennial geraniums have buds. Those geraniums are great, easy care plants. Some photos of the rockeries. Everything is really late this year. The apple tree has blossoms. I have seen the humming bird at the little flowers in the front, but have not yet seen it at the feeder, that I cleaned up and set up about a week ago. I now have 14 sweet peas sprouted, and 6 milkweed growing. The arugula is stringy .. maybe I will just plant some out to the trough as these things do not seem to be suitable to transplant.
I am taking out the old photo albums made with photoshop off my website and replacing them with under construction pages. So far I have January, (which works) February, March and April done on the Gardening page. Hope to finish the other 6 albums today. Godaddy no longer has the notice that it is evaluating my page... bah... they get enough money out of me.
Thursday, May 4, 2017
Was a very warm sunny day. Walked to the lottery ticket store to mail the mom day letter, and pick up lottery tickets. Did not get outside as I fell asleep for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Then deleted the Paths and Art album. made liver, bacon onions beets for supper, and watched 2 James bond movies, back to back while having supper. Can't find the tv schedule for tomorrow.
Friday, May 5, 2017
Was cooler, windy. I have finished deleting all of the Gardening albums. There were 10 of them deleted. Have July, August, September done up with the new web album creator. Have started the Series: 8 of them to delete and need to clean up the construction pages in my garden hard drive folder. Have uploaded the 8 series folders on the FTP to start deleting them. This is really painful but has to be done. Was not outside at all today. Trying to get some headway made on this web page stuff. I have finished the Gardening Page, the Progress page, My Town has no albums made, so it is finished.
Sunday, May 6, 2017
15° today, and sunny. Watered the house plants. Moved the arugula and squash out to the deck on the table. Moved the Orange Trees outside. I have 3 left. I am using one of brown pots to plant one of the milkweeds, and keep it on the patio to see that it grows. I have the milkweed starts, the sweet peas, the cosmos, the sunflowers on the bottom tray of the light garden. They are all stretching to the light. I have 2 milk cartons tops cut off and holes in the bottom to transplant milkweeds into, before they go out into the garden. I am tired from lifting the trees out, and cleaning up after them.
The Create, Pond and Japanese albums do not seem to be deleted... Paths and Art finally work as the under construction page. This stuff is really painfull! I am waiting for the last 3 of the gardening albums to be deleted before I proced with the 8 albums of the series that are completed on the photography page. Then there will be all the Travel albums to undo and re-create. I have 3 albums made with the new little web album generator and they work fine and look really good. The new January is next. I deleted iris1, Iris2 etc from images...I think they were something from May that did not get deleted. I thought they were suppose to be called MayIris1, etc. oh well... no doubt it will all come out in the wash.
Monday, May 8, 2017
Cooler, overcast day. The rufous sided towhee's nest is empty. I did not check on it for a couple of days, now the birds are gone. They could not possibly have grown feathers and flew away in the past 4 days. So sad. I have not blogged for months. I am too busy trying to get my website put back together. I think I will just try to get the 8 series that are done in photoshop put into construction pages and leave Travel the way it is until I get gardening page finished. And finish the 8 little series albums in photography also. The squash and arugula plants that I put out on the deck table look like they are in shock today. The rest of them .. sunflowers, sweet peas, and milkweeds that are germinated and are on the light garden tray are all tall and stringy. Baby Pee was roaring around with his weed eater the other day and some other noisy thing along their sidewalk, so I am not sure my sweet peas would survive along that area by their garbage bins. I think I may put them in on my side of the english oak tree. Was out in the afternoon from about 1 to 3. Got the grass mowed.. took down the crocus field. It did not look like much this year. So this might be the end of it. There is a peony coming up in that rectangle under the plum tree, so I should get the blue bells ripped out of there. It takes perserverance to keep after them to get them gone. There are 3 huge bamboo shoots coming up in the grass by our driveway. I must get some of the round up for them. I moved them off with the mower. I moved the pendula willow to beside the waterfall. It looks quite nice there. The pond looks a whole lot better without that great white pot there. I need to get rid of the other big white pot that has the new tender perennial in it, too. It upsets the balance of the shape of leaves along that side of the pond. I need to get rid of the blue bells there too. I smothered them with newspaper and cardboard but they are still coming up. I think it will take another covering this summer. I have a couple of tall pots liberated for milkweed now. Have to wait to see if any milkweed comes up in the pots The Dave davis one has several little shoots poking up. So I might attempt to get some monarchs for release this summer. Not sure if that will work though, as we will be away in July and then we get the Unity in August. I did some coding on the JE2016 and am up to August on it. I am ignoring the web page, as it is driving me crazy. Don't feel like doing anything on it. I finished reading the Madoff book. Unbelieveable how he got away with robbing so many people of sooooo much money over such a long period of time. I finished the Alice in Wonderland, which was a bit of fun, and now I am reading Kim by Rudyard Kipling. Am more than half finished, can't put it down.
Wednesday, May 10, 2017
Is overcast and up to 20 degrees. I filled the water tub on the deck. The pendula willow looks good beside the waterfall. I moved all of the plants started from seed out to the deck and cleaned up the tray on the light garden. I now have 3 milk cartons to plant the milkweed plants into as they grow. And then I have 1 brown large pot and another tall black pot for the milkweed. I will have gallon pots from the squash. There is a small brown fennel in the trough where I will transplant the arugula and add more arugula seed. It will germinate quickly outside as it is warm enough. I am very tired as I was up till 12:30 watching the election results. Seems there will be some ridings recounted because the final counts were so close. But there is more votes to be counted yet from the people who are not at home, such as sailors, etc. It will take at least 2 weeks to get all of them in and counted. The liberals have 43 and the NDP 41 and the Greens hold the balance of power with 3 sure seats. Unless the Liberals are able to get the majority of seats of 44. It is looking like a minority government with the Greens holding the balance of power.
Rick from Kelowna phoned and our Unity is projected to be factory finished by July 13, and needs a few days for delivery to Kelowna and for Rich to get it equipped and ready for our pick up. He needs to call Pat back regarding his including the white stuff on the cupboards where we just want it all cherrywood, no white stuff. Our Dodge Lodge is so very white all over inside. So, if everything goes as planned we should be able to hit the road in it at the beginning of August. We should fly out to Kelowna to pick it up, and sell the Dodge Lodge after we have the Unity home, maybe after we get back from Sask., probably the end of August, as car stuff starts in September... maybe we could sell the Dodge Lodge after the September car trailer hauling is over.
I have finally figured out how to up load the old albums. Have to load the main .htm to the web root, and then up load each individual file to pages, to images and to thumbnails. I now have Create Working, have Pond working and will finish Japanese tomorrow. I experimented on Uchuck II and have it working... in Travel. I shall get the 8 old Series album done, and then will be finished Gardening and Photography. The site lock delivers me a PASSED on the badge every day... no malicious malware. I am amazed at how well it works on my ipad. I have to purge the cache on Chrome on desk top quite often.
We have an email from Lloyd... Jo is not doing very well... seems to have pneumonia again and this takes it toll. Lloyd says she is exhibiting some signs of level 7 of this disease. She is not eating or drinking much... does not seem able to do this.
Thursday, May 11, 2017.
It has been a rainy day. I left the milkweed, sweet peas, etc out on the deck. They will be ok. But I must get out and put them and new seeds into the garden or pots where they will go. I have 2 big pots ready for milkweed and 4 milk cartons to put them into so they can grow on a bit more and I can just cut the milk cartons off of them when I go to plant them in the garden. Lots of plants in bloom. Tulips, the peony tree, primulas, the yellow epimedium looks so good. The garden looks good with the water hawthron in bloom and the pendula willow next to the waterfall. Not sure what I will do with that big white pot.
I finished reloading "Japanese" album for the Water Garden page, now that whole page works and has its SiteLock Seal. I also reloaded the Paths and Art page. I did that page up in 2010, with 650 large images. They are too big, to be able to read the bottom of the page without scrolling. So, the next albums I make should have smaller images.. maybe 600 high. I will attempt to rejuvenate the May and June albums also.. maybe April... will check it out. January needs to be redone, and probably February, too.
Friday, May 12, 2017
Put the peat pots down on the patio, then potted the milkweed into milk cartons and one into a tall black pot. Have the brown pot available for one of the two milkweed seedlings that are still in the house. Have the echevaria on the deck. The sweet peas and the arugula and the sunflower seeds still need planting out. I plan to put them all into the cutting garden near the oak tree. The cosmos, such as they are will go to the front magnolia tree, where I have 3 plants in pots waiting to be transplanted. There is a nice Japanese anemone and an echinae that is just coming up, and a pink mist pink cusion plant that is not showing yet, all to be planted in that magnolia bed. Along with more cosmos seed. I did all this in the am before it started raining after lunch. Later in the day I scooped water off the water table into another plastic jug for the rain water collection. This jug is brownish because the peat pots were sitting in on the water table. The pitcher plant is going to love that stuff, as it seems to like spagham moss to grow in.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
I am redoing the Change page, which is the first JE page for 2012. Site lock was complaining about their being emails on that page. So, in looking to remove the emails, I have been finding lots of spelling etc. errors to fix. Yesterday afternoon, I listed the pages that I need to move for the June album. There are 160 of them. I was going to do that today but got side tracked on this Change page.
I had a bit of a walk around the garden with my camera. Lots of weeds and dandilions, but it won't take long to clean that stuff up. I had a look at the Pees side along their sidewalk. I think I can cut back their side of the cedar hedge to about 5 feet tall. This involves cutting big trunks of these cedars that are about 4 - 5 inches thick. I will leave the inside trunks to grow up over the top railing of the deck by 3 or 4 feet for screening from their deck. I also want to take down the clematis to a pruneable height... don't care what it looks like... it grows quickly anyway. Shall take down the one by our kitchen window also. Maybe even take it out completely as the blossoms always turn brown as soon as they are rained on and it is brushing against the house. Have to cut back the cottoneaster also. When I mentioned this to Pat he said to show me what I wanted and perhaps he would help me with it, when I said I would have to hire someone to do this. All this is in preparation for downsizing someday and perhaps resale. By the time that day arrives, all this removal of these big trees and overgrown shrubs will have grown in again and no longer look scalped. The little pilea hedge that I cut way back is already growing out again and will get another trimming to shape it as it grows up. I still need to trim back the boxwood, now that the birds are gone. I think I will treat the popcorn bushes to some round up painting to get rid of them as they are horrible messy things. This will leave the old plum tree. I wonder if Trevor will want plums again. At the moment that is the only thing from holding me back from getting it down to a stump, too.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Up to 15 degrees today. Bits of rain. Did not get any gardening done as was finishing the June album and grocery shopping, etc.
Monday, May 15, 2017
Rainy, coolish day. Did Laundry, vacuumed kitchen dining room, closed out many many tabs on Pat's browsers on his tablet. Revised LAMBS and loaded it. It works. I reckon I will have to redo January to May; after having a look at May which is rather ugly. I think I have been slowly losing water out of the waterfall, so I went out in the rain and reset the stones at the top of the waterfall. Hope it works better now.
Wednesday, May 17, 2017
Was out from 11:00 to 1:00 and got a lot of stuff done at the front. Put the anemone in, and the echinea, which has 2 leaves showing, and the pink mist, pinchusion flower, which had no leaves showing, might be dead.. all into the magnolia tree bed. Added the cosmos with just their baby leaves... have to add some seeds to the cosmos spot. Did a bit to weeding at the front. Took out some more of the honeysuckle little hedge. I might have room for the Tahsis columbine here, in front of the cut back hedge. Added some decorative oregano to the other side of the stone path from where it is growing now. There are 3 blue geranium getting established in this magnolia tree bed. It still needs weeding cause the wretched violets are everywhere again. After lunch I was out from about 2:30 to 5:00. Transplanted sweet peas. Did a bit of a reno to the walk way by the lilac. Added arugula to the trough and some seed. put 2 of the squash into holes, and added seed. I have yet to add sweet pea seed to the row I have established along beside the cement block path on the Pees side of the cutting garden. Have bamboo stakes in, and need to tie up the sweet peas and add seed. Need to add seed along the Pees sidewalk too where I have put in a few sweet peas. I have put down more spent peat pots by the Pees side of the pond. Put down a bag of mushroom manure on the strawberry rhubarb side of the old veggie patch. The cutting garden is slowly coming along. A couple of maltese cross (lychnis), echenea, veronica, glads. Volunteer columbines and malva like things, and foxgloves.There was big bumble bees at the columbines at the front. Clipped back both jasmines. Pulled some grass out of the pinks at the back. The little rockery needs weeding and cleaning up. The front stone path and all the beds need weeding. Its not bad though. Does not take long to do it, once I get at it. I have yet to plant the sunflowers and put some swiss chard in .. and maybe some spinach in the other trough. Chard in a couple of spots in the cutting garden. The strawberries are in bloom. I clipped back a bit of the cedars and edging along the old veggie patch. Lots to do yet.
Thursday, May 18
Overcast day but up to 20 degrees. Loaded Long beach and Waves. Both work. One more to go on the photography Series page... Richards Rust. Then will start Travel... have Uchuk done and it works. Done gardening but am re doing January, February, March April and May... cause they suck. Finished the Water page, finished paths and art. Finished June, July, August, September. All the rest are under construction. Hope to get January made soon as finished the Travel stuff.
Made crepes stuffed with tuna, smoked oysters, and squash. Crepes were spinach crepes, sauce of white sauce with onion, chives, parsley, and mozzerella cheese. Did not get out to the garden.
Friday, May 19, 2017
Reloaded Richard's Rust, so am finished the albums under photography. After lunch was outside from 1:00 to 4:30. Tied up the sweet peas in the cutting garden. And added peas that had been soaking. Did nothing to the ones on the Pees side. We are considering taking down the outter limbs of the cedar hedge on the pees side of the deck. Pat said he would do it, so we will be dragging branches out their sidewalk. Pat has called some reno guys to come see about the repair of the deck... they will be here June 1st to give an estimate. We decided to have the hedge between monie's(new owner of shawna's place) driveway and ours, topped by about 6 - 8 feet. I would hope we could have the Davey Tree people take away the cedar trunks too, unless Pat wants them for wood. So, weeded a bit in the cutting garden, and planted sunflowers and some dill. Put old spinach in the trough and some in the strawberry patch. Spread old dill seed along the front of the strawberry patch. Weeded a bit in the fig tree bed and transplanted a maltese cross into that bed. Dug out Michaelmas daisies and other weeds. Weeded a bit in the back corner of the woodland, taking out thistles and bind weed. Weeded the little rockery. Spread a bag of top soil on the cutting garden. I have a couple of maltese cross plants growing, a veronica, lots of glads poking up, and those malvas, and self seeded columbines and foxgloves. I should plant cosmos there too, as well as out front. I must get holly hocks for under the magnolia tree and for in the cutting garden. I think I may put the Tahsis Lupine in the fig tree bed, although there is room for it by the french lavendar by the front rectangle. Although there is a little lupine coming up, in the cut down honeysuckle hedge in that spot. Weeded along the driveway, pulling out bind weed, dandilions, thistles, and other weeds. Was very tired by the time I got to the end of the hedge and that area needs more work. The perennial geraniums part of that bed is almost weedless. and the Geraniums look great. The plants are all growing tall, everywhere in the garden. Tulips are really tall. Mowed the grass back and front. I have this done because I am going to add the bit of Weed and Feed that I have left to the back grass where the vetch is going crazy and taking over all the grass. The cutting garden has lots of these little tree looking plants springing up. Must do a thorough weeding of that area. and give it some mushroom manure, too. Filled the pond and watered the cutting garden, as this area gets no rain due to the surrounding hedges and trees. The lilac is lovely and fragrant. Have a bouquet in the house, but it does not seem to be very fragrant. Pat got supper at the Chef on the Run $9.00 per meal. I am having Morroccon Stew and Pat is having barbeque ribs. Had an apple cider and it has done much for my recovery from the hot day... 20 degrees, and the gardening.
Saturday, May 20, 2017
Have the Bavaria - 36 pages and 3 htm ready to load. Then in the afternoon from 1:00 to about 4:30 was out gardening. Put the rest of the weed and feed down on the back grass... did not get the whole area covered. This stuff really stinks. Then went to the front and dug over the half of the front strip flower bed on our driveway side. Dug and pulled out daisies, grass, dandilions, and achillea, leaving thyme, lumpine, self seeded columbines, tall bearded iris, french lavendar and verbena to grow. I want to replace the ugly off white achillea with the golden one. Shall add mushroom manure to that bed and to the bed behind it that has the peonies.. a bag of mushroom manure each. Will do this after I finish cutting back the honey suckle hedge. The honey bees are looking for the honey in it already... sorry bees, its time for renewal of the hedge. Will plant the Tahsis lupine in this area and I might have room for one of the milkweeds. The bamboo roots have streched across this bed. I cut them off where I found them. There is bits of soil gone to the crocus field area. Dug out weeds out of the crocus field. Was hot out there... 23 degrees with sun today. I should have come in for water and my hat, but had a bit of sun stroke until I realized I was dehydrated. The green bin is full.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Was up early and did some clean up of the light garden area. I have moved the dying formerly disfused blue orchid out to the water table. This phalenopsis plant seems to be dying. I think it had too much water. Took all the peat pots and other ones to the water table and put nasturiums into 9 holes of the little plastic ones and 9 holes of cosmos in these little ones. Put sunflower in one of the larger peat moss pots and milkweed seeds in the other 4 peat moss pots. Watered them and covered with the plastic top to keep moisture in. The pitcher plant is doing ok with a few new pitchers and some old blackened dead ones. I try to spritze it every morning with its rain water. Sure hope the house fly does not try to get into the pitchers. The plant would gorge itself to death on that big of a meal. Moved most of the empty clay pots out to the garage in LB store bags. I need to repot a few of the orchids. I have a little miltonia in buds. The miltonias seem to like a tight root potting. The breathless beauty is in a tiny pot and is starting to put roots out of the pot.
Very hot day. Did not get outside. We take the Model T on the run and only do half the run as we are not sure about how the car is running.
I started to do the Pre 1989 album and found some notes to go with the pictures for The Bahamas trip and for the trip to Padre Island. I want to put this on a text type page like the Journal Entry pages and link to it on both of the htm pages of this album. I am finished typing up the Bahamas one, have no notes for the Mexico.. las hadas puerto vallarta, etc, and have yet to do the Padre Island one. Then put the link on the pages... maybe even add it on the Travel page as the travel logue for the pre 1989 and reload the travel page, of course. I find I need to rename of under construction page of Tahsis and reload it.
Monday, May 22, 2017
Was very hot again. I am not going out in it to garden. I would be baked to a crisp. Same for going to the Victoria day parade. I work all day on the Travel Logue page for Pre 1989 trips. In 1989 I have photo albums made, but I may someday continue with this text page about the trips .. on a new page. We moved to Victoria in 1984, and won the lottery in 1987. We did not do a lot of travelling until after 1987. . . So, it might be good to get all these travel journal notes typed up. I got my first digital camera in 1999 and used it on our Turkey trip, but did not know enough about it and was shooting with the smallest size photos. And that little camera shoots RAW!!! On some of the photo albums .. such as the 2005, I have the travel logue written right on the photo album. That is the last year that I have a photo album done up. I already have the short synopsis typed up for the years of 1989 onward on the Travel page. So, will see how much more of a typed up Travel logue I want to do, after I get the albums reloaded and this first Pre 1989 travel logue finished. We had spinach crepes for lunch, and we had fetticini and vegatable spaghetti sauce with seafood for supper. All easy and made before, so I have been on this computer all day, but am almost finished the travel logue page, and ready to proceed with getting the Travel albums fixed and reloaded.
I have yet to do up the 1982 back to Sask trip..on the travel logue page. And I see that there is very little on the 1989 trip to the East Coast, so I will add that to the Travel logue page. The rest of the albums that I have done mostly have the text on the pages, so maybe I will not need a second Travel Logue text page, as the albums will suffice. I need to delete and reload the Travel page and the JE 2013 and JE2014. I will be taking the sitelock badge off of any more of the JEpages, and revising the menue so that it does not include the big menus that have to be changed every time I add another trip or Car event or gardening thing. Now Godaddy is saying that Chrome has released version no. 56 or some such. My chrome is 58.0. whatever, and I am not seeing anything about needing a ssl certificate on my site, from Google. This is just a means to make more money off us. Although there has been this horrible big virus or what ever it is that is knocking down big sites all over the world with locking out their data unless they pay up in bit coin. Crazy crazy internet. And I thought I had trouble with having to recover my internet and paying Google and SiteLock to get rid of my Malware on my amateur site. Suppose to change passwords on everything every 90 days or something.
I don't know... ... Maybe I should get Trevor to clean up wipe my storage drive clean, and change it for a new drive that is not connected to my machine or to any cloud. And just put everything on it, for recovery, if and when I should need it. My storage drive is in a big mess now and needs to be wiped clean and start over anyway. I must ask him if my storage drive is partitioned off and not suseptible to being hacked.
May 24, 2017
Yesterday, it was going to be a good day for gardening. So, I went out and got quite a lot done on the rectangle bed and the strip in front of it. I added 3 bags of mushroom manure after pulling out the daisies and the ugly achillea, and cutting back the honeysuckle pillea hedge to maybe 4 - 6 inches tall. This bed is looking good. There is 3 peonies, one of them big and in buds. A very nice little perennial geranium that is spreading nicely at the front edge. In the strip area there is thyme, the French lavender, crocuses, a lupine, and the vervbenas, and the blue grasses. In the rectangle with the peonies there is the veronica, the little geranium, montebretias, the baby's breath like plant. It all looks good. Today I added the Tahsis lumpine and a milkweed from out of one of the milkcartons. I have 2 more in milkcartons. This is the showy milkweed from the place in Oregon.
I was out from 10 to 12:30 this morning finishing the clean up of this area and adding the 3 bags of manure, transplanting the Tahsis lupine and the showy milkweed. The French Lavender is in bloom and the bees like it There are bits of thyme in bloom in the thyme circle but no bees on it. The stone path and all the inner front garden need to be weeded. Pat got home about lunch time with his new iphone. I think he will be okay with it. Had lunch and then went out again for an hour.
I was out for about an hour after this stuff, and got some of the front of the rectangle strip after the spirea shrub cleaned up. Picking out daisies, etc. The bed needs about 2 hours of work on it yet. Tomorrow should be a cooler day again so maybe I can get it finished tomorrow morning. Shall wash my hair in the am and should be ready to go grocery shopping tomorrow after lunch. Will see..
May 25, 2017
In the morning we went to the Western communities, to the LB store and to the big store for groceries. First we had lunch at The Original Joey's pub restuarant. Interesting perogy type things with chicken and vegetables in them. After getting home, went out to the garden from about 2:30 to 5:00. Finished the rectangle on the Pees side. It needs a bag or 2 of muchroom manure, yet. Still have to finish cutting down the honeysuckle pillea hedge on the Pees side. Got nothing done on the web page, except trying to do up the text stuff page for Pre 1989. Have a couple more 1980's stuff to do up, including 1989, and then will load it and can load the photo album for pre 1989, also.
May 26, 2017
Took out the recycle bins. Watered around the back by hand for an hour. Made cucumber salad. Loaded the Pre1989 album that was ready to go. It works. Reloaded Travel page, it works. Watered the deck plants with the big green watering can.
May 27, 2017
Was awake at about 5:00 this morning and planning what to do about the Magnolia Tree bed. I think I will take out the scruffy iberia along the driveway and get rid of those damn violets, and the other trashy michaelmas daisies and weedy things. Then I will put in another heather beside the ugly water meter place. I will let thyme grow as ground cover in the area. Also will take out the old heather that is going brown, next to the cedar hedge by the Pees side. I was going to go out today and trim back the boxwood, but it is far too hot. Up to 30 degrees at noon. Had cappicinno and typed up the 1982 stuff for the Travel Logue page. Have just the 1989 stuff to do yet on that page then can load it. I loaded the 1989 photo album yesterday. Have a little boquet in the house. When I brought the few plants into the house, both Pat and I got sneezing and runny noises. Something in the few flowers is causing hey fever. Dames rocket, pin cushion flowers, fern, parsley leaves, I should dump it out. There is a very big bug == looks like a fly, dead in the biggest pitcher on the pitcher plant. This should feed it for a long time! Maybe I will need to get it into a bigger container. It grows in spaghum moss. The pendula willow looks pretty good in its new spot by the waterfall, and the back of the pond looks nice without the big white pot. I think I will get rid of the other off white pot that is suppose to have the zandeschia in it. I don't see it coming up. Once I have got rid of the blue bells, maybe I will add some sort of ground cover type plant, or boxwood., as I will probably take out the cedar that is getting too big for its spot and just have boxwood along the Pees cement wall up to the cedars, where I should add some retaining cement blocks to hold in the dirt that now is held in by wood stumps. Might just need 2 or 3 blocks depending on size. This might be an idea for the pees side where the honeysuckle hedge is now. This would work very well, I think. I can use the big white pot to set a good gargoyle on, just this side of the cedar hedge looking at the garbage cans. Heh!
May 28, 2017
It was a hot day again. Up to 29 degrees. I was awake at 5 in the morning and since I could not sleep I did more travel journal entries for the 89East travel logue page. Finished that and loaded the page and pictures on it to my web page. Finally figured out that images should not be a part of the code to enter the photos right on the page. That is only needed for the photo albums. Very hot and stuffy in my room. Next I must get more gardening done... early in the morning if I must avoid the heat. and water before and after maybe. Looks like we are going to have a scorching summer, again. Wish everyone would just plant a tree where ever they have space for one. And I am considering taking the top off hedges.. Better than paying for damage to windows etc when we have these wild wind storms. It is obvious that it is far too late to do anything about Nature gone crazy.
May 29, 2017
Was out from 10:00 am to 12:30. Got some cleaning up done around the back. Transplanted a milkweed into the big brown pot. Pruned the orange trees. Swept up some of the leaves and debris on the patio area. Pulled a few grasses and weeds out of the stepping stone path. It was suppose to be cooler today but got up to 25 degrees. Watered at the front while working at the back and had a river running down the street before I went back to the front. The plum tree seemed to get a good watering. Clipped out bamboo sprouts. Took the watering hose and watered all around the front garden. Cut the branches off the cedar that is under the big tree. Cut back one of the branches of the big tree. Am going to take out the trunks of the cedar and remove it. It is scraggly and crowding out the other stuff. It looks much better already. Tomorrow it is suppose to be windy, and rain. This should cool things off. So maybe I can start the pruning of the boxwood hedges, after the rain. The back grass looks rather sparse after the weed and feed. I will have to rake out all the dead stuff and put down some compost and perhaps some of the old grass seed that is kicking around the place. with more compost on top of that. Am removing michaelmas daisies. Dave Dube's milkweed is up. The milkweed tuberosa in the cutting garden has finally sent up a little shoot. Ralph phoned and Pat talked to him this evening. We took the van for a ride today. The fridge works fine and is even clean. We have heard nothing back from Jaromey and her friend Laara with regards to Larra buying our van. We think we might get an SUV to pull the trailer, and sell the Passat which is probably on its last legs anyway. The Front rectangle on the Pees side is looking quite nice.. that is, the silver plants in the strip in front of the rectangle looks good. The rectangle itself needs some work. I pruned out the little honeysuckle hedge and it should come back nice and bushy if I keep it trimmed. The other rectangle has the peonies, veronica, and a lovely little geranium... this looks good with the lavendar and thyme cleaned up, and the honey suckle pruned back, too. The grass is looking quite nice, but I still want to try find some Par 3 to take out the weeds and moss. The little Thasis lupine looks like it might make it. The magnolia tree got trimmed back a bit too. It should look good with a new heather, that will grow bigger and balance with the Irish heather on the other side of the cement water meter stuff.
May 31, 2017
Was cooler and rained a bit. I have the guest room and the library room set up for the Archers. Got a tiny bit done on my web page. Something ate the leaves off the Thasis lupine, so I guess that's the end of it. The Milkweed that I put out in that front strip does not look very good either. Looks blanched, or sun burn. My pansy orchid has one of the buds open. Huge blossoms for the size of the plant. It will need repotting after it is finished blooming.
June 2017
June 2, 2017
Since the last entry we have heard from Sandy that Gloria's sister has her heart, in Edmonton, and the Archers will therefore not be coming to Victoria. There has been some change in arrival times and just Sandy and Ralph will be here. Needless to say I am happy for Gloria's sister and for me. I have 2 bedrooms set for our guests and we can have our own. The house has been vacuumed. We went to the Chicken Soup place for chicken soup for lunch as it was a coolish rainy day. After lunch, we got got groceries etc. Pat went out to find a radio and I finished the vacuuming. Then went out to mow the lawn and Joe was out front measuring the boards for the new entry way and he measured out back for the deck. Pat arranged for a bin with a guy he had met through Dan Cyr, when Dan went to get some truck thing from the guy. Small world. Anyway, the guy will provide the bin for the old deck scraps. I am at a loss as to what day these deck things are going to happen. Pat seems to have it figured out. Joe wil be working here at the front before our guests arrive. We need to move the plants off the patio area. We need to move the Model T into the front garage as the back will be blocked by the deck scraps and the bin. We need to go to the Roundhouse on the Wednesday of next week. And Pat and Bruce will be going to the VCCC meeting on Tuesday night. Sandy and Ralph should be arriving sometime on Wednesday, ... we will be away in the evening, in the old car. Thursday, I want to make ribs and the plum pie (made the day before). Breakfast on Thursday and Friday, when they leave to catch their boat to the Alaska cruise. Who knows when the deck will be completed. Well, got the grass mowed, and then part of the hedge trimmed today, just to escape for this iphone hassle, if not to get it done. Should be able to get the hedges done tomorrow, and maybe I can get some weeding done in the garden. Managed to get the Hawai, 1990, photo album on line. Am working on the text for the Travel log page.
June 3, 2017
In the morning after capaccino I moved the patio plants and the deck plants to the back of the garage and along the old sidewalk. The orange trees and several milkweed plants. Then the pots from the deck, which Pat helped me with. In taking down the cedar box made my old Bert, it fell apart. I swept the dirt into the fern garden off the steps, and threw away the columbines and a little cedar that was in the box. Then watered the plants and around the back cutting garden a bit, as well as washing the dirt off the plants in the fern garden and the rhodos. I have yet to cut the clematis off the deck. Joe is going to be here on Monday and starting on the front. Pat went and paid for the material today $1453.44. After lunch I did some more hedge pruning. I have finished the big hedge and about half of the little hedge is done. The clippings are lying where they fell. I have the trellis from in the cedar box leaning against the hedge where billy bob likes to weed whack the hell out of the grass by the hedge. I have to ask him to stop doing that. It looks gross. He does this on their lawn that borders the little flower border, and it really looks gross there. I took out a lot of black berries out the strip between our driveways. Ahmad came to visit me while I was doing this. I clipped back the creeper a bit. This area still needs a lot of weeding as does all the rest of the garden. I took out the last of the honey suckkle long shoots from under the California lilac, and trimmed up this little hedge at the edge of the rectangle by our driveway. Clipped out bamboo where ever I found it. The little Thasis lupine might survive. I see it has a tiny leaf coming out. Yippeee. So, tomorrow I should finish the hedge, but we are to go to Cliff and Darlene's place for his annual motor cycle guys meet where they serve that chilli stuff, and salades no doubt. I will get to see her garden.
June 5, 2017
Last night after supper I went out and used my hedge trimmer to trim the little hedge. It looks a bit ragged. Then I went to the Pees side and using the trimmer cut everything off the edge of their sidewalk and trimmed up the camillia and all the evergreens back as high as I could reach. The privacy screen seems to be getting thinner and thinner all the time. I am rethinking taking the cedars on the outside, that is on the pees side, down to about five feet high. I think I will just leave them the way they are. I loaded the wheel barrow with the clippings and swept off their precious sidewalk. I cut back the lilac, too. Everything looks pretty ugly... I am sure they will like it, that way. I see they have caused another brown spot on the lower branches of one of the cedars, destroying yet more of the privacy hedging. Joe the deck fixing guy was over and got some of the front decking done. The boards were delivered about 12.30. I made plum pie, and a roast chicken dinner. Lunch was biscuits with cream cheese and lox trim, yogurt and jam, a half an apple. I made 2 batches of biscuits, so there should be some here for when Sandy and Ralph are here. Now they are coming on Wednesday evening probably, staying over Thursday and leaving on Friday morning. tomorrow morning is my lab for Dr. C. Got a tiny bit done on my Progress page of the web site. I seem to have 37 pages that need menus changed every time I do an under construction page. I don't think all the menus are up to date, but don't care. I seem to have about 30 to 45 people visiting and a lot of bots. I can't imagine who these people are. I have an email from google to get an app for my google analytics. Wish I could get one for my desk top.
June 6, 2017
Finished coding the 2016 JE page. Have to proof read it and then load it. Did this at about 5:00 am and then went down for a nap after I finished it and slept to about 11:00. In the afternoon I went out and picked up all the clippings from the hedge pruning. Have a wheel barrow full. Have to put them in the next green bin as this one is full for tomorrow. We will have a bin for the lumber scraps, so all the extra stuff I have for the green bin can go into it. It got up to 25 and is still quite hot at 8:30. Pat phoned Sandy...they are at Kelowna and will probably be here about 6 or 7.. maybe even later as there is the ferry ride over. We have to go out to the old cars thing at the Roundhouse. Have to leave the house about 5 and will probably be back about 9 - 9:30. Joe has finished the front deck and has started the back deck. He has all the boards loosened and has started putting in the new ones. He thinks he might finish tomorrow. The bin comes on Thursday... the day after tomorrow. Sandy and Ralph will be here Thursday and leave on Friday, probably early to catch their cruise ship out of Vancouver. Don't know if we will see them on the way back.
June 9, 2017
We were to the Roundhouse with the Model T on Thursday evening. Joe finished the deck yesterday shortly after 6:00 and then we had ribs, baked potatoe, cole slaw and vegetables, and plum pie. The bin also arrived on Thursday and Joe loaded his deck scraps and Pat and I loaded some trees and branches. Pat took down the cedar trunks at the front by the liquid amber tree. He took down the camillia from beneath the kitchen window, leaving a couple of branches close to the ground. I took the cottoneaster down to a stump with my pruning saw and threw it all in the bin. Took down 2 sumacs from the woodland. Dumped the pile of brances and blackberries by the green bin into the bin, and the wheel barrow load of hedge clippings into the bin, also. Then Pat phoned the guy to come and get the pin and paid him $200. cash. The boards came from Bay Street Castle Building Center and cost $1453.44. paid by visa. Paid Joe $3780.00 labor with credit union cheque. Total of $5433.44. After looking over the deck railing I found the cedar that is in the moss garden by the purple and mauve rhodo, is drying and dieing. I was thinking of taking that out too, but forgot it when I was taking out the other ones before the bin was taken away. So, I will take it down, and cut it up for the green bin, I guess. Along with the clippings from the clematis, etc. We had a bit of rain on Thursday, when we came from the Roundhouse in the Model T. Was cooler yesterday and rained a bit. Was about 18 today with some cloud. I got all the bedding and table cloths washed. So have yet to make the bed in the guest room, and put the other bedding away in the closet of the library, and do the ironing. Have checked the pages on my web page, and have most of them working now, Must proof read the Garden Journal excerpts for 2016 and load it.
June 10, 2017
It rained quite a bit over night and in the morning. It got up to 20 degrees today. Was out after lunch for a couple of hours. Picked up the clippings from the Clematis. Cleaned the moss garden from the little bamboo to the Japanese lantern. Cut the branches off the prickly dieing juniper by the deck post, and Pat cut down the trunk with his saw and cut it into stove length pieces. The green bin is almost full again. Ham and scalped potatoes for supper.. a feast night. Did a bit of work on the web page and am starting the proof reading of JE2016. Hopefully, I have JE2015 fixed. Have no idea why it broke, as it was working before. Waiting for the reload to show. I seem to have 37 pages with menus to be changed ever time I list a travel album or a car event. I think I only change car events on each of the 3 car clubs events though. Added a link for the monarch butterflies ordering page, but have not reloaded the gardening page yet.
June 11, 2017
Was out in the afternoon from one to about 3:30. Moved the table and chairs, the water tub, the blue planter pot, and the bird bath back on to the deck. Spray washed a lot of moss off the patio area and put a few buckets full of it on the cement blocks around the pond to try and get the moss to grow on the cement blocks. Was very hot, but the temperature was only 20 degrees. Got the 89East reloaded to the page. Forgot to put the reload date on it. There is a huge swallow tail butterfly patrolling around the garden, in the last few days. I do have fennel growing in pots on the back cutting garden area.
June 12, 2017
Was out from 10:00 to 1:00, moved the off-white pot with the parsley in it up to the deck. Scraped moss off the patio and put it on the sides of the stepping stone path as I cleaned out the weeds along the edges. So, have moss along this path for about 2 feet. I cleaned up the deer fern and moved the seahorse and its plinth back to the spot where I took out the cottoneaster. Pulled out those weedy plants from under the rhodo and will try to keep it clean under the rhodos, with just steer manure or mushroom manure added under them. At the front I cleaned up a bit along the stones that lead into the water meter. Then planted the sun flower, the cosmos and what I think may be a nasturium under the magnolia tree. I have to finish cleaning out that bed. Have to finish cleaning up the fig tree bed, and the moss garden, as well as the rhodos. It was 24 degrees when I came in for lunch just before 1:00. I need to move the rest of pots off the back sidewalk so I can get the mower into that back grass area. Also got a bit of proof reading done on the JE2016 this morning. Made a stew with vegetables and the left over pork ribs. It is tasting really good so far. Was out in the afternoon from about 2:00 to 5:00. Working at the back. Got 2 of the brown pots moved down to the patio. Then weeding under the rhodo and the fig tree. Have lots of michaelmas daisies to remove from the fig tree bed and from the magnolia tree bed. Those nasty tri colored stinking things are hard to get out from under the rhodo. I might have to take the dark purple hellebore out of between the rhodos. It is just too crowded for the rhodos. It can go under the deck with the white hellebore. I am quite tired of them. Emptied out the pink pots, with the small pots dirt going to the seahorse spot that needs lots of dirt added. Dug a hole for the big pink pot, but ran into rhodo roots so it is too shallow, and the pot contents are heaped up. Not sure what is in there now. There was a tag for miners lettuce. There were a few bulbs that I planted to along in front of the fig tree. Hope they can plump up and grow a bit more. I think they were tulips. Watered around the back a bit after all the weeding. Still have to move the hellebore and keep after those wretched tri colored stinking things.... maybe use roundup with a paint brush. The stew turned out really good. And we had a small piece of plum pie. Tomorrow is my appointment with Dr. C. Got a little bit more done on the JE2016... up to April 6, now. Pat went to city hall and paid the taxes.
June 14, 2017
Yesterday was to see Dr. C. and was very tired, slept in the afternoon. Today was cloudy and cooler.. up to 18. Made cole slaw in the am, and the salmon loaf. Had left over wor won ton soup from yesterday for lunch. Out from 1:00 to 4:00. Hosed off the patio area. Moved pots from the back.. have the trees and one big white pot, and the two brown ones by the garage door, on the patio. Have the tall black pot with Dave's milkweed and 3 other white pots put into the bed behind the old garage. Pulled out some michael daisies and had a look around under the deck. Still work to do under there. Cleaned up the pots and bricks and roundup stuff and put it all away. The patio looks less messy than before, and so does the deck. I am slowly reducing the number of 'things' in the garden and in the garage. Got a bit of proof reading done on the JE2016 page.
June 16, 2017
Cool day.. did ironing in the am. Lunch and then went to look at cars.. mercedes. Pat had his car scrapped by Ernie Skinner, and has put in a ICBC claim on line. I suppose they will have to see the damage, which is paint scrapped off. His car was in worse shape. After we got home about 3:00 I went out to garden about 3:30 to 5:30. Cut off all the bamboo shoots I could find. Cut off a bit of the sweet gum tree branch that was blowing towards the window yesterday in the wind. We had rain yesterday, too. Did a bit of weeding along the stone path at the front. Pulled out more michaelmas daisies and reset stones. Am finished weeding up to the David along that path. Pat got a call from Elmer Kellen after supper. They are going to see Fran next week. They had a good long chat, it seems.
June 17, 2017
After popcorn lunch I went out about 2:30 to garden. Cool, cloudy day. Was about 16 or 17... perfect for gardening.
Mowed the grass, back and front. Raked some of the moss out of the back grass. Moved over the plants at the end of the bed under the holly tree. There was a lot of prickly holly leaves to suck up in the mower. That worked well, now am considering cutting the holy branches back a bit out of the apple tree, etc. Actually had quite a bit of debris for the green bin. Then weeded along the stone path in the front, pulling out michaelmas daisies along one side and smashing up the clay on the other side of the path. The roses side need more compost added. The pinks are surviving amazingly well, since they are growing in clay. There is quite a lot of thyme growing in the stone path and way too many of those little orange things. Hope I get them all cleaned out before they produce seed. The yellowish decorative herb thing is taking over the little geraniums in its area. Since I am going for lower maintainence, I guess I will let it grow. It border the thyme circle which looks pretty good this year in bloom, but needs to be weeded. I see I have one more bamboo shoot to take out of the cedar hedge, next to the bench. The milkweed from Dave looks much better now that I have put a wire hoop around it. The front peonies are white and flopping over their hoop. The honeysuckle hedge is too low to support them this year. The area in front of the rectangle by the purple plum tree, looks pretty good with all the pink lychnis and stuff growning there. In front of the other rectangle looks pretty good with the french lavender surrounged by thyme in bloom, and the blue grass at the other end beside the spirea bush. The rest of the front needs weeding. I need tall plants where the michaelmas daisies grow at the front. Those daisies are far too invasive, as daisies of whatever kind ARE. I am also slowly removing the michaelmas daisies from the back flower beds also. The valerine and Campanulas look fairly nice on the Pees side of the back rectangle and in front of the hedge. Sandy Smith's plant is about to break into bloom any day now. It has grown to about 8 inches high and looks like a campanula, with lots of clusters of buds. I must send her pictures when it blooms. Thinking of planting mini roses at the front where I am removing the daisies, underplanted with that silvery sedem maybe. The sedum is evergreen, and is just across the stepping stone path and the yellow oregano from where I am taking out the daisies. I would need to put in a barrier to contain the yellow oregano.
June 19, 2017
yesterday was the Model T run in the morning. Home for soup... was a cool, light rain day.
Today, I moved the big white pot to the deck by the corner of the house by the hedge. Going to put a shade tolerant rose in it. A floribunda. Clipped the hedge a bit and tried to remove branches off the plum tree with the long handle pruner but was not successful. Came in for lunch and then phoned Davey Trees to have them come to do the hedge -- between the driveways... trimmed down to about top of the window next door height... maybe 10 feet off the top of the hedge. Keith is to come on Wednesday, 21st, between 1 and 3 to have a look and give the estimate. I must ask him also to take down the yellow plum tree, take a few feet off the hedge between the back decks, take off the branch on the front tree that is pointing towards the house, trim the hedges to shape them. All this with a view to eventual sale of the place. I have written out a page for Keith about what I want done. Probably going to cost a bundle. After getting the call back from Davey tree, I went out and started digging michaelmas daisies out of the fig tree bed. Digging out roots... found several bulbs.. I think they were tulips, and replanted them all a few inches down. Moved a big rock that seemed to be covering these bulbs. or some of them anyway. Am about half finished taking out these daisies in this bed. Its hard work and very tiring. So, I went to clean up more of the moss garden by the rhodo. Cut back the white azalyea, pulled out more of the invasive smelly things, cut off some hellebores, and some of the leaves of the hosta, and trimmed back some of the ferns. The dirt from the old cedar box has fallen on some of my best moss. I shall have to get the garden hose in there and try to wash this soil off the moss. The ferns need trimming up in that area also to reveal the moss. Have weeded this area back to about the dry stream under the deck. Pulled the dead blossoms off the rhodo and tried to clean up under it... needs more work. After this I went to the front and had a look at the tipped over David and think the invasion of the roots and my weeding and digging out the michaelmas daisies in this bed may have tipped the David off its cement block. Have to get it levelled up again after seeding around it. The yellow stuff pulls out very easily. The daisies need to have roots dug out. Meanwhile, Pat is dealing on a newer Mercedes that will pull the trailer, because the Unity Mercedes Manor is going to be too long for him to use to pull the trailer, and awkward to back up. He needs to square up his deal with Riley to keep the trailer for the same rent that Drummond is now taking . . $50 per month, as Drummond is trying to sell his place. Also, Ernie Skinner scraped a bit of paint off our Passat while we were at the place where Pat was talking to Dale about another Mercedes. He has decided to go with the gold colored one, which is a year older. Yaman Simpson, is going to give him a better deal... Pat has him down to $13000 and will be getting something for the Passat. Pat has arranged to have it inspected tomorrow at 9;00. And then Yaman is giving Pat a good deal on the instalation of the towing hitch. His claim with ICBC for the scratches on the Passat came to the autobody shop estimate of $1100.... Ernie Skinner will give him a cheque for that amount. Pat thinks that Yaman may just take the car with the scratches, as Pat figures they just need a touch up, anyway. And then He will have the ICBC claim cheque from Ernie to just deposti. Wish he would help me deal on this tree pruning stuff... I always feel like I am being taken for a ride by any of them I have had do stuff. Sore muscles from my digging today.
June 21, 2017
Warmer day with a bit of a breeze. Keith Bennet from Davey Tree came to do the estimate today. I typed out a sheet enumerating what I wanted done. The estimate came in at about #1500 without the plum tree which the guy suggested we do in the wintertime. I have a copy of this in Gardening. We accepted the estimate. They have a 3 to 4 week waiting list. So, the 4 weeks takes us to July 19th. Will email them back once Pat has told me when he wants to go to Sask. I would like to suggest that we go in August after we get the new Unity. Or if we go after the swap meet we could be back by July 20th or so. Would work either way. We just do not have to spend too much time around Saskatchewan, then. I could garden for a a couple more days... get the front path cleaned up and be ready to go. The swallow tail butterfly has been around for a few days now. Watched a humming bird trying to have a bath in the water fall. Then it was eating the little bugs out of the spider webs. I think that green and white shrub that I have growing by the bamboo would make a good plant for the big white pot on the deck. It seems to grow quite fast and is evergreen.
June 22, 2017
Was out to the garden after lunch. Took bottom branches off the holly tree up to 8 or 10 feet. Dragged them back to the green bin. Chopped some of them up for the green bin. Then took out the mower and mowed up the leaves and around the back grass patch. Was very hot at 23 degrees. Came in and drank a whole mug of water and rested a bit. Went back out to the front and did some weeding from the stone path down the stepping stones to the edge of the thyme circle. Sandy's plant looks great. I must get out and water. Pat set up the David last night. He says it needs some shims yet. This morning a tree care guy knocked on the door and rang the bell. Well, was just too late by a day as I signed up with another company just yesterday. Would have been good to have a comparable estimate. I asked Dominika is she could get me into the 3 week queue as we may have to be away on an unspecified day at the end of July.
June 23, 2017
Very hot day. Was out from about 12:30 to 3:30. Got the David stabilized with a wooden shim at the back (made from a found piece of wood in the garage. Used the rock hammer to rip out more roots. Then put a plastic barrier around the bottom round stepping stone, shimmed the David and tried to stuff more dirt under it. Then filled in the outside and inside of the plastic barrier with clay some stones and sand. Put the round stones around the foot of the statue. It seems quite solid, now. Am making plans to take out all the michaelmas daisies as they spread like crazy. The thyme circle is filling in the bare spots, at last. Yesterday, I added the link to the moss garden growing blog on the gardening page and on the links page. Today I fixed my blog so that only people with a google account can comment and then they need the human identification thing... chapka? I have been getting horrible amounts of the spam things lately. Have to go for my lab tomorrow as I see I have 5 days left of my meds and a standing order at the lab.
June 25, 2017
Yesterday was a scorcher. Got up to 31 degrees. I watered around the front for about an hour and a half after supper. Had strawberries from the garden with my cereal.
Today is going to be just as hot. It is at 28 now at 11:00. It got to 32 degrees before day's end. Changed my blog settings again and saved. It is on only google account people and show word verification. I have been getting hoards of spam lately. Same shit, over and over again. Billy Bab was out weed eatering and then leaf blowing off the sidewalk. He has my grass under the little boxwood hedge scraped off again. Quess I am going to have to pound little stakes in along the hedges to keep the idiot off. He does the same thing all over his grass patch. Scrapes the grass back to bare soil a foot back from the edges of the flower bed and all along my hedge along their side of the little honeysuckle pillea hedge. Now I am glad I left it along there. It stops him from scraping any of my plants off along that edge. Fuckin idiot. And then he leaf blows off the sidewalk with this extremely high pitched whining machine. Went out after lunch and watered around the back for about an hour and a half. The red plant in the pot is the worst wilted one. I think it needs shade. I can liberate the pot for a milkweed plant, I guess. and put this plant in the magnolia bed. It gets quite tall. I have most of the daisies out of there, now. Just need to decide what to put in there. I think pinks would be nice along the front, or one of those really blooming little perennial geraniums. I need a taller plant behind the David... maybe a blue grass, with the red plant behind them would look good.. maybe more than one red plant. maybe thyme in front of the blue grass, with dutch iris growing up through the thyme. I need a couple more pinks for at the front strip and along in front of the gertrude jekyl rose. Both of those places needs good compost added. After watering I cut up a few branches of the holly leaves into the green bin. Tomorrow should be cooler. There is a bit of cloud cover now and the temperature is down to 27 at 5:30.
June 26, 2017
got my times to visit the medical clinic sorted out today. Dr. T .. phone for appointment on Thursday and go in. Got a vase fixed to fit into the big green vase and now have my white roses in it. Looks great! It is a tiny bit cooler so far today, at 1:30 it is 24 degrees. Going to start the 92North album to reload (have the coding figured out for additions to each htm page of the photo albums and the coding for the Travel logue page to return to the photo albums also figured out. Have it loaded, hope it works. This will start with the 1990s. I am feeding the fish. I seem to have at least 4 gold fish ... two of them pretty big.... 5 - 6 inches, and 1 shubunkin for sure. Was out from 2 to 5. Finished weeding the thyme circle and added a 10 kg bag of compost to it and some of the surrounding plants. Watered around the front. Dumped a few flat boxes of weeds into the green bin. So have to get the holly tree branches cut up into the bin, then I can start putting stuff beside the bin again. There was another bamboo cut off today. Must check around the front tomorrow for more bamboo. After I get the holly branches cut into the bin, I need to finish weeding the stone path way and add more compost to the plants. Must finish weeding the sun dial circle and the magnolia tree bed (take out the michaelmas daisies and the violets)
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June 27, 2017
Went to the medical clinic at 8:00 and waited 2 hours, got to see Dr. Trerice. She weighed me, 155, took my blood pressure... not too bad. Gave me renewals for my meds...and there are refills on them. I have a standing order to go back for blood tests at the lab in December. So, all that is sorted. Got a book at the used book store. Called Pat and he came to get me. We went to the Broadmead amd got the LB store stuff, went for lunch at the Artisan Bistro, got frozen yogurt and mango swirl icecream. Home and I went down for a nap about 2:30 and slept till 4:30. I was really tired and stressed. Today is a cooler day, but did not go out. My skin is still sore from all the sun exposure yesterday. Am reading The Rise of the Robots on my Ipad and a Ken folliot book about the Welsh miners and World War II on my phone. This would be really good in paperback and the old fashioned kind of reading. The Rise of the Robots is scary stuff. Its an extension to my reading by Kurzweil about artificial Intellegience. And it is happening now. Machines are going to be in charge of everything. built by algorithms in cloud computing. We humans don't stand a chance. Wonder how many people are OFF GRID already.
June 28, 2017
Was out in the morning for about an hour and a half. Watered the deck, patio plants. Watered all around the back a bit. Moved a milkweed out of a milk carton and into a tall black pot. Not sure if it will survive the move. Have 2 more spindly ones in peat pots in the house yet. Going to move them into the brown pot sometime. Cut all the holly leaves into the bin and tamped it down with the big hammer. Pat brought his trailer home from Drummond's place and will be moving it to Riley's place sometime. After lunch I was out for a couple of hours and finished the watering at the back. Then weeded around the sundial circle. Cut off more bamboo shoots. Where ever I have weeded its all looking pretty good. Hope to finish the stone path tomorrow and put down some more compost around the front. Maybe get started on finishing the magnolia bed. I finished the Flash Boys book and have started the apocalypse book. . . its fiction... no where near as scary as this real stuff, especially the robots stuff. Scary because it is not fiction.
June 29, 2017
Is far too hot on my sun burned back to be out there. It is 25. So, maybe I will go out after supper to weed a bit. The milkweed I put into the big black pot seems to have survived the transplant, so far. The brown pot seems to have a little milkweed germinated. The white admiral butterfly was around again but could not get it sitting still. The Dave Dube milkweed has buds but is not open yet. I got pictures of a flicker out on the little rockery at the back. It seems to have found an ant's nest in the pinks. The strawberries are still there. Downloaded the June photos.
June 30, 2917
Did the bank stuff. Was even hotter today... 28, so did not go out at all. Was to get groceries and got a Mandarin Honeysuckle (Lonicera Mandarin) vine for in the big white pot on the deck. I need to wait until the tree guys are finished before I transplant it. Flowers: Masses of flowers in early summer to early fall.Exposure: Partial sun to full sun. Mature Height: 8 - 20 feet. 4.5 - 6.5 meters. Cold tolerance: USDA Zone 3. Prune to shape.
July 2017
July 1, 2017
Happy 150 Canada Day. Was out in the front garden from about 1 to 5. It was about 25 degrees. There was some shade where I was weeding and it was not too bad for hot sun. I finished the stone path and the surrounding area. The little campanulas are finally taking off. They are suppose to be invasive, but they never have been until this year. There was another bamboo shooting up in the cedar hedge. Spread another 10 kg bag of compost around the inner smoke bush bed and the edges of the little rockery across the path from it. After supper I watered all around the front for about an hour and a half. I need to finish the renovation of the magnolia tree bed. I will take out the iberis as they have violets in them that I cannot seem to eradicate. After I have them out of there I will let the thyme grow as ground cover. The little trillium does so well there, maybe I can get another one or two from that place on Salt Spring Island. I need to clip the spent blossoms off the little geranium in the front rectangle. It looked sooooo very good this year. I think it is ever green. I want more of it .. maybe by the David in front of some taller plant, that might be evergreen. In the back the cutting garden is slowly coming along too. The tuberosa milkweed has buds. There are 2 little blue veronicas and two tall maltese cross type lychnis.
July 2, 2017
Was to bed quite late last nite.. Heard fireworks at 10:30. Was up at 5:30 this morning as we were to go to Comox to look at a car. We had early capiccino and left at 8:45. Nice warm day, blue sky and a few clouds. We were to meet Mike at his place at 1300 hours. So, he is with the Air Force, as a mechanical engineer and he will also be in charge of making sure the new air planes... dunno what they are ... get the designs and delivered on schedule... etc. Is to leave by mid July. We had a nice drive up, with lunch a Platters? in Comox, and then found their place at shortly after 1:00. The car is a 2008 Highlander Toyota with V6, so has ability to tow loads of 5500, which is what Pat wants. Pat and Mike went over all the stuff, and final word was that Pat would check with Pat Jones about this kind of car, and a couple of other places, and made an offer of $10,000.00 on list price of $12K, which was accepted; providing someone else does not come up with the $12K before Tuesday. Its red, I can step into it no problem. The seats are not fancy leather, like the Mercedes but the up keep probably comes a lot less expense than the Benz. Its a bit longer than the Passat but Pat figures it will fit in the garage. It has this built in towing hitch. It has an extra seat so you can fit ... I think he said 7 people into it. Would be great for Red Deer too as it comes with the 4 almost new snow tires, and lots of room where the 3rd seat is folded down, for cargo to the swap. Or people cargo to pick up people at the ferry for the Victoria swap. I do hope we do not miss it. It is 8:00 and bed time for me. So tired.
July 3, 2017
Didn't get much sleep last nite. Was up by 9:00 and started laundry. Made potatoe salad, made avocado jello salad, made roast chicken for supper, and made 2 large blue pkgs of vegetable spaghetti sauce and froze. Now have the chicken stock to finish. Was busy all day. Was a cool day, would have been good for gardening. Hope tomorrow is as cool. Pat has arranged with Mike - daniel michel.. some french last name, to buy the 2008 Highlander with the hitch, snow tires, etc. We will go up to Comox on the bus and he will pick us up. We will deliver a certified cheque to him for $10K. Looks like it is a done deal, so I should be able to sleep tonite, after I finish the chicken stock. I think I will let it cool over night, actually.
July 4, 2017
Potted the christmas cacus into a bigger pot with African Violet soil. Watered the pots in the back with the watering can. The milkweeds are in buds. Then watered around the back with the hose for a bit more. The zantedischia has just two little leaves. The pond needs to have the duckweed skimmed off again. The lily of the nile is coming into bloom. Was to Cannor, where it was very hot. Got 3 salvia, a pink, a French Lavender and an artihanstia or some such name. These perennials should go in where I am taking out the michaelmas daisies in the magnolia bed. Cannor does not have any good looking phlox. Their spagham moss is a huge bale for $40.00. The pink will go into the bed edge by the roses. Have 4 new little goldfish with 2 in each tub garden. Hurried and made supper and then showered and we went to the VCCC ice cream night at Harvey and Sue Sherman's place. Big property, lots of parking. Lots of people... must have been close to 50. We just had icecream and cake and went home. Pat took his trailer out to Drummonds place for storage. Its a bit cramped. He has arranged for Mike to meet us at the bus in Comox and then to lunch. I think we need to be on this bus at 8:00 on Saturday. Oh well... I guess I can be awake. Sleep on the bus if necessary. So, then we will need to sell the Passat and the Dodge Lodge. Hopefully the Davey Tree guys will come before we need to go to get the new Mercedes Manor. All very exciting and spendy. But you can't take it with you!
July 5, 2017
Got up 25 today. The sun felt really hot when I got out after lunch. Of Course the hottest part of the day from 2 to 4. I put all the left over twigs and leaves into the newly emptied green bin. So that spot looks better. Dug the green pot out of the tall white pot and filled that pot with the bunch of root from the dead orange tree, then some good 'sea' soil, and more potting mix. (much lighter) then the new Mandarin Honeysuckle went into the pot, and filled in around the edges with more container mix. Put the 2 milkweeds from in the house into the rescued green pot and a gallon pot. They are watered and left out on the water table. Cut back another big bamboo out of the front cedar hedge. Have decided to use the old burt's trellis in the honeysuckle pot. Will set it up after the tree guys are finished. I hope they get here before the Mercedes Manor is ready to be picked up.. Added links to the gardening page. John Sali is 89 today and Isabel was 85 sometime in April.
Sunday, July 9, 2017
On Friday I watered all around the front and watered the house and deck plants. I skimmed off the pond, filled it and cleaned the filter on the pump. I repotted the pitcher plant into a larger plastic pot with spaghnum peat moss in it. Transplanted the two milkweeds into gallon sized pots and am keeping them on the deck in the shade. Despite the hot weather they seem to be surviving the transplant. I transplanted the new pink into the front garden, next to the stone path, in front of the roses, added some compost.
On Saturday, we caught the Island Link bus to Comox, taking the certified cheque for $10,000 to Michel Daniel Joilette - Mike. He met us at the bus drop off at the Driftwood Mall. We went to the TD and he cashed the cheque. Then we went to the Insurance agent in the Mall and had title transferred to Pat... another $2,080. We have the snow tires, chains and anything else I forgot that he added. Pat seems to have no trouble driving the new 2008 Highlander Toyota. All the stuff is up to the latest factory updates. Mike and his wife could not join us for lunch as they are far too busy getting ready for their move to Spain. So, we go back downtown Courtenay to the Union Street diner, where I have a most delicious Spinach Salad, with Honey Yogurt dressing, sundried tomatoes, artichoke hearts, a few mushrooms. Pat has chilli. The trip home is good with a stop for iced capiccino and to Jack's for Chinese supper. They are having a wedding dinner at Jacks so I feel a bit rushed to finish my food, as the guests are in and being served, but I believe they want the entire area for the wedding people.
On Sunday I am getting some work done on my web page.. have started the Turkey photo album. It is noon now and the temperature is up to 28. There are horrible forest fires happening all over B.C. Uploaded Turkey. Next is the 2000 Lady Rose. We went to the new trail and I took pictures, also Pictures of the Passat for Pat.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
Yesterday, I did the laundry after supper, and in the afternoon, from 3 - 5 I dug out some more of the michaelmas daisies by the david. Forget what I did in the morning but I was busy. Turkey and Lady Rose on the web page work, although it seemed to take ages to get anything loaded to that godaddy FTP, and for them to change to the new .htm page.
Today, Pat sold the Passat to Dave Harvey for $4200.
The interior of BC is on fire... forest fires everywhere from 100 mile house south with the number 1 highway closed, and sometimes the 97. I know not if we will get out to Sask. These forest fires are expected to go on, and the rain with thunder and lightning may even start more fires by lightning strike. We are ok on the island. One of the mars bombers will be ready to join the fire fight in August, so says the new government. (John Horgan NDP (43 seats) and Weaver GREEN (3 seats) have joined forces in defeating the Christie Clark and the Liberals.(45 seats)
July 13, 2017
Did photos for the Pleasure Way van for Pat's ad. Lunch of left over spaghetti. Went to the TD and deposited Dave Harvey's cheque. Pat and he are to meet at the Insurance place to change title and license plates at 6:15 and they did. Pat has had serveral answers/inquiries to his ad within a couple of hours of placing it. The first guy likes it and the price but is going to sleep on it. So, another guy is to come to view it (Klaus) at 7:30. And another at 8:30. There are many other questions. I hope the first guy just comes and gets it tomorrow. Pat needs to take the Highlander somewhere or other tomorrow, too. We should have waited a day or two to do the Van ad, maybe. I spent about 3 hours watering deck, patio, and all the potted plants and then all around the back in the afternoon. It was nice and cloudy and good for the photos this morning, but by the time I got out to water the clouds had gone without leaving any rain behind and the temperature got up to 28. The forest fires are still roaring, although the news last nite said they had reduced the number of fires from 220 to 183. Must watch the news again tonite.
the bug bite URL: http://www.newhealthadvisor.com/Bug-Bite-with-White-Ring-Around-It.html I will apply a cold pack and treat myself to a couple of cattos pain killers. the white ring seems to be the dead white cells that rushed to surrounjd the bite. I think it was a spider. This is day 2 when the ring appeared. I think it happened at night. It is not very itchy... just a little, and a bit of swelling that goes down when cold applied.
July 17, 2017
We have the van cleaned up and everything moved into Rachael's room. Washed the bedding and dishes. Did ads on Used Victoria and on Kiji. Yesterday Glen and Rosemary drove into Victoria from Chase. They were pretty sure they wanted the Van and looked it over pretty good when they got here. Nice people. We are to meet at the TD bank this morning to complete the deal. They are from Victoria so they will be here for a couple of days visiting family, equipping their new old van, no doubt. So, $22500 more to our bank for the Mercedes Manor. We should only need to take $60K from Mikey's bank when we get the call from Rick at Kelowna. There are a couple hundred forest fires raging in the interior, so I will be just as happy if they keep the Mercedes Manor in Manitoba until the highways are less smokey and dangerous to travel. Williams Lake was evacuated last nite to Kamploops. It is the worst fires, ever! I developed these skin eruptions with all the stress of selling these vehicles, etc. but they are now clearing up, I think. So, it is just as well I was not whining about it all in here.
July 18, 2017
Spent the morning catching up on sleep. Rob from Davey Tree said they would be here on Thursday the 20th. Gave a notification to the Pees and to the Syrians on the other side about the work to be done. After lunch I went out and cut back the giant loveage plant, and cut out the volunteer tree next to the back tub water feature. The fish in both tub gardens love the water sprayed into the tubs. I guess it areates the water. So, I have the green bin full, without tamping it down and out at the curb. Watered all the pots on deck, patio and around the back with the watering can. The tuberosa milkweed is in bud and there is an orange one from Dave's seeds also in orange bud. The Showy MW from Dave in its pot has buds. They will be pink. I have 2 swamp MW in pots and 3 or 4 new Showy that I grew from the Medicinal Seeds place. I had 30 seeds and seem to have a very low success rate with bringing them on. I hope they grow a good root system in the pots they are in. They do not have the silvery leaves that Dave's plant has, so I wonder if he is just making a big story out of the kind of milkweed the caterpillars eat. He has tagged butterflies returning to his garden, to lay eggs. We will see if his plant and my new ones can cross pollinate so that the silvery hairy one of his produces seed. The other plant from his seed is not silver leafed and blooms in orange. O well, all butterflies like these plants. I cannot find showy seed at Cannor.
The forest fires are still raging in the interior. Yesterday, Rosemary Derkens said that they had had rain at Chase the day before, so they were good. Cache Creek people went back home today after being evacuated for 11 days.
July 20, 2017
The Davey tree people are now to be here tomorrow morning. There have been nothing but bitches whines and complaints from the Pees, about the oak tree branches and the purple plum tree. Seems any notification to them only draws this bitchy behavior. The Syrians, on the other hand speak understandable English and are nothing but polite and the same with their landlord, Moni. I got a few branches of the yellow plum tree cut off and piled by the green bin. and part of a branch of the sweet gum tree that was reaching across my new little cedar hedge by the Pees driveway. The milkweeds are still in buds. We were supposed to have rain today, but missed out on it. Now the weathermen say tomorrow.. Sure hope so. There is going to be watering after the Tree trimmings happen. I have a sore shoulder from trying to cut off plum tree branches yesterday, and so took the day off, and even had a nap in the afternoon. My Windows updated its Apple stuff today. Looks good... have not tried any of it yet, but I am sure it will be fine. I reloaded the Greece photo album today and it works. Am working on the North Island trip now. (2002)
July 21, 2017
Have the North Island trip finished and am now working on 2002 France: Pont Royal and Paris.
Was an overcast day with promises of rain that never materized. The Davey Tree guy (Dan) and girl arrived at 8:30 with their truck, chipper, big ladder and long pole clipper saw. Dan and I walked around the property to be on the same page of what they were to do. They got to work and were very fast. The camillia, and the cedar hedge between our decks look great. The cedar hedge between the driveways looks a little sparse, and is brought down by quite a few feet. It is topped just about mid window height on the house next door. I like it and hopefully it will grow back in. The Syrians side is rather ragged with pieces of the cedar flopping over. The hedge at the back of the strawberry patch looks ok. I need to take the wisteria off the trees, although Dan says it is not on a main trunk and should not hurt the Western Red Cedar. He took a few branches off the English Oak. They did an excellent job on the sweet gum tree branches. Pat asked them to take the virginia creeper down a bit and they did. It needs a bit of clean up. We spoke about the holly tree and the firethorn and he said it is ok like it is and to plant a flowering plant under the holly, and took back a few branches on the firethorn. I asked Pat to take $20 out to each of them, and they accepted, saying they don't often get tips. Supper of fresh salmon that Pat got from Mr. Grocer. After supper I went out to wash down the cedar hedge between our decks. This set the baby billy Pee into a total frenzy. He had just cleaned the sidewalk. He became more and more abusive, using the F word liberally and progressed to how the plum tree is a traffic hazard. When he backs out he cannot see traffic coming and he is going to get t-boned. At the time I was running the garden hose to water the cedar hedge from on the Patio. I told him to calm down, repeatedly. Calm down or I would give him a cold shower, which I came very close to doing. At one point I said I would like to see him t-boned... I don't think he knows what T-boned is. How can you get t-boned backing slowly out of your driveway. At any rate, in the end of his rampage I told him to sure, cut the tree down. His parting comment was fucking bitch. He was extremely loud and abusive. Nevertheless, he did not ruin my day. I got the hedge between the decks watered and watered the trimmed back cammillia. Oh yeah, there was a dead bird -- a wren, I think, sitting at the edge of the boxwood hedge next to their sidewalk. Later when I saw that it was not a stone but a dead bird, I put it into the compost bin. I need to water tomorrow, as the promised rain does not seem to be falling. The hedge between the driveways will need a good watering, as well as the hedge between my strawberry patch/cutting garden and old weird Sheila's place. I watered a bit around the water/Japanese/moss garden and am hoping for more rain tonite. There was a terrific football game, between Winnipeg and BC starting at 8:00. Pat spoke to Tom Mellor. Ferry died a few days ago, Pat learned from Arthur and Rosemary, when he ran into them at the Mr. Grocery Store. Tom was thankful for Pat calling him. They are busy cleaning up the house and will rent to a couple of girls that will be going to university, and etc. Our Mercedes Manor will not be ready until August 8 or 9th. We will have some time to decide how we will deal with this re: picking up the Unity and coming back for dishes, etc. or heading straight back East from Kelowna. The time schedule will be tight, either way. Pat does not want to miss going back... partly, I am sure due to Greening. Well... whatever ... we have some time to decide. We have 2 days free camping to get used to the machine... perhaps we can decide then, which way to jump.
July 22, 2017
cloudy, cooler today. Finished uploading the 2002 France photo album and it now works. The North Island works also. Went out to get pictures and ended up under the deck and trying to clean out the debris in the hedge. There was a cut off bamboo.. tall one.. and it had dried. I must have done it and just left it in there. I pulled down the other tall bamboo canes and made them sit under the edge of the deck to create some more coverage for the top part of under the deck .. for the privacy. Hopefully this hedge will soon sprout new greenery. Silly Mrs. Pee was out there sweeping off her precious sidewalk again this morning. She will surely sweep again after I rattled debris down from in the branches. I see baby Pee ran the lawn mover over my little bamboo stakes that were meant to keep him off my grass and cutting it down to the bare dirt. We got a little bit of rain over nite. I kept waking up last nite and reading till I got back to sleep again. Am tired and sluggish today. Need a nap. Its muggy outside, so I hope it rains some more. I need to water the hedges and the front more.
July 23, 2017
Was up before 6:00, made the ham stew in the crock pot. Went out and cleaned up the debris under the hedge between the decks. Cut the bamboo back to deck bottom height. Then watered all around the back. Until 9:30. Then cleaned up some of the plants and black berries and bind weed out of the hedge and strip along between the driveways. Have the green bin full. Took out bamboo shoots from the front garden. Then watered the cedar hedge between the driveways for about an hour and a half. Came in about 11:30 and had lunch and a nap till 2:00. Went out and watered all around the front and the Pees side as far as the water would shoot. Came in sometime after 4:00 and visited with Pat for a few minutes. Showered, made the ham stew, stewed tomatoes and cheeseed hot dog buns for supper. I see the Syrians have a chicken hutch in the back corner of their yard where the old play house used to be. Good for them. There is a bit of odor, but its hot summer day! I hope they get a nice big vegetable garden going, next. I did not see the butterflies today. Hope they mated and have laid eggs somewhere. I am getting a few fennel plants going for them. The milkweed is in bloom. We will need photos.
July 24, 2017
Was out from 7:30 to 11:30. Weeded the moss garden. Its looking really pretty good. The chocolat lily has formed lots of bulbs. I should mark its spot. I used the weed killer stuff on a few things I want to get rid of, namely the wisteria sprouts, the plants under the holly where I expect to put milkweed, and some weedy stuff under one of the rhodos. Snipped to seeds off the old rhodo with the purple and maeve petals. Mowed the front grass. Ran the mower over lots of the st. John's worte, and took it right down to ground level. This made lots of debris in the bag and so the green bin is now heaping full. I will have to tamp it down again. Still have the back to mow. Checked for gold fish in the back tub. Could not see any. Some birds were having a drink on the edge of the tub. Perhaps some bird or animal got the fish. I must get some new ones. Everything looks good after it gets a bit of water, so I must keep up the watering, in the morning, if I don't do anything else, I should water.
July 26, 2017
Finished the clean up of the light garden that I started yesterday. Fed and watered all the plants, fillled the trays with water. Light garden is looking ok, and so are the African Violets, and Xmas cactus. I have 2 new milkweed speciosia on the deck in pots and am trying to get them to root from the long stems they have grown. Mowed the back and clipped off the tall grass under the Apple tree. Then watered all around the back for about an hour. Watered the cedars along the driveway, cleaned up some of the Virginia creeper and some of the Agave plant....have enough clippings to fill another bin.
Watered all around the front sometime after lunch. While out there Mr. Pee made a point of pretending to talk about cutting back the plum tree, but told me, on the sly, that he had a problem, but could not talk about it now. Not now. So, what the hell am I suppose to do about his problem, whatever it is? He's as crazy as the rest of them. I hold out no hope for Gertie, either. The grandsons cars do not seem to be around any more. So, I suppose there might be some hope for them.
July 27, 2017
didn't do much today. Groceries and booze run. Then made the new spinach salad with artichoke hearts, sun dried tomatoes (which did not seem to be the right ones. I want red ones that are not gummy) AND the new dressing... sweet yogurt I think they called it in the cafe at courtenay. Watched the knowledge tv channel about gardens from around the world. This was about some in India. The Moguls were actually from Afganistan and invaded and conquered India which was a bunch of Hindu tribes, in I believe they said the 14th century. They let the Hindus keep their religion and culture, I think. I must read up about it. These Moguls were a bunch of party animals.
July 29, 2017
Al and Marie Hunt were to visit on the 28th. We went out to McMorans for a scrumptious lunch and Pat drove us around a bit. Then home to visit and I made ham and scalloped potatoes for supper. They over nighted in our guest room. In the morning I was up way early and made porridge and bacon and eggs for breakfast. They left about 9:00 on their tour to Port Refrew, around the loop with a stop at the Avatar Grove, and I think they were up to Chemainus to overnite. They expect to go to Tofino and maybe even to the Hot Springs. They will be back on Wednesday to overnight and catch their early flight home. They will want to leave here at 4:00 am. In the afternoon, I did laundry, including our sheets. It was cooler than the promised 28 degrees. We have not been using the big fan in the guest room window this year. It cools off at night enough to sleep and we run the overhead fan, with the bathroom windows open and the dining room window open.
July 30, 2017
I see on my calendar that it is International Bog Day today. My little pitcher plant has been gorging itself on house flies, and so seems to have stopped growing pitchers for now. Baby Pee is still playing his loud music. Pappa Pee had words with him about it in some foreign language. This did not stop the bad behavior. Seems to me the old guy is afraid of him. Perhaps he should take it to the authorities. It is only getting worse as time goes on. I will see what Saanich has in mind for an extension of that bicycle/walking trail along Grange to connect the trail coming out of the park on Loenholm to the trail a block to the north that crosses Carey Road and goes into the park on that side of this little area.
July 31, 2017
Had a slow start this morning as my back (kidneys area) is still sore. The tight elastic on those pants I was wearing seems to have contributed greatly to this problem. I dragged most of the milkweeds to the patio area. Still have one more to go. Maybe tomorrow. Watered all the pots. The sun is beating down and it is 27 degrees. I made a bamboo trellis for the honeysuckle. Watered all around the back for about an hour.
August 2017
August 1, 2017
Watered a bit around the back and then gave the cedars along between the driveways a pretty good watering. It is 27 degrees today and the air is very still and a bit muggy. The sky seems hazy. We have a reversal of the winds, and instead of going off the ocean to the east, they are blowing the smoke done the river valleys to the coast. I think I can smell the smoke. We are to have record high temperatures this week. The hedges seem to be doing ok. Got a new kneeling pad, and 4 new goldfish... 2 for the pond and 2 for the back tub. I saw a very weird creature this morning about 4:00 am. It looked like a very skinny, light colored, and a bit smaller, racoon. It was big for a feral cat. Whatever it was I think that might be what is getting the goldfish in the back tub. Ray gave Pat a ride home in his very fancy old queen chrysler car. Pat had left the Highlander to have the hitch brake installed, or something like that.
August 2, 2017
Watered the cedars between the decks and down the strip by the Pees sidewalk. Mrs. Pee was out in her pajamas cleaning up her bins. I gave the cedars a good watering from the top and washed the deck off from the muck that had got on my deck furniture and everything from the Pees having someone do their gutters. Watered around the back a bit. Watered the roses and the boxwood hedges. Watered along the 5 foot strip between the Pees place and ours. Gave the cut back camillia a good watering and watered along the little honeysuckle pillea hedge and where the shithead has been scraping the grass off from under the boxwood hedge and reset two little bamboo stakes at the edge with the trellis at the other side to try to keep the idiot and his weed eater off my plants. Watered the roses and under the cedars at the front to the plum tree, where I see there are more branches cut off and thrown in my flower bed by the plum tree. There are plums knocked off the tree from them setting their bins under the tree. As I was doing this watering the shithead came along with his weed eater and started scraping off my grass. Deliberately provoking me and so there I was, idiot that I am reacting to this provocation by spraying the weedeater and screaming at him to stop scraping that grass off and get off my property. Of course, things went down hill from there. He was bellowing the f this and f that and I know not what all. I participated in this idiot charade by trying to reason with him, which of course only made him worse. At one point he was scornfully saying something like yeah you lottery winners, why don't you get a job and go to work like normal people. And that he works hard 12 hours a day. He was spitting at me... honest to god... so I sprayed him with the garden hose and he aimed the weed eater at my face and was madly gleeful ... right out of his mind and sprayed me with his garden hose that he just happened to have turned on and with him down by my little magnolia tree. I have yet to examine the damage he did to that tree. I was thoroughly frightened by this time and ran from the spray and yelled to Pat to call the police. Pat happened to be in the back bathroom .. so, I called 911 and finally got someone who told me to hang in there... I had to go into the house to hear this over the weed eater and the shithead roaring madly. The police arrived and spoke to the shithead first. Sometime during this time, a package had arrived in the door from the mailman and Al and Marie got to our place. I was soaking wet, very upset .. do not remember the sequence... When the police man came over to talk to me, I could hardly talk. Al, Marie and Pat had gone upstairs. Constable Steve Mcnamara told me nothing of any use. Said to walk away from him, which I had been telling myself to do just the day before too. and was provocked beyond my endurance to tolerate a walk away. Which was the shithead's intention. The cop told me we were acting like a couple of kids, spraying water at each other. I actually had to laugh at the picture he painted. He said this was a civic or whatever dispute, I would have to take it up with Saanich. To build a fence... I did not think to tell him that my trees were my fence and they were forever destroying the trees. He seemed a bit taken aback when I asked him if nothing could be done until I had my face scraped off by a weedeater, but repeated that it was a civil matter. I could not settle down for the rest of the day;. We went to HoJos for dinner and it was nasty and loud. Or perhaps I was overly upset and this was a further annoyance. We watched the news when we got back from dinner. Saskatchewan has had a horrible hot heat wave, going on. We all decided to go to bed early as the Hunts had to catch a 4 o'clock flight out. And so they did, very quietly. I turned on the lights for them but did not hang about to see them off, as they did not want that. Later went down and turned off the lights and locked the door. I hope Constable Steve mcnamara, who is from the patrol division, does some patrolling around our area, now. I am writing this from memory at 11:30 on the 3rd., as I cannot sleep again. Actually it is now 12:46 am on the 4th.
August 3, 2017
Get up about 10:00 get the laundry and dishwashing done. and have to try to get some rest, as I was up most the night last night. It got to 37 degrees today the news said, but I only saw 31 on our thermometer. Was damn hot anyway. Got a bit of rest, made our supper, watched the garden show on tv and to bed about 9:00 to read for a while and to sleep. It is quite warm but not impossible. So, since I have got this recorded I might be able to get some more sleep. I am determined to walk away from now on. We have too much other stuff happening just now to pursue the survey or whatever I need to do to get them outted for building their house far too big for the lot and placing their clothes line on the property line. I think there is going to be a killing over there... the old woman seems to have dementia, or alzheimers. The shithead has gone insane and the old man tells me on the sly that he has a problem but he can't talk about it now. Not now. He seems to be afraid of his wife and son. Pat doesn't see it that way. I believe he thinks they are all of much the same mind. I haven't seem the old Pee around for a few days. The grandsons are not around and I don't know how Gertie manages. Her car is there but gone for most of the day. She must work long hours.
August 4, 2017
Was out from 9 to 11:30 and thoroughly watered the front and gave the strip between the driveways a bit of water, including the hedge. Mrs. Pee had to leave him in charge of the curry while she went off in her car to phone her little pookie. So, Mr. Pee is still alive at this juncture. He no longer drives. He was in a car accident a few years ago, so perhaps he lost his license. We went to lunch at the chicken place and then shopped London drugs for printer ink and paper and vitimans. Pat got a cover for his phone but needs the one for the 7 plus, so has to take it back and exchange it. Made cucumber salad. Its very hot and seems to be less smokey today. Its 28 at 2:30, and the air is very still. Have made the Harvard Beets.
August 5, 2017
It seems a bit cooler today. There is haze and the temps are 25 at 2:00 pm. Have started the reload of the Travel album for Scotland Ireland in 2004. I was out at 7:20 to feed the fish in the back tub and discovered branches... big branches ripped off the lilac tree and thrown over my herbs in that corner at the back, the compost bin thrown over with the lid off, and the empty pots scattered along the path of my cutting garden. The compost bin and the pots were definitely situated on my property. In fact, the compost bin had a stake through the handle and pounded into the ground to secure it in position. All of this inside the gardening tiles that the landscapers had originally put down, along that side of my propery in that back corner. Now if this is not wilful destruction/damage of my property I do not know what is. Yes, Constable Mcnamara I walked away from this provocation. I know you have speeding bicycles to catch. I do hope it made the shithead or his mummy happy. GAWD AHMIGHTY. Actually, I think he is in desperate search of something that will get him out of this domestic situation that he is in. Some years ago, he whispered to me..."It didn't take her long to get rid of the trees"... the her referred to of course being his mother. I think she may have alzheimers or dementia now and is in desparate need of help herself. Why am I blessed with this kind of neighbor? So, our Unity should be ready soon. We will probably get the Commissionaires to look after the property while we are gone. We might just carry on from Kelowna to Sask. After that we will see what the commissionaires have to report. I hope they put up surveillance cameras, perhaps from our back deck hedge, to scan that whole property line.
August 6, 2017
Was disgusted to see more damage to my garden. Went out and took photos and am in the process of emailing Cst. Steve McNamara #276 to fill him in on what good his walk away policy has made. There has been 3 attacks on my trees since he was here. Baby Pee is definitely getting worse. We go to Robin's RROC people picnic in about an hour. So, am finished for today. Was up at 1:00 am picturing the red almost full moon. While doing this I saw a person all in black with a German Shepard dog in harness walking in front of my house. And heard Baby Pee cough his smokers cough out by my boxwood hedge. Watched TV with Pat after supper of salmon and left over salad. Did not have time to try to watch the Symphony Splash on facebook live, but did hear the fireworks.
August 7, 2017
Awake at about 4:30 and checking out my page stuff. I have to finish loading the Scotland Ireland images, pages and thumbnails if necessary. The 20 htms that are loaded work. Must finish the email first and get it sent off. I had a look over the deck at the pond. It is quite cool out and things smell wonderful.. no stinking chemical, or curry smells out there.
11:00 - finished and sent the email at last. Hope Cst. Mcnamara gets here soon so I can clean up the mess. Decided to make salmon crepes for supper. The temperature is now at about 20 and hazy. It is 1:30, the temperature is up to 27 and the air is very heavy. Watered the deck and house plants. filled the pond and both tubs. All the fish seem to be in their pond and tubs. Fed all of them after skimming duck weed off the pond. Checked around the property for any more damage.
Hello Cst. Steve McNamara,
Further to your attendance at my home on the 2nd of the month, there has been additional damage to my property. I have attempted to list this damage and would appreciate your attention to see this to verify the information for your files and reports.
Points:
Dan and helper from Davey Tree were here on July 21, 2017 to top and shear hedges around my garden
and to top the Camellia tree on the Parmars side of my property, to about 12 ft. on the East side of our house, topped the cedar hedge between the decks to below eaves level. They had been complaining about "tree shit" falling on their sidewalk. They wash that sidewalk down with some sort of chemical that they spray with the garden hose, washing this mixture down the storm drains on both of their driveways. This Colquitz is a fish habitat stream, as you, of course, know. Shortly after that they began to intensify this mad behavior. Some time after this the Parmars had the gutters cleaned and there was dirt and mud on my deck. Washing the dirt off my deck and watering down the newly trimmed cedars and the plants along that side of my home caused another swearing, screaming fit from Parmar.
Damage to our garden:
Aug 2: Cst. McNamara visit: I was out watering around the front garden when Mr. Bill Parmar started scraping the grass off the edge of my property by the boxwood hedge with his roaring weedeater, including cutting down my little bamboo stakes I had to protect my grass. I watered his weed eater and told him to get off my property. He went ballistic and started his usual rant, 'f' this and 'f' that, calling me an 'fucking bitch'. At one point he was sneering 'ah you lottery winners. Why don't you get a job and do some work like normal people' and continuing with 'I work hard 12 hours a day'. He was nearly foaming at the mouth, totally out of control. While he was ranting I was watering my garden. He began spitting at me through the little star magnolia tree, at which time I sprayed him with the garden hose. There after things got seriously ugly and he aimed the running weed eater at my face, and spraying me with his garden hose that he just happened to have with him while running his weedeater . . . . shouting I know not what, as I was totally afraid and astonished at how out of control he was. I ran towards my house door while calling 911. You know the rest.
Aug 4 - noticed Plum tree branches broken off and thrown on the flower bed. I removed them to the side of the plum tree and walked away, as you suggested. photo attached.
August 5:
I was out at 7:20 pm to feed the fish in the back tub and discovered branches... big branches ripped off the lilac tree and thrown over my herbs in that corner at the back, the compost bin thrown over with the lid off, and the empty pots scattered along the path and on my plants of my cutting garden. The compost bin and the pots were definitely situated on my property. In fact, the compost bin had a stake through the handle and pounded into the ground to secure it in position. All of this damage was inside the landscaping tiles that the landscapers had originally put down in 1988, along that side of my propery in that back corner. I put the compost bin and pots back in place and took the broken branches to my green bin and walked away in accordance with your advice. I should have taken pictures, but cleaned up the mess and have pictures of the broken lilac branches that are to be cut up and put into the green bin, after you have seen them.
August 6:
About 7:30 am I looked out my living room window that overlooks the front garden and discovered this horrible mess of cut up foliage thrown on my grass path and the boxwood hedge next to the Parmar's property. I am attaching pictures of this damage that includes the removal of a small cedar tree that I had planted a few years ago. I had planted these cedars to screen the view of their compost and garbage bins from my front door. All of these cut off plants have come from the plants that are definitely on my property. The bamboo stakes I had along the edge of the sidewalk were an attempt to grow sweet peas to try and screen the garbage cans and the stink, from my front door. The bamboo stakes are gone.
I have left the mess as is, and would appreciate it if you would stop by to verify this damage to my propery for your files and reports.
A matter of curiosity:
In the very early morning of August 6th, I was at my dining room window, trying to get pictures of the red smog shrouded moon when I saw a person in all black with hoody over his/her head, and a lovely long haired German shepherd dog in harness going down Loenholm Road. This lead me to search the web for information on the K9 unit. I see these dogs are part of the Saanich Police, Patrol division, but work where ever they are needed. Also had a quick look at the hours our Saanich Police work. Seems like a high stress job you have, especially since you switch between day shift and night shift quite often. In the Times Colonist there is information about how our tax money is spent. We only have 161 Police Officers to cover this large municipality? Photo of moon for you.
Investigation in abeyance:
Patrick and I expect to be away from home soon after the 9th of August, to pick up our new Unity van in Kelowna and continue Easterly, if the weather and roads allow. If all goes as planned we will be away for about 3 weeks. We hope to get the Commissionaires to care take our place while we are gone. I would like to leave your card for them to contact if there is any more damage to our property that they would need to report to the authorities. May I?
Thanks for your good advice and attention to this matter.
Margaret Meehan
1106 Loenholm Road
Photos attached:
Aug6in2017brokenPlants.JPG
MissingCedar.jpg
mar23in2016Cedars.jpg
July22in2017Missing bamboostakes.JPG
BrokenPlumTreeBranches.jpg
BrokenLilacBranches.jpg
CompostBinLilac.jpg
GardenCompostBin.jpg
121AMAug6.jpg
the ph0tos are in the PARMAR folder.
I have a head ache from being out in the stiffling heat. Will make the crepes next. Got the images loaded for the Scot/Ire album. must check pages and thumbs next.
August 8, 2017
4:00 a.m. couldn't sleep, so loaded the pages for Scotland Ireland album. Took about an hour. It works. I cannot seem to be able to get the updates on the Travel Journal notes page to show the recent additions... the pre89 travel logue. I am sure I have reloaded it 3 times.
August 9, 2017
Finally the pre1989 travel logue page works with the new additions. Early this morning I noticed an email from Hydro saying my bill was over due. After searching the folders from in the desk... credit union and hydro ones. I finally came to the conclusion that I had mistakenly cancelled a payment in view of the warning about the Telephone Scam on the bill. Wrote an email to Pat about it, showing him the thing and asking him if he thought it was a scam. Finally just redid the payment as I had marked it in the book and everything, but the payment had not come out of the bank.
Next thing was an email to Trevor about my anti virus and the error in opening files; and Pat not having icons on his desk top for gmail. Copy to Pat. Well, Pat said that he knows how to get his gmail, but just never needed to use it on his desktop. That is not what I understood him saying to me. Trevor emailed back saying that those errors are password protected files and all the anti viruses programs do that. And that he had Friday at 4:00 free, or we could wait till we got back from our trip. ok, emailed back and thanks for the info and that sure when we get back will be fine. And had to tell him that I miss-understood Pat's gmail stuff. He just not need to use it on desk top. Trev will talk to Liz and family and see if they agree to come and get plums... When we find out how long it will be till we go to get the Unity I will let Trevor know that he can be over to pick plums if they want to. Pat phoned Kalanaka and found that he might need a few more extras .. like a coating on it to make it more resistant to dirt and stain. Bonnie is to get back to use with whatever... Rick is to phone Pat tomorrow when he knows more about delivery date.
Next thing on the agenda was an email to Dominika at Davey Tree to ask when I can expect the bill. She replied that it would be coming in the mail. AND it did.. a few hours after I had emailed her and she had asked their head office to send it by email. So, wrote her back thanking her and told her of the arrival of it in snail mail and that I would send off a cheque for it immediately. and it would be nice to have one in email, also. So, this snail mail sucks. The bill was $1475. or something like that.
So got all that sorted.
Went for groceries after lunch. Its very hot and muggy. 28 and haze. Earlier I noticed that shithead threw his mess of cut plants over the little boxwood hedge onto the flower bed. I need to go out and get pictures, and need to water the back pots, as well as the hedge and all of the bed actually.
Finally when I thought I had everything under control, the toilet in the suite has been running and running since who knows when. Pat says he has to fix the valve tomorrow. And I have a swelling bite of some kind on my left elbow. Seemed to get it sometime after being out to mail the Davey Tree cheque. Tomorrow we go for dinner with Marlene and Art at the Spaghetti Factory. All the fish were present when I fed them this a.m. and the honey suckle is doing fine. Hope we can get Victor to look after the place again. I must do laundry tomorrow, too. But the water is shut off... bloody hell. Oh well, Friday, maybe. Guess we will just have to get new ones. I was at 147 this morning... been to hot to eat anything but salads.
August 10, 2017
So, it seems we will not get our Unity for another 2 weeks. Pat is going to go for the extra polish on the outside to help keep it clean and easy to wash for about another 2K. We are going to fly out to Sask for a week to see Fran and be back and hopefully the Unity will be ready to pick up about the 23 - 25. I took pictures this morning of more damage on my plants. Got some laundry done and will finish tomorrow. I really must get the patio plants watered and around the back. Went to Kerrisdale cameras and got a new card for the SX60 and a new battery, as the others were not working properly. We were to Spaghetti Factory for dinner with Marlene and Art. Good food, good visit. Very hot day. Was up around 28 or 29. We are suppose to get cooler temps and perhaps rain by Sat or Sun. Sure hope we get a good downpour.
August 11, 2017
Pat arranged for tickets out to Sask.. I think we fly out the early morning of the 15th and will be back 22nd. Pat phoned the Commissionaires and Dave was over in about 15 minutes as he was in the neighborhood. He is going to be looking in on the place while we are gone. Finished the laundry. It is hot out there at 2:00 but nice and cool in the house. I am nevertheless going to go out and try to get some watering done and the messes cleaned up. Dave said their company is in charge of providing services for all the hospitals on the island. They need to send a person to be with each patient that the doctors deem to be dangerous... need to be with the patient constantly. So that must take 3 shifts of care of each patient. You gotta wonder if it would not be easier and cost less to go back to staffing the mental hospitals and building more for the care of dementia patients and others that need care and not having them in the hospitals with other sick and helpless patients.
August 12, 2017
sunny, a tiny bit of clouds, and at 1:00 it is about 19 degrees. So, we are getting the cooler weather promised. Had a look at my trimmed hedges. They seem to be doing not too badly. I have been watering them.. aproximately weekly, through this hot weather. Actually been watering all of the garden except the woodland on this random watering, by hand, days. I water the pots by hand with the watering can, the rest with the hose. Come ON RAIN! While out feeding the fish this morning I noticed cigarette butts by the east side of the pond. I don't think they were there when Dave was over yesterday. He did take a look at the pond and fish, as I had asked him to keep an eye on the pump. The fish seemed to be able to turn it off. Now they have taken up smoking! There are some seriously deranged people living next door. So, went out and took some really crappy photos around the garden, and of the cigarette butts and the mess on the front flower bed, and the damage to that front flower bed next to the Parmars garbage cans. What can their game possibly be? I am glad Constable McNamara told me to 'walk away'. Perhaps when we are away, starting Tuesday 15 to Tues or Wednesday the 22 or 23...(forget which day it is); perhaps, these demented people will get the help they need from the authorities. They had their laundry out on the line... pyjamas and gauches. What a lovely display.
Cleaned my camera, and my purse. I am going to take my camera bag as carry on and the rest will go in the little black suitcase (for both of us). We won't need much. Must remember the electrical chargers, etc. I think I should take my phone charger in my purse or camera bag. Must remember to put gadgets on airplance mode... even the ipad which will be in the checked suitcase, with password folder.
Pat fixed the back garage door and now it locks very easily and unlocks too. I was out from about 2 to 4 and watered all around. Watered down the hedges. They might make it through till the rain starts or at least until we get back. We have had a nice cool breeze and the smokey haze seems to be gone. While watering under the deck and along my hedge and that side of the pond there was a great chemical stink. Very strong odor. Got the Syrian side hedge watered down for about half an hour. Did not even get a whiff of the chickens. As soon as I was out watering the demented baby Pee started playing his music and increased the volume to quite loud. He had a visitor from a neighbor... might have been old weird's daughter. blond, hair in a clip at the back. She came right over to the Parmar place and said her piece and went away. Did not hear what she said but I assume it was about the loud music. Hope she reports it, whoever she is. Hope she smelled the chemical spill. The stink is still up my noise here at my computer and is giving me a headache. The breeze is from the East so the stink is coming from the Parmars place. It seems the Syrians now have a rooster. It has been crowing till 7:00 pm. We are getting a few clouds and a cool breeze. It is down to 20 degrees at 8:45 and Gertie's car is not in the front driveway. Hope she has skipped that demented household, for her own sake. Did a basic blog post about the damage to my garden.
August 13, 2017
The rooster was crowing at about 5:00 am. I went and unloaded the dishwasher since I could not sleep. The bird stopped crowing and I went in and back to sleep. Maybe it will be in the pot for dinner tonight. :) Its cool in the house and we did not need the fan on. We both got mosquito bites last night. We had a few mm of rain last night and there was some on the water table. I had my water about 9:30 while looking out at my garden. A guy with glasses was kicking a big blue ball down the street past our driveway and back to the corner of grange and loenholm. Gertie was just putting a pkg in the back of her car, and beginning to back out when the guy was there. Gertie looks thin and hagard. She was wearing the East Indian clothes. The long top and baggy pants stuff. I have never seen her dress like that. But then I haven't seem much of her, either. Shortly after she left the van left the back driveway. I fed the fish... they seem to be in there, but did not watch for long. It was coolish out there. About 16 with a cool breeze. Would be great gardening day, except we have a VCCC run today. The honeysuckle on the deck is growing like crazy. I should prune it back to get more shoots to make a thicker screen. At 4:30 its about 23 degrees. Trevor Liz Own and Liam were over to pick plums. We got the ladder out and trev was up on it. Not much of a crop this year. When we went out to go on the VCCC run at about 1:00 old Mr. Pee was all dressed up in a suit and went out to Gertie's car. I do not know who was driving. The car is still away and the van is back and baby Pee is out there playing his loud music and was when Trev and family were here. Also I heard some snipping the trees just before they came and their garbage can opening. I want to get that mess cleaned up at the front so I will have a look tomorrow. The people 2 doors down are having a gathering with several cars parked along the road. Nice to see. Watered the house and deck plants. It has been quite breezy today. KFC for supper. 7:15 and Gertie's car is not in the driveway.
August 14, 2017
Last nite when I was awake and looking out the front window I saw a bycle-ist tearing around the corner of Grange and loenholm. As he passed my drive way he said something like tootle ohh I really don't know what he said. I was up at 7:00 this morning to start cleaning up the mess in the front garden. It smelled very nice and fresh for the first few minutes, and then there was a terrible smokey smell, like there was something on fire. I came in about 9:00 and Pat said about this smell, before I even mentioned it to him. I replied to Pat... next attack -- arson. Went back out and clipped back and cleaned up the perennials in the two front rectanlges, including clipping the spirea bush down into a round bush. Cut back the lychnis and everything that had gone to seed. Took my second wheel barrow of clippings back to the green bin. I had left some of the damaged plants out of the bin, from the first load of the mess, and still the bin is full. I have the second and third wheel barrow loads piled in front of the bin. The van is in the back driveway. Gertie in her car left about 10:00 and is not back now at 4:00. Clipped back the montebretia, weeded the thyme circle and a bit by the cement vase container. It all looks pretty good. I just need rain. Went in about 11:20 just as Pat had got home. A few minutes later a white truck pulled into our driveway and backed out to park on the grass in front of the hedge. Mrs. Pee went out and I thought she had got someone to cut down the plum tree. There was some sawing noise, so I went out to see. Pat said to not say anything to just take picutres. Well, it was a Saanich truck and Mike Mclean was finished the job and about to leave when I went up to his window. He got out and I asked him if there was a problem.. He said there was a visibility problem and he had pruned the tree to the Saanich specifications and indicated the view anyone now had if backing out in their car from the Pees driveway. (good thing I had clipped back the spirea bush.) He said this is a Saanich tree as it is on the boulevard. I said that yes I knew it was. Told him he had done an excellent job, shook hands, got his card. He seemed a bit surprised by my attitude. Like he had been told something else entirely, I am sure. The tree looks good pruned. I had mentioned to Dan from Davey tree that I wanted them to prune that tree in the winter when they come to take out the yellow plum tree and prune the apple tree and anything else that needs it. So, anymore damage to the my garden on the Saanich propery should be actionable. I spoke to any number of people while out gardeing along the boulevard. Happy, nice people There was a cigarette butt by the tree. Not sure if it is still there or if Mike Mclean noticed. Skimmed off the pond. When I fed the fish they all seem to be accounted for. Went out and took pictures. The cigarettte butt is still by the pond. and the clothes pin. I am pretty sure Dave the Commissionaire guy will see it. He doesn't miss much. So, we are all packed and ready to go early in the morning. Just need to pack the charger for my phone. And my hair brush. and throw my ban into the checked bag. I expect we are under 50 lbs. Wonder if we have to get food to take aboard. Will see tomorrow. 7:30 gertie's car is not home. I see the shithead has thrown the blackberry sprout that I put along the bamboo at the entry to my grass path, thrown it into the flower bed. This guy is going to explode when he has no one to pretend to torment. Disfunctional bunch. I have written a note to Dave the commissionaire, and asked him if he would drag my green bin back to the garage. Pick up is on Wednesday, so, hope he can do this on his second day visit which will probably be thursday.
August 23, 2017
We got home yesterday from our week trip to Fran's place. Victoria has had no rain, and is still having high temperatures. Dave of the Commissionaires seems to have taken good care of the place. We were greeted with two blossoms on the Pixie cattalaya orchid. I thought I had killed that poor plant as it has been looking a rather pale color. We had pizza for supper. Pat decided to get our tickets from expedia for the flight to Kelowna on the 29th. So, that is done. Now we are starting to plan our packing and Pat is emailing Rick to see if we can get a deal on the extended warranty because all these delays in delivery have caused us some trouble with our schedule this summer. So, that stands as is till we get there.
I watered the house and deck plants, filled the tub and the pond, and fed the fish. We got in some groceries and wine and lottery tickets. I found some rather dried dog shit on the grass path and picked that up with a plastic bag. Picked up more trash on the way to the Park garbage bin on Gerda. On the way back I found a teasel plant growing near the fantastic power pole. I need one of those in my garden! Perhaps I can get some seed from it. Had a look at the pin oak that is behind the garage. I think that will have to come down, too. It is too close to the garage. So, in the spring or winter there will be the old plum tree and the pin oak to take out. The trimmed hedges are looking a little drooping. Sure hope we get rain soon. We are eating yellow plums from the back tree. I see there are more plums fallen off the tree at the front. Must be too dry, and it has, after all been pruned at this hotest time of the year. Poor Saanich tree.
August 24, 2017
Scrubbed out the tub and mopped up the floor in the ensuite. Clipped the rose back from the door and now have a boquet in the living room, with a slight fragrance. Watered a tiny bit around the front. Did laundry. Picked up a few scraps of garbage from across the street. The mower has been along past Loenholm cutting back the blackberries. Saw "Jeven's" maternal grandmother and her husband walking along Loenholm this morning. They did not stop at the tree terrorists taj mahal. She is wearing the same clothes as in the photo on Facebook, so it is surely the same person. We have our flight tickets booked, so we are ready. Just to pack and get up early on the 29th. I had a look at the pin oak, and it might be okay to stand for a couple more years. There is a forest wild fire 20 kms, now 3 kms, from Kelowna. People are being evacuated. Hope Rick is getting his inventory, including our Unity out of there. Hope the Salis are ready to move! OMG.
August 25, 2017
Watered the patio pots and all the pots around back. Watered around the back a bit, especially under the apple tree. Picked 3 figs of the top of the tree. They are very ripe and beginning to dry. Pat is eating them, and says they are good. Groceries and made the roast beef in the afternoon. So, had a roast beef feast night. Was a cooler day.
August 26, 2017
warmer day today. cappiccino this am and then out to the Mayfair food mart for lunch and walk over to Topaz Park to see the RCMP Musical rides. They spent too much time with some band playing music we could not hear. The horse rides were an hour, and very fine. We sat on the grass and our view was obscured by people at the front sitting in lawn chairs. Was quite warm out. We had our hats. Home by about 3:45. Brought a few things up to pack for the trip to Kelowna. The fire seems to have been beaten back some and it sounds like it is under control. At least 2 of those fires were set by some insane person. Probably all of them, as there were 7 spots on Filpot road that were started, and there was no lightning. I do hope the arsonists burns in hell, if not a hot jail cell, in solitary confinement, with no hope for parole. Out to the Greek Fest for lamb dinner, spanakopeta, baklava, that Greek wine. Home by 6:15. Download the awful photos.
August 27, 2017
Sunny day. We are eating yellow plums right off the tree. Getting packed for our flight to Kelowna. Seems the airline is still flying. The fires must be under control. Picked a handful of blackberries to have with our plums and ice cream tonite. It is blistering hot out in the sun, with no rain in sight.
August 29, 2017
we were up at 4:00, caught a cab at 5:00 and were to the airport an hour before our 7:15 flight. It was a long day. Supper at the campsite and finally to bed. All the stuff is in the Travel Journal. Smokey air and chemical smells from the new Van.
August 30, 2017
Breakfast works ok. More oreintation and visit John and Isabelle. John takes us out to eat at a fantastic Chinese buffet place. Very good. After we head off back to the campsite and Kelley and Ange and Alisha come to see us and the new van at the campsite...All this is in the travel Journal.
August 31, 2017
Breakfast, add water and head for home..We make the 5:00 ferry. Home and unpack...Had supper on the ferry.
September 2017
September 1, 2017
I am up too early and start doing computer stuff. I was on my godaddy site to change the card to the new one and could not find it. Since I had to text talk about it, I also purchased my standard SSL certificate, for 3 years, for my mmmee.com hosted site. Cost $209.98 Canadian. Have started to put the code on all the pages. Once I get the code on I will have to make up links for the visit to Fran and the trip to get the van. Pat wants me to make a page for all purchases and sales of our vans. I am thinking about adding this to the Cars pages, with four columns, one for each van picture and info and then the Trip photo album for the last one can be linked to the fourth column on the vans, page, as it will be under its own Travel Journal photo album page. So, I will have 2 travel journal photo albums to make up links and photo albums to.
It was quite cool this morning. We had the fan running in the bedroom. Now, at 3:30 its up to 26 degrees and quite hot. There was no rain while we were away, so I should get out and water everything again, but do not feel like it. We have not had rain for 2 months and have had very hot weather. My house plants survived the 4 days we were away. They seem to like a break from the light garden.
September 2, 2017
Downloaded photos this morning and discovered I had only the ones from when I had changed the battery. I remember that I formated. I thought that since I had put in a new battery it had to be formatted. Stupid. I lost pictures of the bear at the campsite, and all of them up to about the lunch stop. Pictures of the Merritt area. Oh Damn. I will have to get over it, I guess. Was hot today, got up to 28 degrees.
September 3, 2017
The Sitelock is whining about setting up my new SSL properly. I have emailed Adam W about it. He has looked after the purchase of sitelock for my site and the removal of the malware, in March. I have added the ssl badge to all of the pages and am keeping a list of the pages. My music does not play either. The denial of access to Port 80 has shown up on my desktop files in My Web page, and the music won't play off my desk top files. bloody hell. Have done up the links on all the pages for the 17Unity album and the 17Sask album. Doing up the under construction for all the pages. No doubt I will have to phone Adam to get his attention. Maybe on Monday or Tuesday. Was up for about 3 hours in the middle of the night trying to figure this shit out... to no avail. Am tired and bitchy this morning. It got to be really hot again. 29. We went out to the Greek fest again for lamb and pork kabob wine baklava. Food was ok, the noise and heat is intolerable. Home by 6:00 and can go downstairs where it is cooler. The fan in the bedroom is running and it cools off at night to a fairly cool, under the covers temperature. This is to continue all week with no sign of rain any time soon.
September 4, 2017 Labor Day
It is going to be hot again today. At 10:00 it is 25°. I have watered the house and deck plants. Filled the pond, and skimmed the leaves and debris off. Fed the fish. They are all present. Four big gold fish, two small ones and a very pretty shubunkin. I should get a couple more shubunkins. Maybe even a koi, since the racoons, herons and river otters don't seem to be visiting anymore. The big pixie orcid has two more buds. Got the patio plants watered and all the pots. AT 12:30 its 30°. Going to be a scrocher. Wiped up the floor in the camper, added lemon pledge to all the wood. The water was amazingly dirty for the small space. The door came off the bathroom again. Dammit. It was 33° in there. Very hot. I want to get shelf liner for all the cupboards. Non stick stuff. added more bamboo sticks to the trellis for the honeysuckle. The honeysuckle is growing like crazy.
September 5, 2017
Talked to Adam Withrow at GoDaddy, having trouble with SiteLock settings to allow their scan of my site. He had to have one of his expert techies check out the work he had done to get things set. (B0b) I believe they have it now. He will call back tomorrow morning - 9:15 - 9:45. Adam got chatting about photography. He used to develop his own stuff back in the day. I must find out if he has a website for his stuff. It is overcast today and 25° at 11:00 o'clock.
September 6, 2017
Adam seems to have done the sitelock forms and we await their getting at it. Bother. It was cooler today and still hazy, smoky. Got laundry done. We go to the island challenge on Friday. Have to get the trailer attached to the Highlander and load the T to the trailer. more bother. I put $100.00 on the TD visa for Cops for Kids. Should get receipt in snail mail and notification in my shaw mail... not here yet. The twit must have got my email wrong. More bother. Had a good steak supper. Emailed and phoned Trevor about my anti virus... cannot seem to get a hold of him or his office guy Alfred. What? Am I invisible?
September 11, 2017
There was a quarter inch of rain in the rain gauge when we got home from the Island Autumn Tour yesterdeay. The weather has cooled off and it is actually like Autumn out there now. We need more rain. Confirmed my appointment with Alfred to update my enod anti virus by remote on Wednesday the 13th at 10:00. Site Lock is back to square one with my web page. I will need to contact Adam about getting them set up again with the ssl in place. Perhaps at the end of the week, if nothing happens in the mean time. I have started to make the addition to the cars page for Pats note on the Vans. I have under construction pages ready to load for the trip to get the Unity at the end of August and for the week trip to see Fran mid-August. I have noted these trips and the Island Autumn tour on the Travel Logue page. When I get the SSL on and sitelock working again, I will be reloading all the 33 pages that have the badge for the ssl on them. Need to add the CanAm of next week end and there might be a few little trips with the Unity to be added, also, before I reload the Travel Logue page.
September 12, 2017
Visit from Tom and Diane last nite, after supper. Secret: Arthur, Rosemary and Thomas are buying a new home somewhere out on Wain Road, about an acre, and selling their place in Oak Bay, of course. Was up at 5:00 to get ready to go to Breakfast meeting at RBC. Was interesting, but the presenter Barsch (a former American) who seems to head up RBC fund people, seemed to be pushing American stocks, especially oil. ho hum. I could have skipped this one. Good breakfast though. We went to Canadian Tire after the meeting and picked up a stepping stool and a couple of the cookie sheet type things. After lunch I went out to feed my fish and found the biggest one floating on the top. Could not determine what killed it. There seems to be one missing from the deck tub. I have not seen the ones in the woodland tub for a few weeks. Working on pictures for the Vans part of the Cars page. A few pictures around the garden. 21 degrees today, some cloud.
September 14, 2017
Yesterday the second fish in the deck tub magically appeared in the evening. We grocery shopped and got some Van stuff out at a big box store. While taking in the garbage bins I talked to a guy picking blackberries, across the street.
Nice day today, sun and 24 degrees. We need rain, though. Spent the morning trying to get the SSL certificate on to my site and getting Sitelock set up properly. Adam from Godaddy turned me over to Austin, his super nerd who did whatever he needed to do, including putting in the new IP they gave me when I bought the SSL. Austin then told me to call Sitelock to have them authenticate the certicate. Talked to Marlyn who told me I had No SSL.. got her to send me to a nerdy guy named Thompson to get the Smart settings done properly and the Shield thingy set too. The SSL is authenticated and should now be okay to go in 24 hours. Thompson had to check with his super nerd to see why they had 2 TXT things for this certificate, too. Well... call them if I have any more problems. Adam said he had never had such problems like this before. I didn't tell him that I was ready to dump that SiteLock firewall. So Pat has taken the guys in his Highlander up to Cowichan for lunch with Walters... well he has taken Bruce, for sure, so I will see him later in the afternoon. I can now settle down and have my popcorn day. Checking for more photos of the old chevy van. We took it to a swap meet in the States, once for sure, but no photos. This was before my digital camera. Anyway, I am going to go with what I have and add a link to the upIsland album, as well as make its own album (under construction, for now)with the few photos I have of it. Need to add all these new urls to all thirty three menus, But will do it when I get the pages made for all of the Vans and UnityTB. After this I will reload all the pages with the SSL badge on them, hopefully. It will be awhile, as the next thing on my agenda is getting the Unity loaded with dishes, towels, etc. Not to mention the completion of the renovation on the Magnolia bed. Pat pulled the trailer with the T in it up to duncan with the Highlander and it worked well. He got Pat Houle to add a new hitch to the Highlander yesterday. Says this is ok for short halls but will need to use the Unity for longer halls.
September 15, 2017
Another nice day, but no rain. About 22 degrees. Did laundry, scrubbed the carpet around the dining room table. Watered and fed the house plants, the deck plants and all the pots on the garden and the patio. Getting some work done for the Vans pages.
September 18, 2017
It has been colder in the last couple of days. 11 degrees for the low and 16 for high. We have had a bit of rain over yesterday and this morning. There is only about 1/10th of an inch showing in the rain gauge. And now the sun is out again. (10:45)
I seem to be getting my SSL certificate sorted out with SiteLock but still need Adam's help. Chrome browser will not let my music play on the secure site. Firefox plays it, so I may have to go back to firefox as my default browser. I have finished the Chevy Van pages. I will need to add all these links to all the menus on 33 or 34 pages - the Travel stuff on each one. Waiting to talk to Adam to find out how I add the S to stuff to make them https. My god if I have to change every link on every page this is going to make me crazy. Anyway, have to find out if I change the SSL certificate badge thing on all the pages too.
September 19, 2017
cool day, rainy . . . Yea! The weather forecast is for no rain on the week end when we go on the Can Am.. Duncan to Sooke then overnight, and back to Duncan over the same road the next day. Take overnight bag to Sooke cause our luggage and trailer stays in Duncan. Rugged trip arrangements. Called Adam W. at Godaddy this morning at 11:40. He was to call me right back. 12:30 and no call back. I want him to fix this SiteLock configuration of their True Shield stuff so I can get my SSL certificate working. In the meantime doing stuff on the Vans pages of "Cars". Hydrants all gathered and put into the album folder up to 2008. A squirrel has been in the Oak tree and around the back. There are Jays around and the morning doves and lots of birds since the rain started and the temperatures cooled. The fish are all there, minus the big one that died, including the shubunkin, and the 2 in the tub on the deck. Shithead is still playing loud music out in his van, or whereever its coming from. Sent CWF $25.00 for their 2018 calendar.
September 20, 2017
Coolish day. 6 goldfish and one shubunkin in the pond and 2 in the deck tub. Has rained a bit over the past couple of days. Phoned Adam again. End decision was to delete the Site Lock. and use Godaddy's Web Security, which Adam will look after totally. Says he has never done this before. Assured him he would get it.. he always has his super techies to help him. So, I will be away on the Can Am till Monday, I said. I tried to load the New Dodge Lodge stuff at about 8:00 and my site is unavailable. So... they are working on it. Good thing I will be away tomorrow. Hope the Can Am run goes well this weekend. Shithead is still playing his loud music. I have not been out gardening. There are Jays around and the squirrel in the oak tree. Hope to have the Van stuff finished and loaded, and reload the Danube by the end of the month. Then I can think about gardening. Have to finish renovating the magnolia bed, and clean up the moss garden. The apple crop is sparse. Must think about getting the Unity gear loaded. It is really nice out there.
September 26, 2017
Email from Adam on the 23 that my site was up and running and SiteLock was gone
We got home from CanAm on Sunday 24 and I started to remove the SiteLock badges and make the pages for the vans.
Monday did more work on the pages and finished removing SiteLock Badges. We had rain on Monday 25th.
Today I emptied about 1/4 inch of rain out of the gauge. Finished uploading the revised pages, and added the van stuff, added the CanAm stuff. Made soup and vegetable/seafood sauce for the spaghetti. Had a look at Solidcode and megashots 2. Got urls for them and for google analytics and godaddy login all noted. It is a lovely warm day, but all I did in the garden was feed the fish. 6 goldfish and there should be a shubunkin, but have not seen it lately. 2 in the deck tub.
September 27, 2017
Warm sunny day. Filled the pond and skimmed it, fixed the rocks on the waterfall. Walked around the garden. There are leaves falling all over everything. Of course this happens in the Fall. Need to finish my renovations: taking out the michaelmas daisies and along by the holly tree and the front by the david. Replace them with milkweed and tulips. Take
the plant out of the big white pot and plant it at waterside by the waterfall. Then the leaf clean up starts. Everything is really dry. Was 24 degrees this afternoon. Was out from 1:30 to 3:30. Moved the zandescia out of the white pot and planted it into the ground on the pees side of the pond. Used up the gravelly soil from out of an old cedar trough to fill in around it. It is a bit too high, so I used old boards from an old cedar trough to try to contain the dirt. Moved the mermaid off the top of the waterfall. It looks more natural where it is now, near the bottom of the waterfall by the little pendula willow. Moved the waterfall rocks around and hope they stay put. Moved a round cement paver in the holly tree bed, and then dug out the clay and some of the plants to make a hole for the bronze fennel that is in a tall black pot. The hole was not quite deep enough, so heaped some of the clay dirt back on to the sides of the potted plant. Watered it in and hope it survives. The honey bees are on these michaelmas daisies that I am trying to get rid of in this bed. I used the ax to break up the clay soil.
September 28, 2017
Was 24 degrees by the time I got out at about 2:00. Finished digging the michaelmas daisies out the the bed by the David and transplanted a showy MilkWeed from this year, (an early Medicinal nursery one) out of a tall black pot and next to the David. I hope to get the big silver leafed one from Dave Dube into this bed next to this one just transplanted. I will leave the michaelmas daisies next to the magnolia tree in there for now. I will just cut the seeds off before they spread all over the garden. I watered the milkweed in and watered around the front lightly. 6 goldfish and a shubunkin, with 2 in the tub. I see shithead is throwing the leaves on to my irises at the back corner, and has thrown some sod pieces on the clematis and anemone in the front corner. God knows where else he has been dumping his crap. He can't seem to find his green bin, I guess. Still playing his loud music around dinner time. Not only blind and deaf but an idiot as well.
September 29, 2017
We got a tiny bit of rain over night. I finished the Danube uploads. Shopped with Pat... meds, lb store, groceries. Making a roast of beef in the pressure cooker. Cloudy and rainy today, so did not plan to garden. Maybe tomorrow.
September 30, 2017
We had a bit of rain last night. Have finished loading the Pre1989 album and it works. I see that I am up to the Hawai trip in doing up the Travel Logue notes. I have started to do up the Model T Days for 2012 which I made up with the old photoshop album generator. It looks pretty good.. have to get some time with pat to name the 'pages' photos and then load it. Pat's phone wanted to update and he thought it was pretty cool to use his thumb print as his pass code. NOT..
October 2017
October 2, 2017
got some stuff moved out to the van yesterday. we grocery shopped yesterday. Today it got to be 18 degrees. Made French onion soup in the morning. Set up the stuff for supper after lunch and got outside by 2:30. Now have a milkweed from this year.. a showy from the medicinal people, and a swamp milkweed from Cannor Nursery, AND Dave Dube's silver leaved showy DAVIS milkweed. The davis bloomed but again produced no seed. The one I grew from Dave's seed and blooms in gold/yellow produced seed this year. The Butterfly weed (tuberosa) from Cannon that is in the cutting garden did not seem to do very well this year. I think it bloomed, but not sure. So, I have another swamp Milkweed in a pot and more plants from this year's medicinal showy ones, and the one from Dave's showy that produced seed, to transplant yet. They will go into the holly tree bed where it will be easier to water them. I planted the 20 mixed colors of tulips, 10 de caen anemones, and 20 large mixed color crocuses in the bed at the front around the milkweed. I transplanted another french lavender behind the David, 2 red salvias in that bed and one blue salvia. I moved some of the little geranium to this bed and planted it at the front next to the stone path. I dug the michaelmas daisies out of that bed and will have to keep an eye on any of the root bits coming up. I skyped cyrus and told him I was deleting all my old Megashot stuff, he suggested I zip it and send to him... no way... told him it would be a waste of his time to read all that.. and mine too. He told me that 5 out of 7 people will be happy to go to megaportfolies.com.. I did not search it... I suppose it is the stuff he has been showing me. He did not link me. I told him I had been looking at fineartamerica and they had someone to do prints for them and so sent him a link, for some ideas for whatever he is working on now. $80. a year for it. Too busy, did not attempt to go there. I have hoards of Megashot stuff to delete yet. I suppose I could do it by the folders. Have to empty the recycle bin now.
October 4, 2017
sunny, nice fall day yesterday. Did Laundry, watered the new plantings of Milkweed, Salvia, 20 mixed colors Tulips, 10 mixed colors de Caen anemones, 20 large mixed colors crocus. Watered around the front garden a bit. Pat and Bruce went to the VCCC meeting. Deleted some more Megashot stuff.
Today is the same nice day. Made potatoe soup for lunch. Did ironing, made the pumpkin pie... ooops put a top pastry cover on it. Oh well. We'll eat it anyway. Have taken the turkey out to unthaw in the basement fridge.
October 5, 2017
Nice sunny Autumn day. Made beef stock - about 8 - 9 cups. Made vegetable/fennel/beef stock in the afternoon. About 7 cups. Did a bit of moving things to the Van and am feeling more comfortable with where things are going. There really is lots of room. I think I will be able to take my toaster/convection oven. It will fit under the sink with the coffeemaker and there is room for dishes and some pantry stuff... beans, spam, etc. I must protect the glass of the oven, turn it to the back? and protect it with a cardboard. My little stepping stool is working good. I have the bathroom stuff mostly stored with room to spare. Pat is feeling despondent about getting the TV and the wifi extender working. I think Trevor could help, but of course Pat needs to decide what he is going to do. He took Pat Houle for lunch today, as Pat H. had done some work for him on the hitch of the Highlander Toyota. We are liking the Highlander as we get more used to it. Pat is very good at parking the behemoth now. We have yet to get the, bluetooth, maps, back up camera, etc working on that front gizmo. I watched a video on it last night. Looks complicated, but once you understand the buttons it might become usefull. I managed to get 3 more photos tweaked for the Chatterbox Falls album, today and updated Skype. Am tired and have a very early start tomorrow.
October 6, 2017
Hardly slept at all last night. Sweats and itches, due, no doubt to the wretched Poly Cythemia. Was up in time to go to my *40 appointment. Was ok and out in record time, and back home. More issues with Skype at home. Hope it is fixed, now. Lunch of roast beef sandwiches. Murray and Carol Firth visit us later, and help us with turning on the thing above the entry to make the TV go on inverter. Fixed the batteries in the gizmos to the right position. Into the house for coffee and hobnobs and good visit. Pork ribs for supper, beets, baked potatoes. Is good and Pat is hilarious. Loaded some more stuff to the van... have hoards of room for stuff. Firths talked about the trip to the East with these old cars and campers. So cool. We now have the TV working in the Van. Have yet to figure out the wifi extender. and maybe a few other things, but we are coming along.
October 8, 2017
cool at night and got up to 20 in the afternoon. We have 1/10 of an inch of rain. The leaves are starting to turn colors. Pictures of a hawk in the western red cedar in the back garden. Its the big meal day. We went for a teen burger for lunch and then to London Drugs, home and started to make the turkey. Not my fav0urite meat. Turned out okay. Had pumkin pie for dessert later. I think the fish are starting to hibernate. They do not seem very interested in eating. Got a few more things moved out to the van. Got a few more photos tweaked for the Chatterbox Falls album. Am half finished the photos.
October 9, 2017
Sunny cool autumn day. The trees are turning colors and losing leaves. 12 degrees is the high for today. Finished making the 9 cups of turkey stock. It tastes really good, but is low sodium. There is a little book that might work as the trip book ..must ask Pat if he has some other thing in mind for that book. Looked up information on using the convection/mirco oven machine in the van. Have come to the conclusion that I will bring along the Convection oven from home and just use the one in the van as a microwave oven. Will bring the little roaster, the convection oven's pan, and can use the tin foil pans that are available in stores, too. There is lots of storage room in the outside bin on the driver's side. We are considering getting fitted sheets and pillow cases by ordering on line, for the van. They do not have a top sheet included. How crappy is that? We need someway to attach hooks in the van, so we can hang towels and the little flash lights, Although the metal things will clunk around. Will want to take the little slow cooker along also. I can make up soups, etc as there is more room in the fridge. even room for ice cubes. Took the trailer back to Riley's place and got it parked nicely. I found a good rock to bring home to use in the magnolia tree bed makeover.
October 10, 2017
11 degrees and a few bits of rain in the morning. It got up to 14 in the afternoon. Walked home from the mall after having my blood tests for Dr. C. Brought 4 hyacinths and 6 more tulips. I need to put them in the fig tree bed. Was out from 2:30 to 4:30 raked leaves off the back cutting garden and a bit off the strawberries, and rockery. Raked around the apple tree. I emptied the old green garabage bin into the green bin and have several bags of leaves and twigs dumped on the woodland trail, to be taken next bin day. Filled the pond. Must find out when the leaf collection days are.
October 12, 2017
Yesterday we had a meeting with Mike P. at the Bank. We're doing fine. Had lunch at the Bistro, did a bit of shopping. We had an early night last night as I could not seem to keep my eyes open. Made 4 pkgs of fennel, lentil, vegetable soup yesterday and had some for supper. Not great. Not saving the recipe.
Old mrs Pee, the tree terrorist, had Saanich come over and cut more off the plum tree, this morning. I am finding this quite amusing today. She surely has dementia. It got up to about 13 degrees and we are finally getting some measureable rain. I have finished tweaking the photos for the Chatterbox Falls album.
October 13, 2017
1/2 inch of rain emptied out of the gauge this morning. Took out the blue box. A few photos of the trees. Read the Godaddy email about the up date of my account. I have a new IP and there is instructions on how to set up a FTP. So, I should be good to go with that, when I have time. I am getting the ChatterBox Falls trip done up, at the moment. Have the photos put into the album, and need to complete it and load it. Put the email in red as Important. Watered the house plants. Did a quick view of the email from HCP. Their web page looks great. Could not get a map. Sent them $45.00 for a membership for a year, via PayPal. So my PayPal is up to date and can be used. Closed the window in the LTV. Its gonna be great once we get all the electric things working. Spent a couple of hours watching LTV videos... go to owners from top menu, put in Unity for model, see the videos and check the TB on each video where it applies. Videos not great, but they do help.
October 14, 2017
Overcast, cool day. 12 degrees. We go to Swiss Chalet for lunch and to get a $20 gift card for Liz. Early supper and to the theater at the University to see a play about the overlander gold miners. Purchased a calendar and gave the Wilderness Committee a $10 donation on line for total of $30.48. Updated Pat's iphone. To the theatre at the university to see the little play about the Overlanders at 8:00.. Phoenix theatre maybe. Was fun.
October 15, 2017
Vacuumed kitchen, dining room, bathrooms. put the big ham into the oven at 300, and 4 beets, and 2 potatoes, while we went on the VCCC run until about 3:00, got groceries, etc till about 4:00. Made 3/4 of a quart of harvard beets, and have the incredients for the italian meatball and savoy cabbage soup on the countertop, unthawing for making the soup - double batch, tomorrow morning. Have made the album for chatterbox falls and have added the menus to the 3 htm pages. .. by 5:00. Its a sunny lovely day out. The trees have marvelous colors, but we did not stop for any photos, of course. It got up to 15 degrees with all that sunshine.
October 16, 2017
Last night I typed up the travel journal notes for the Chatterbox pages. Three days put onto the 3 pages. I am slowly getting the Chatterbox Trip / album completed. This morning I made a doube batch of Italian Sausage meetball and savoy cabbage soup. We had some for lunch and I have put 5 pkgs into the freezer. We might get high winds tonight. The day was overcast and cool but we did not get rain.
October 17, 2017
Double batch of Irish Yellow Broth made one meal for 2 for lunch and have 4 pkgs frozen in the freezer. Made 3 cups of vegetable stock. To fairway to get the beef bone with meat and some other groceries for the minestrone soup. Have started the soup with the beans soaking, and cut off most of the muscles off the meat, browned the nasty bits and will save them to make stock after. Browned the meat and the bone, then added 8 cups of water mixed with left overs of the mornings vegetable stock. Brought this to a boil and will leave it with the burner off until the beans are finished soaking in the morning. After simmering the meat, bone, and beans for 3.5 hours, I will divide it into 2 soup pots, add another 2 cups of water to each pot, and add the vegetables, etc. Will need to add 2 more cups of water to each pot, after finished the soup... or as much water that fits into the pot.
October 19, 2017
I seem to have missed yesterday. I made 12 packages of Minestrone. Made more vegetable/beef stock. worked on the Chatterbox album and cannot figure out where I made a mistake, so have eventually decided to just start over from square one. We finished the left over borscht with a ham sandwich for lunch. Rained a lot, and the big wind storms they talked of did not materialize. but we did get a lot of rain. Vancouver got even more and the streets were awash.
TODAY I had an appointment with Dr. C in the A.M. My counts are up, the crt.. whatever thing on my ehealth report is to do with my joints being okay (arthritis) Anyway, the new girl seems good, and they are to phone me about my phlobotomy time and the next lab and visit to Dr.C. I suppose this will take care of November. Had a nice chat with Dr. C. Got $112 or so of stuff at the drug store, while waiting for Pat to come and pick me up. I remade the Chatterbox album, and made index pages for ChatterBox with the menu on them so far. I made so many mistakes that I had to correct that I think I will call it quits for this day. We had a great laugh at supper time. Pat said there was some report for a 23 or so meter of waves somewhere. He asked Siri how many feet there was in 23 meters. She gave some nonsense reply... he said this is bullshit. She replied there is no need for that. We just cracked up. Made swedish meatballs for supper and have saved 2 pkgs - small amount compared to what Pat ate tonite - one pkg frozen and one in the fridge.
October 20, 2017
Made 4 pkgs of root vegetable/apple soup, with one for Sunday and 3 frozen. Made 5 jars of vegetable/beef/apple stock. Made a jar of cole slaw. There will be potato cake, carrots/parsnips, ham and salad for supper.
October 21, 2017
Finished the Chatterbox photo album which contains the travel logue. Did the note and link on Pre 1989 Travel Logue Page.
October 23, 2017
Started making the January photo album yesterday. Today I emptied a full rain gauge. It is 14 degrees at 3:00. Pat dropped me off at London Drugs and I picked up 2 pkgs of grey ink No. 226, as I had missed getting the grey.. which IS THE ONE I NEEDED. The packaging is sooo wretched. He picked me up at 10:45 and we went home and then to the Clinic for flu shots.. was going to be a long wait, so we went home and had lunch, then back and got the shots. Had still been another hours wait. Apparently they had had some sort of emergency or something to deal with, so the appointment waits got a bit longer. Got home and did some more tweaking of photos for the January album. the height must be 600.
October 23, 2017
Warmish, sunny day, did some photos of the tree colors. Did laundry. Our trip out in the Unity did not happen, as the ESP thing came on. Pat checked the battery and found it was a bit low. So, its charging. Garbage and green bin tonite. Got a few more January photos tweaked.
October 25, 2017
Warmish, cloudy, few bits of rain day. The LTV charged and it started. The ESP thing is gone, but there is something else on the 'engine' icon thingy. Pat will take it down to see Dale at the Mercedes Benz place. He likes how it drives, and we are learning more stuff each time we try to go out in it. Big chicken dinner. Day was wasted on the run with the LTV and looking up stuff on it. oh yeah, skimmed off the pond and scraped a few leaves off the moss with the pond skimmer. 'Tis the season for raking leaves.
October 26, 2017
Sunny, 14 degrees. Pat visited his friend Dale at the Mercedes Benz dealership this morning. Dale fixed the Engine warning light that was on. I made a crab/shrimp salad for lunch and we went to Saxe Pointe. Was good. Learning more stuff and gaining more confidence each time we go out. Must remember to turn off the water pump and turn off the red button by the side door which is the main switch. Must take out some toilet paper inside of the rolls to put between the glass in the pull out pantry. To open the pantry, first push in the botton and it pops out, then pull the handle. Be sure all the drawers and doors are firmly shut when in the driving mode.
When we got back I went out to garden. Got a bin almost full of leaves from under the fig tree. Cut back some of the perennials. Then dug over another 2 - 3 feet of the holly tree bed, and put in another milkweed plant. It was all clay soil and in a black pot. It seems to be one from Dave. I must mark this plant very well. Lots more leaves to rake, and the trees have just started to lose their leaves.
October 27, 2017
Nice sunny warm day. Made salad for lunch. Got a few photos tweaked for January in the morning. Was out for 2 hours in the afternoon. 1:30 to 3:30. Skimmed off the pond. Clipped and cleaned the rest of the flower bed next to the old garage and got a couple more feet dug over. Have found about 6 good tulip bulbs. Took two wheel barrow loads of clippings, and leaves and roots to the green bin. I will be putting at least one big white pot of plants (milkweed) into the dug over bed. I am also finding big roots of the campanula plants in this bed. They aren't much of a show. I see that there is a burning bush shoot coming up off its old root, but it is right beside the surviving cypress (hedging cedar) There are also some branches of the burning bush that the old bitch knocked over, that survive and have rooted, I think, behind the cypress. Guess I will let them grow. Maybe I can get another plant for closer to the chimney to guard the jackamani clematis and the anemone.
October 28, 2017
Was 18 degrees, sunny, lovely day. Was out from 2:15 to 4:15. Dug out some more roots. Am remaking part of the edging rocks. I put another big white pot of plants into the dug over part. Am definitely half finished this digging over. Have spread some of the loose dirt over the grass. Need to mow this grass and get the apple tree leaves off of it. The apple tree still has lots of leaves on it. There are 2 milkweeds: one is the orange one that sets seed; from Dave, the other one is Soulmate, which I believe is a swamp milkweed. I have another black pot with a milkweed that I grew this year from the Medicinal Garden guys seeds. Started on March 1. It is showy and hopefull will grow and bloom pink. I have a couple of small black pots with fennel and foxgloves. And then need to put in the tulips, old and new, and the new hyacinths. I have bone meal in the garage that needs to be spread on all the bulbs after mowing. Came in, showered, washed my hair and will make salmon for supper. In the morning I tweaked a few more photos for the January album. Am half finished that stage of the album.
October 29, 2017
Sunny warm day again. It was about 13 degrees. More leaves are falling.
I was out in the garden from 2 to 5. I finished digging over a few more feet of the holly tree bed and am running into some pretty big roots. I think I might be cutting off the holly tree roots, so will only shallowly dig over the last 3 or 4 feet and keep the daisies and other weeds out. I put in another pot with a milkweed and a fennel in it. The milkweed is a showy from Medicinal place in Oregon. Hope it survives. I need to make a stake for it. I took yesterdays roots and some leaves to the bin. It is full, of course. I put in a small one gallon pot of foxgloves into the dug over bed, and have one more to add to it. I have 3 more big white pots with plants from the deck plantings to put into the bed at the back of the garage. I took a blackberry bush out of there and did a bit more cleaning up. The irises will be next.. I need to ruthlessly thin them out. The germander needs to be sheared back. The Saskatoons look so weedy in the winter. The mock orange shrub is spreading like crazy. Am thinking of taking out the old lily of the valley shrub, the Saskatoons, and clipping back the mock orange and clean up the Japanese cedar. Davey tree guys will have to take out the very tall pin oak and the old plum tree. I have bone meal in the garage for putting on the newly renovated beds with the new bulbs in them. The cyclamen are spreading everywhere, too.
October 30, 2017
Another warm sunny day. Made chicken soup for lunch and Coq au Vin for supper. Then went out to the garden at 2:15. Skimmed the pond and cleaned the leaves off the moss garden, quickly. There will probably be more leaves yet. Took about 3/4 of an hour. Finished digging over the flower bed in the Holly tree bed. Added a white pot with a delphinium, a foxglove and 3 tulip bulbs. And another gallon pot crowded with Foxgloves. I planted the old tulip bulbs at the end of the bed by the holly tree and towards the house. Then I put the 4 hyacinths down the middle spaced quite far apart. The 6 new tulips are doubles. Added them along the grass side of the bed from the mid point of the bed towards the house. Put bonemeal on the top of the bed, watered it in a bit. Put bonemeal on the front renovated bed also. Got into the house by 4:45 and a hot tubby bath, then making the rice for supper with the Coq Au Vin. I have 2 big white pots of perennials in them left to put some where. These were the pots that were the butterfly garden on the deck. I will probably put them behind the garage and fill the edges with the left over dirt I have that fills the other big white pot.
October 31, 2017
A thin layer of ice on the water table, but it got up to 12 degrees, with sunshine. Made 4 pkgs of onion/apple/squash bisque today. Was out from 3 to 4:30. Put all the root into the green bin. It is very full. raked leaves off the fig tree bed and the stepping stones around it. Raked up the leaves under the apple tree. Bagged most of the leaves into one black garbage bag. Mowed the back grass. Dumped the clippings on the trail beside the green bin. Now have an appointment at the Royal Jube for my phlobotomy end of November and then lab and Dr. C. in December. I sorted photos for October album. Have 24 rows of 5 makes 120 pictures. Can make 15 per page for 8 pages; or 10 per page for 12 pages.
November 2017
November 1, 2017
Finished sorting and naming the pictures for October, as stated yesterday. I will be able to name them Oct10, Oct11 etc in the order they now appear under the names that group them in order of where they are in the garden.
November 4, 2017
Yesterday morning there was snow on the ground and it did not get above 4 degrees. Some of the snow melted. Today its 5 degrees at 11:00. The snow that was left has turned to icey mush. I have finished making the January album and am now doing the changes to html. Spent too much time trying to figure out how to turn the radio off in the van. This freaking computer is driving me nuts. Next is the setting the time. Key has to be in position 2, then press the M (menu) button... looks like it is somewhere on the streering wheel, press repeatedly until hours show then use the + and - buttons to set hours and minutes. Use the 0 button to set the hour, once you have it set, then the minutes should flash and set them with the plus and minus button again, and use the 0 button to reset it.
November 5, 2017
This morning we had a time change... Fall back an hour, so actually had an extra hour this am. Washed the sheets. made capiccino at 9:30. I uploaded the January album and be damned if it would work. After trying this and trying that, I tried to get it on my chrome on my phone. It worked fine. Freakin google... I had to clean out all its saved site... cleaned out the cache. It worked fine on Firefox. Why didn't I try Firefox before? Anyway, it works. I must remember to try firefox next time before getting upset about this damn chrome browser. Its all nuts. Like the pees bext door. Another cut branch lying on my grass path this morning. The branch of the sweet gum tree is cut back about 4 feet into my propery. Sick sick people. So, I will ignore it as best I can. The branch will put out lots of new little branches and actually become more bushy, which will be fine. It will just take a couple of years. That tree has sure filled in around the trunk where the Davey Tree guy cut branches right to the trunk ... to take them back from hitting the window. The tree is just starting to get some leaf color now. We seem to have the Mercedes Manor's battery stopped losing its charge. After Rick's email to Pat about maybe the radio was left on, and our search to find out how to turn it off, we seem to have it off. It turned back on again when Pat started the back up camera today. We took a long drive and got the battery up above 12.. about 12.6 I think. We will watch it for a day or more to see if this solves the problem. Then we need to figure out how to make the generator go. I would sure like to know how to get some heat on my feet in that cab. I can't believe they would make vents that do not put hot air out the top vent or heat my feet. Must be some more complicated shit to figure out. Pat got the time on the clock figured out this am, too. We are thoroughly scared of that navigation system, too.
November 7, 2017
To London Drugs, etc.
Today it got a bit warmer to 9 degrees. I brought the orange trees in. There are now 3 of them. I dragged the very full green bin out. I dragged the broken branch of the Sweet Gum back to the woodland path for loading to the green bin. I have finished a page for the October album... that is 15 photos tweaked. 7 more pages to go.
November 8, 2017
Was 10 degrees and overcast. Went out after lunch for 2 hours. Raked up the leaves and most of the fruit of the fig tree. Dumped into the bin. Raked the leaves off the grass at the back. Most of the apple leaves are down, but still some to go. Skimmed the pond.
November 9, 2017
Made turkey pot pies yesterday afternoon. Went for lunch, shopped for booze, and groceries yesterday. Bits of rain and about 9 degrees.
Today, there were 2 little humming birds around the plum tree when I went out in the morning, but I did not see them at the feeder. Vaccumed and wiped out the oven, put away the dishes. Have finished tweaking 2 - 15 photo - pages.
November 11, 2017
Was a drippy day, about 10 degrees. Read some and made supper. Did laundry after supper, while watching Heartbeat and Barnaby (Sykes). Have got one more row of photos tweaked for October.
November 12, 2017
Is rainy and about 10 degrees today. Finished the laundry, capiccinno, lunch of left over potato pancakes and fish. Yumm. doing up more photos for October. Finished the 3rd page of 15 photos. There will be 10 pages. The Pot. Lisa Taylor Gallis 'Nora' (Blc. California Girl x Sc Beautort) has 2 blossoms out and another set of 2 buds to open. The Milt. Breathless 'Beauty" is putting up a spray with buds. There is a stem of buds coming up on a Phal. Yellow from the Grocery Store, too. There was a tiny hummingbird having a long drink at the feeder. There have been 2 of them flitting around. Pictures of one eating. Playing with camera and finally found that exposure compensation can not be set in M. Set it to P to make this change. Pictures of the blooming miniature cattalaya.
November 13, 2017
We were to get big winds today. The ferries were not sailing and Vancouver had power outages this morning. There was a small rainbow, but I could not get it in focus before it disappeared this am. I made beef barley soup. Got photos for page four tweaked. Have 4 more pages to do. The winds started after lunch, blowing from the East so my leaves are staying mostly on my garden. But they are still hanging on to the sweet gum tree and the magnolia, and the apple tree and oak at the back.
November 14, 2017
Raining all day. Made potatoe soup for lunch. Have finished Page 5 of the October album. Must watch the Knowledge network tonite about climate change at 8:00.
November 15, 2017
Was a sunny day till about 4:00 when it started to rain lightly. We had wor wonton soup at Jack's and then a drive to the condo's place.. Trivano? Got home and went out to garden at about 12:45. Raked the leaves off the back grass and threw them under the cedars. Skimmed the pond. Put all the empty pots into the big old garbage bin behind the garage. Black tall pots, big white pots and the pink pots, as well as a few smaller pots of various colors and sizes. Raked the leaves off the thyme circle and all the front plants. Piled them up at the front. Leaf collection starts tomorrow. Hope mine stay put till Saanich gets them picked up. Mowed the leaves off the driveway and the left over ones on the grass. Put this mulched up stuff back on the woodland garden. There are still lots of leaves left on the oak trees, the apple tree and the nut tree at the back. The front sweet gum tree has lots of leaves left. Its going to be a long leaf raking season. The white roses are in bloom. This morning I made a pint and a one cup jar of apple sauce. Tomorrow I need to make an apple pie for Pat's birthday, and we will have breaded scallops with baked potatoe instead of going out. Finished one row of Page 6 of the October album. Need to finish page 6, page 7 and page 8
November 16, 2017
Was an overcast day with a bit of rain. Made the apple pie and a popcorn lunch day as Pat was out for lunch with Bruce. Slept in the afternoon as I had been up way late last nite, and probably will be up way late now, reading. Finished Page 6 of October. Pat phoned Pam tonite to wish her happy birthday. She is 54 this year.
November 19, 2017
Today it is rainy, and about 10 degrees. Had to make my camera to go back to the screen view... grrrr hit the disp button a few times to make it go back, if ever it happens again. Asked Google.. was the fastest way to find it. We still have a lot of leaves on trees yet. The nut tree, the oak trees and the front sweet gum. Its almost december and there are so many leaves still on the trees. Have decided to make a Misc Gardening page like the series page in photography, to include: birds, bugs, animals, Bouquets (move to the misc from the menu) mushrooms (move) Market (move) show (move) Survivors, Painted Vases (Move from Series and put Sunsets in its place) -- need one more for the gardening misc. No rush it will come to me.
November 20, 2017
Was a sunny day. The pump in the pond had quit. I found that the extension cord plugins were full of mud. Causing a faulty connection. I washed them out and it worked again. Pat said he never heard of THAT before. Those sneaky fish have all sorts of tricks. After lunch I was out for about an hour and a half and raked leaves off the back and the front. Piled the front ones on my leaf pile at the roadside. There will be more leaves in a day or so, as with the least breeze there were more falling as I raked. Have finished tweaking the photos for October. Maybe I can finish it by month end.
November 22, 2017
Was a warmer day, got up to 14 degrees with sunshine. The Mercedes dealership cannot find anything wrong with the van. I guess we need a second opinion. After lunch Pat took down about 6 feet off a branch of the sweet gum tree. He cut it back to the property line. It looks good. So after making the casserole for supper, and having our lunch I went out to rake leaves. Cut the branch up and have a bit of wood for the fireplace the rest in the bin. Raked leaves at the front and put a few more onto the leaf pile on the front. I will need to cut back the perennials soon, but for the moment they give the garden some form and interest. Clipped back the jasmine on the garage, took out a few dead branches on the rhodo at the back and took a couple of branches off the Japanese cedar. Then clipped back the mock orange a bit. I need to cut up those branches from the Japanese cedar yet. The Syrians chickens are in the back yard. They can come and get them.
Yesterday I did up the album for October and just started the html changes on the index pages. Finished the Index pages. Now have 120 photo pages to do.
November 23, 2017
Was out to rake leaves for about an hour. There are still lots of leaves on the sweet gum, the English Oak, and the Harry Lauders Walking stick. Have finished changing the necessary coding on 2 pages of the large photo HTML pages.
November 24, 2017
Warmish and over cast. The leaf collector was around this morning in a Saanich pickup truck. He did a shabby job of picking up the leaves.
November 27, 2017
Grey Cup yesterday. It was rainy and coolish. Yesterday I finished the October album and uploaded it my page, did a blog post about it.
Today I am doing laundry. Cleaned out the old nursing and secretarial books. Going to give them to the Diabetes truck. vaccumed the front entry way, and the entry to the suite. raked leaves off the front steps.
November 30, 2017
Rainy coolish day, 7 degrees. Made chicken soup, 1.5 pkgs frozen and cup of soup with supper. Made 4 borscht pkgs, made 3/4 litre of Harvard beets, 2 pkgs of spaghetti sauce with meat, frozen. Was busy most of the day. 28 days of rain in November, but not a record amount of rain.
December 2017
December 2, 2017
Grocery shopped with Pat.
today is a drippy day at 10%. Watered house plants and trees. Have tweaked 1 page of photos in the February album. It is going to be 8 pages of 15 photos each and 800 x whatever for the file size, and set as large instead of medium. the thumbnails will be large also. 3 rows down and 5 across.
December 4, 2017
Yesterday we went to the golf course for the vccc christmas lunch. Was nice, food was not great. No seafood to be had.
This morning there was ice on the water table. It got up to 7 degrees and was overcast. I made three 8 x 8 pans, single layer, of cabbage rolls. We will have one for sure for supper. Made one meal of swedish meatballs with the half a pound of left over beef. Made a Johnny cake. Made a batch of rum balls. Finished all and dishes by 4:30. No doubt I will need more rum balls before Christmas is over.
December 5, 2017
Ice on the water table this am. fairly cool day. might have got up to 6 degrees. Finished tweaking page 2 of the February album. Made 6 big blue pkgs of Quinoa, Squash, Tomatoe soup this am. The carpet repair guy was around at 1:40 and decided he can be back on Saturday 9th at 8:30 am at a cost of $502.00. Should be done before supper time when we go out to some bistro with Art and Marlene. So, moved all the small stuff out of the living room, so it is ready. Last nite I saw a racoon, a doe and a buck walking along the street and then into the next over neighbors lawn, the other side of the Syrians.
December 6, 2017
Sunny, about 9 degrees. Ice on the water table in the morning. Finished tweaking page 4 of February. Lots of leaves down, but will rake tomorrow, as we have to grocery shop when Pat gets back from some lecture about the Lennon rolls at the museum, and lunch. The motion light was on early this morning so there must have been a critter.
December 7, 2017
was sunny and about 6 today. Was out at about 10:00 and got the back moss garden cleaned up. Leaves thrown under the deck. The moss looks pretty good. Nice and fluffy. Shithead has been throwing cigarette butts in the pond again. Came in and had soup for lunch. Was out again at 1:00 and raked the front leaves. 3 wheel barrows full of leaves to the back woodland area. Raked some of the leaves behind the bench. Ran the mower over the Pees grass and our driveway. Put the clippings on the purple plum tree rectangle bed. came in about 3;30 and had a hot tubby bath. set up stuff for supper and then had a hot tea/brandy/honey ... yummm.
December 8, 2017
Colder day. We had Russ the carpet guy in to take out the wrinkle in the carpet and clean all the green carpet. We had moved all the furniture and stuff. He arrived about 8:30 and was finished by 12:30. It looks quite good for a carpet that is 8 years old and has seen heavy use, expecially around the dining table. We are about $500. lighter in pocket. We will put the furniture back tomorrow. Yesterday and today I got Page 5 and half of page 6 photos tweaked on February album.
December 13, 2017
Nice birthday yesterday with lunch at Sidney, picked up passport forms at the Bay Center and got the 2nd book of the John A MacDonald series at Munro books. Appies for dinner. Today is sunny day. Getting laundry done. Have now got Page 6 finished on the February album. Walked home from my lab on the 11th. There is lots of leaves on the front garden again, but will not get to them until after tomorrow when I have a appointment at Dr. Cuthberts office in the am and we go out for dinner to the Lemon Grass with Sheila and Jim at 5:30.
December 16, 2017
Jo passed away this morning. Phoned Petal Pushers in Burnaby and talked to Sophie and she will make up the boquet and have it delivered to Sussex Avenue to Lloyd and zimmerman family. Drippy day and about 6 degrees. Do not feel like raking leaves, although I should be out there getting it done.
December 18, 2017
Was warmish this am and no rain. Went to lab first thing in the morning. Pat waited for me, and I was finished quickly. Went home, had breakfast, and did chores. Was out to rake leaves by 11:00. Put the leaves around on the garden, the Pees side, the front triangles, behind the bamboo, on the roses. A couple of scoops of the rakeful to the compost bin. Another cigarette butt in the pond. The shithead. It is to get colder starting tomorrow... freezing temps. Have finished Page 7 of the February album. 1 more page to go. The Milt.Breathless Beauty pansy orchid has 2 blossoms. A light yellow phalenopsis if opening 3 buds. the miniature cat. is finishing up its blooms. It had 4 flowers.
December 21, 2017
Sunny day yesterday. Raked leaves, after being downtown to the Bay Center to get our passports turned in. We are to get the new ones on Jan. 8th by registered mail. Funeral arrangements made for Jo for the 2nd and 3rd of January. Pat made reservations at the hotel for the 2nd and we will go home after the funeral on the 3rd. Ralph and Sandy and all the 14 family are going to Hawaii so will not be attending. I am to call dr. t's clinic on January 3? 4? at 8:00 am to get on the list to see her about my lab tests.. nothing serious. I have 4 pictures to tweak before I am ready to make the February album.
Today is much colder and there is ice.
December 23, 2017
Finished creating the February album. Now need to do all the html changes and upload. Maybe I will be finished by the end of December. Today has been cold and sunny. Tomorrow we are to get snow that should stay for Christmas.
December 26, 2017
We had a bit of snow over Christmas day. It was mostly gone by dark. Today is a bit warmer. Put out the bag of stuff for the diabetes truck tomorrow. Watered the house plants and trees yesterday. We had duck for dinner yesterday, and so have made up some duck stock and have a bit more on the go now. Made duck soup with some of the duck stock and added the rest of the bones and the vegetable peeling to the pot to make more duck stock and the meat went into the soup pot. there is a bit of duck left and I might like to make a duck comfit out of it. Must look up a recipe. I have made the album for February and am in the process of changing the html stuff. Talked to Sali's last nite. They are coming to Vancouver .. Kelly is driving. Talked to Carol over the last couple of days and Dan phoned back the next day. They have just been moving all the stuff into their new building. Dan and Carol are going to be slowing down at the office, and Jordan will be in charge.
December 29, 2017
Finished the February album last nite. Today it is 4 degrees and raining again. The rest of the country is in a deep freeze.. a Arctic Vortex they are calling it. Very cold air from Siberia sitting over the whole country, with wind and snow storms. Photos of 8 or 10 mourning doves on the lines across the street today.
December 31, 2017
Yesterday, Dan phoned. He was at Calgary, driving, by himself. He expected to be at Kelowna at Sali's place today. Since we have not heard, I expect he has made it. Kelly is driving to Vancouver and bringing John and Isabelle, so they might travel together. The Fraser Valley is still in deep freeze, so I sure hope they bring blankets and candles and hot thermoses of coffee.
Today, it got up to 6 degrees. I noticed cigarette butts in the pond again. After lunch I went out and planted the new little lady killer crocuses in the fig tree bed. Skimmed off the pond and saved the butts to throw over the hedge and onto their back deck. I hope it gets the asshole into troublel Ha! Cleaned up the moss a bit and the front grass. Swept off the front deck. We have had some big winds and the broken branch on the sweet gum tree finally came down. There are roses still on, but all the leaves at the front are down. The English Oak still has leaves, and the pin oak. I have yet to call Davey Tree about the plum tree. Pat wants ot head South after the services for Jo. As usual gardening takes second place to anything he wants to do. I have a doctors appointment on the 3 or 4th. Have to phone the clinic and see what time slot I get into for Dr. T. Pancakes, with maple syrup, ham and eggs for supper. Then Pat's pudding. delicious.
Continue on to Journal Entries for 2018
Back to Journal Entries for 2016
Welcome to the bottom of the page
Annual Gardening pages
January - we occasionally get snow.
February - more rain, and some
bulbs up
March - first spring bulbs
blooming
April - rock plants blooming,
grass needs mowing, fruit trees blooming
May - the garden is in full
swing
June - lovely warm days of
medium temperatures and roses in bloom
July - we need to water a lot
in the summer as we do not often get rain.
August - the Fall perennials
starting to bloom and fruit is ripening
September - harvest time in the
vegetable garden and time to plant the winter garden
October - glorious fall colors
and sunsets, fruit ripening and rains begin again
November - sometimes a lovely
month with the Fall colors and warm rains
December - more rain, the garden
is mostly greens and browns, very peaceful.
Water and Japanese Gardening
- I built my pond with its 8 - 9 foot diameter
Fruit and Vegetables -
grapes, figs, pears, apples, plums, and vegtables
Garden paths and Garden art - I have
converted most of the lawn to gardens and paths
Rock and Alpines - I have a few small
alpines in various spots around the garden
Woodland garden - I am trying to
establish a few indigenous plants in this area.
Indoor gardening - orchids,
cacti, African violets
Bugs - butterflies, birds,
animals
From the Market - photos of bought
produce or flowers
At the Show - there are a number of
gardeing shows I attend annually
Mushrooms, lichens
Boquets - Creating flower arrangements for the house and for show is an
added benefit for creatativity as well as visual satisfaction.
Miscellaneous - in case I cannot
decide where something belongs
Annual Journal Notes - This is the first page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2012 when I began to keep my garden notes on my computer. See the bottom of this first page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2013 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2013 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2014 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2014 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2015 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2015 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2016 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2016 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2017 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2017 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2018 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2018 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2019 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2019 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2020 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2020 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2021 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2021 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Annual Journal Notes 2022 - This is the page of the annual Journal Notes excerpts beginning in 2022 from my garden journal . See the bottom of this page to go to the Journal Notes for the next year.
Outline of the garden changes - This is the first page of a series of three giving a tour of the my garden.
A description of the garden rooms - This is the second page of a series of three giving a tour of the my garden, and showing the creation of the garden rooms as well as some of the renovations over the years.
Annual Garden changes photo albums The third page of the series will be annual photo albums of the changes in the garden for the year, beginning in 2009.
Annual Photo Albums
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