Wildflowers

Younger son had a crazy idea to start a wildflower patch in the meadow beside the house. 

You can see his first attempts here.

This year produced a bumper crop of Black Eyed Susans and blue and pink Cornflowers. Red Poppies too... but they flowered earlier in the spring.

The flower patches are full of bees and butterflies and little green grasshoppers. It's really buzzing! A third area of the meadow has been tarped to kill all the grass and it will be ploughed and rye will be planted, and then cut, and the wild flower seeds will go in. 

And this area by the little stream has been planted with Milkweed especially for the Monarch butterflies.

Stinkhorn

 Just google "Stinkhorn mushroom" and you'll find photos of lots of different varieties. I have no idea which this is.... could be the one called Devil's Dipstick, but I really don't know. The name just seems appropriate.

The mushroom emerges from a white rubbery "egg" buried in the soil or wood mulch, often known as "Witches Eggs", and grows 5-10cm tall, hollow, with a sticky dark gleba. This contains spores, and has a really bad smell... think rotting meat or vomit...... and attracts flies and other insects who love that sort of deliciousness.

These stinkhorns were growing in my son's garden. It was a damp rainy day. The next day was hot and sunny and they had shrivelled and dried up.

Crunch!

It was an ordinary Thursday morning. I was ready to go to my Art Group, just one more cup of coffee before I go, and then...... disaster. 

I'm not sure how it happened, but the coffee landed in a huge coffee puddle on the floor, my favourite cup smashed to smithereens, and I slipped on the wet tiles, sailed through the air and landed on my right wrist.

I heard the Crunch!

Called 911, Paramedics were marvellous, Ambulance to Emergency where they fixed me up with a temporary cast. Dislocated wrist and two bones broken.

A new cast installed a week later.  Did you know that when you get a cast, there's a colour chart to choose from? Purple seemed like a good choice. 

And now I am learning to negotiate the world with my left hand. Only 25 days to go. (see ticker at the top of this blog). I can't wait!

Wet

Thunder and lightning in the night, and torrential rain thundering on the roof. I was happy to stay in bed warm and dry and listen to it all. Up early, still a bit dark, and I saw something moving on the deck. 

The poor little chap was soaked. I think he was looking for a towel.

Sweetness

It doesn't take long for the trees to figure out that Spring is here.  A few warm days with cold nights and the sap starts running. The maple trees are tapped and buckets are filling fast. The driveway is lined with mature walnut trees, and they have all been providing sap along the blue sap lines. The lines can be seen in the photo background.  The lines lead to a large tub in the little barn.

This is the third year for this home-made humble evaporator. It's constructed from a steel barrel lined with insulation and firebrick.  Some large metal catering trays, various pipes, elbows, a couple of valves, and lots of firewood.  It may look a bit rough but it works! Sap goes into the top pan, drips into the lower pans topping up the evaporating sap. 

When the sap has been reduced enough, it's cooled and frozen, and when there are enough batches stored in the freezer, it's finished into the sweetest yummiest maple-walnut syrup you have ever tasted!

Stamps

 Do people still collect stamps? Perhaps philately is a thing of the past, now that email and social media are the modern means of communication.

I had a stamp album with lots of stamps when I was a child, but it's long gone now. But I still can't throw mail away with a stamp on it, so the stamps get packed into an envelope in the junk drawer.  One of the local churches was asking for collections of used stamps, so I decided to find the scissors and clean up my collection. 

And here's the pile of bits that were removed around the stamps. Lots more room in the junk drawer now.

Glow

 A sample of the stunning stained glass windows at Humber Valley United Church in Toronto.  The windows were designed and built by Eric Wesselow in 1977.

Eric Wesselow was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy and president of the Quebec Society for Education through Art.  The Wesselow system of layering glass so that there are no visible lead lines was named for him.