We got a bunch of rain yesterday and my garden is happy. I realized that, though I've shared some pictures of things growing, I haven't really shared my garden here yet. It's almost all new this year. Last year I had two half-barrels of carrots and two very scraggly looking tomato plants that didn't really do much. This year, with a lot of help from my dad, I have four big boxes in the backyard, the two half-barrels of carrots on the front deck and two more half-barrels of tomatoes on the back deck where they seem to be much happier.


The boxes are three by three feet and about two feet apart. They are roughly knee height and very easy to work in. We can see them past our deck out the back windows off the family room and see how our veggies are doing. I'm planning to built a trellis for the peas with some of the willows growing at the back of our yard.


Things have been planted, or transplanted, as containers were ready and most things have sprouted now. The last box was planted on Friday and has an empty square for a second planting of spinach in a couple of weeks. Some of the sprouts surprised me; I didn't expect the beet sprouts to be dark purple, or the bean sprouts to still have their beans on - like some sort of beetle with its wings open - or the peas to be full of leaves right from the start.


The whole garden's not veggies though. We've got our ornamental crab-apple blooming away in the front yard. I think the blooms have reached their peak but I'm hoping they'll still look nice for my tea party next weekend. Under the tree is a tiny flower garden: I've got Argyranthemum (pink) and Bidens (yellow) for some height, Lobelia (blues, purples and white) to spread around and fill in, and Pansies for some bright spots of colour.


I have plans to make another flower bed against the front of the house. I may even get to that this evening. I'm not quite sure what shape to cut the bed yet; my sister says it should be something kind of rounded to look nice. I'm planning to fill it with a bunch of wildflower seeds and some sunflowers to add some more colour to the front of the house.

You can see some more pictures in my Flickr set.

This poor little blog. So behind. Fortunately I'm almost caught up on everything else. Last weekend arrived with the first of our Christmas activities and I woke up Monday morning and realized that I needed to get stuff into the mail now and it wasn't even finished yet! A busy week followed and I just never had enough slow time where I was awake enough to write.

But this morning is slow ... we've had coffee and I might even have a second cup, we're smelling brioche filled with pear jam cooking in the oven, it's warm (in a relative sense) outside and pretty, fluffy "ptarmigan feather" snow is falling, and I've got time and energy for sharing.

I've been procrastinating on putting up decorations this year (we've been waiting to have a new front door installed: it's been hanging out in the living room in the mean time) so the Christmas season didn't really arrive in our house until last Sunday when a few of our friends came over to socialize and eat cookies before all the travelling began. My favourite, quick Christmas cookie is gingerbread. My mum calls this recipe Edible Playdough, because there are no eggs, and used to make it every year as one of the activity stations at any children's Christmas do she was involved in. It can take a lot of handling and still come out okay and, while it might ruin your dinner, won't make you sick.

Edible Playdough

1/2 cup shortening
2/3 mollasses
1/2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinammon
3 tsp ginger
2 cups flour

Cream the shortening and molasses together. Stir in the baking soda and spices and then the flour. Shape as desired. Bake at 350F for 8-10 minutes depending on cookie thickness.


When I was little I was really fond of making igloos and turtles out of this stuff. Now a days I'm more likely to roll it out very thin for a wafer like texture (this is not a chewy cookies). They're good for hanging on trees since they don't go noticeably stale for quite a while ... oh, and it's great for houses.

Since one of our party on Sunday was Renee's daughter I felt that was amble excuse for us to spend our time decorating little houses. I did all the assembling before hand and put a variety of dishes of candy and a bunch of bags of icing with different tips on the table. We had a great time.


I spent my evenings this week getting presents finished up and cards made and then making my trip to the post office. The ladies in our post office are awesome: I know they must be worked off their feet this time of year but they are still always cheerful and they keep the line moving quickly.




Our new door went in on Friday. It's been taking up space in our living room since the beginning of September and I just couldn't get into decorating with it there. Now that it's in the wall (and I've finally shortened our much-too-long curtains) our living room feels big and bright and very empty. I've got all the boxes of decorations pulled out and am looking forward to hanging up lights and ornaments and maybe even watching White Christmas this evening.

When Samera showed up at my tea party last month (a wonderful surprise as I thought she was 1800 km away) the first thing she did was present me with goodies. There was some giant rick-rack - for purposes yet to be determined - and some delicate lace - perfect for a project I was thinking of - and a piece of mint.

Being me, I can remember Samera telling me what kind of mint it was but, though I can hear her voice and picture the way she looked as she spoke, I can't remember what it's called. She has some orange mint drying on her blog right now and since I know this sprig of mint was a cutting from one of her plants I will assume it is orange mint until someone corrects me. It smells delicious anyway.

Samera said if I put it in some water it would root and it spent three weeks living happily in a shot glass on our kitchen table. Everytime I watered it (or put it back because it had fallen out) I would see a little more development around the bottom of the sprig. It was a magical process. Last night I decided that it was probably time for a little soil and dug around my gardening supplies until I found a good pot.


My mint is now sitting prettily in its pot on the table and I am thinking of things I can do with it once it's big enough to harvest (or share).