I'm writing this in the hope that our internet connection will work sometime today and I'll be able to post it. Our connection has been up and down all week and for the last few days we've been pretty excited if it stayed up for more than three minutes at a time. We're told it should be fixed by Tuesday. I hope so because I already have a backlog of things I want to post about and it will only get worse. We're planning on camping over the long (er - sort of - you have to take the Friday off) weekend and it would be really nice to get some stuff posted before we leave on Thursday.

ETA: A day later and another try - fingers crossed.

In the mean time, here are my pictures for the past week.



Monday was a holiday here and I took it as a chance to work on a new t-shirt.


Most of Tuesday evening was spent pulling up sod to create a new garden bad in front of the house. I'd never before realized just how thick and heavy a chunk of lawn can be. After all that work a cold beer was absolutely fantastic.


I saw these barriers on Tuesday but didn't have my camera with me. I was glad to see them still there when I walked by at lunch time on Wednesday. I wonder if they were put up in that order or if someone did it deliberately.


This tin sits on top of my stove. I think it came from my Aunt Marg but I'm not totally sure. I keep packets of strange drink mix in it - things like fancy hot chocolates and hot apple ciders - to pull out on rainy days.


Friday was a whole day of preparations for my annual tea party. Between the sun outside and the oven inside our house was a very hot place but all the goodies were completely worth it.


A jar of lavender in the smoky red sunlight coming into my sewing room.


What is it about tea that makes it refreshing even on hot days?

I just finished pulling up a swath of sod in front of our house and filling it with top soil. I still need to plant seeds in the bed (a bunch of wildflowers) but after two hours of hauling stuff around in the wheel barrow - accompanied by my own private cloud of mosquitos - I'm totally worn out and the seeds can wait until tomorrow. Here are my pictures from last week (well ... except Monday).



Somehow I didn't take a picture on Monday. I'm not quite sure how it happened because I remember thinking about taking pictures quite a lot but I must not have gotten my camera out of my bag. I didn't notice until sometime on Tuesday.


This is my favourite thing to see in our mailbox. It means there is a parcel for us in one of the larger boxes. It works like this: the mail person leaves the key in your box, you use it to open the big box and then drop it in the letter slot to give it back. My sock club package was in the big box.


This is my iron about eight o'clock at night. It's on so I must have been sewing or ironing or something. The light in my sewing room gets very soft and hazy in the evening. The red light seems particularly bright.


This is my reamer. I love it. I made Key Lime pie only once before I bought it and it took two of us ages to juice all those tiny limes by hand. This little guy completely revolutionized the process and I like to make key lime pie as frequently as I think I can convince other people to help me eat it. This particular pie was shared with my sister and her husband.


Gratuitous crab-apple blossom picture. I love flowering trees.


Coddled eggs are really good. They're a lot like boiled eggs but you get to add stuff before cooking. I haven't made one in ages and had to look up the recipe.

Buds on our ornamental crabapple tree.


A raven on a piece of ornamental mining equipment in city hall park. They're such big, scruffy looking birds.


A pumpkin plant freshly transplanted into my new garden beds (more on those soon).


Buds opening into blossoms on the crabapple. I love all the frothy pinkness.


Keeping track of my garden and planning out the last two boxes.


I wore my favourite sundress out to Rob's staff barbeque. The blue flowers matched my toes.


I dusted! There are only two weeks until this year's tea party and I thought that it might get a little less crazy the day before if I start cleaning up well in advance.