I'll take the odd mosquito please!

I saw on the weather network yesterday a report on the town of North Bay Ontario. Every year for two or three weeks, they have to deal with a deluge of these HUGE flies call Shadflies. There are millions....BILLIONS even of these flies....and they coat the walls and roads and cars and backs and lights and EVERYTHING!!!!

EEEWWWWWW!!!

Just for two or three weeks...and then they are gone as fast as they arrive. I think they are only out in the evening and at night...but STILL this is in summer when you WANT to be out and about enjoying the summer evening - I mean this is CANADA for gawd sake!!! I'm sorry but three weeks out of an already short summer is just TOO LONG!!! I know the summers are longer in Ontario but still...it's still Canada!!!

Aren't they GROSS?????

Pictures from my garden today

So many things still haven't flowered.....so I still have things to look forward to in the garden over the next few weeks.

Today Lloyd and I got to eat our first strawberry from the garden (remembering that SOMEONE stole the first strawberry last week some time....so today Lloyd and I shared the second strawberry :)

It was VERY yummy :)

Our vegetable garden now seems to be growing well.

We have strawberries growing VERY well - in the next week or so we should have a LOT ready to eat - but I know they won't make it to the house - they never do - no matter how many we grow, they just get washed off by the garden and eaten there and then. WE have a tap by the vegetable garden thankfully :)

We also have raspberries and tomatoes growing there.

Peas, pumpkins, squash and watermelon and rhubarb.

Radish, golden beets, lettuce and carrots (a purple kind) and broccoli

Everything else is going to have to wait until next year. We just ran out of time, energy and motivation for this year! I decided to focus on my flowers which I am LOVING. I also planted a LOT of sunflower seeds but I am not sure if ANY of them grew. It may be hard to tell if any of them grew until Fall - because of where I planted them - I scattered them in fields where hay grows tall - I mixed the seeds in buckets of moist soil and clumped the seeds into lumps of soil to see if that would help them get started and we tried to sow them in old gopher hills etc etc and bare patches etc so the soil would help but there is no guarantee that it will work. I've since read that you should use a clay mix in the soil. (Actually MISS B if you read this thats an idea for you and your girls with flower seeds in the city as they suggest it to add flowers to the cracks in city sidewalks) our best sunflower ever survived from a packet of birdseed in the crack by our garage door! They suggest you put seeds in clumps of soil mixed with clay and then go around the city dropping them in cracks in sidewalks and then when it rains they grow and then in the summer the sidewalks look stunning :)

Quadding after the storm

Susannah quickly made the most of the big puddles left over from todays thunderstorm!

Loopy and the bee...

Susannahs Lupin seems to grow constantly! The bees LOVE it! I think I will buy a lot of these next year - I love them - the leaves are as stunning as the flowers! They look gorgeous in the rain!

Lloyd and I had to run to Costco today so we also went to Greenlands for coffee and I bought a few more perennials for my flower garden. I love buying a few each weekend and adding to my garden - it's coming together nicely and I know it won't look perfect this year - and probably not next year, but it's coming together - and considering that we only dug it up this Spring and just a few weeks ago it was a pile of mud and nothing more really, I'm proud of what we've done to it :) I know what I want to do with it, so this year is really about sorting it out and bringing it together and next year will be about rearranging it and seeing what survives and where the spaces are and what I need to get and what needs to go where.

I'd also like a bird bath in there somewhere.The Goldfinches spend a lot of time in there and I think they'd like a birdbath - and maybe a birdfeeder in there too. I'll have to remove the bird bath in winter of course.

Another video

Chris and his friends messing around yesterday :)

Susannah

Susannah on the porch this afternoon after a storm - she had been picking up hailstones during the storm and paddling in the puddles left by the rain....and her hair was all curly and damp from the rain.

Photocopies :) Oh my, the things kids do :)

We did some photocopying today :) Firstly we did his hand and face, and then his big brother mentioned that he could do his butt lol and of course Sam thought this was a GREAT idea!!!! I won't impress you with the results of THIS scan lol! Too funny :)