A Chilly Dark Day With Some Accomplishment....

Finally no rain yet much today, so I went out back to prepare for next years vegetable garden I want.
I read in the Special Edition of "Birds&Blooms" that one could lay dark plastic on the grass over the winter and in spring the grass would be dead. I used extra large garbage bags and cut one side and bottom.
This is better for me because there is no deep digging. This magazine is fantastic. Packed full of all kinds of really good articles and tips on many pages. I can`t seem to find where it spoke of this though. I`m positive it was in there somewhere!

But while I was laying the plastic I spotted something freaky by the fence....

After getting up the nerve to investigate, I got the shovel and turned it over....

It was a stuffed animal. Whew!! It must be from one of the garage sales my sister had out here and Elvis swiped it. Weird. It looked like real wet fur and there were a couple of flies on it.

I went in the field and got some loads of bricks we stored there and wheel barrowed them over to frame it and hold the bags down.
So the whole thing will become a raised garden bed with bricks framing it. Not sure how high yet. This spot gets extemely wet when it rains, but the other side of the tree is even worse. It will need leveling after we get a load of dirt dumped in spring. I might even section it off with bricks. Grow different things in each one instead of the typical line rows.
It`s not that big, about 12 ft by 10 ft give or take, but a good start. I`m going to grow tomatoes in pots to save on room. And maybe plant some flowers around the tree. It still gets a lot of sun there, even with that tree there`s hardly any shade so the veg should do okay.

Then I planted the two small Heather plants I bought the other day that were staring at me in front of the grocery store. There were tons of them, but kind of expensive so I only took two. $4.99 for such a tiny thing. They need shelter so I put them here for now anyway.

I decided to plant some of the mums. Not sure if they`ll survive over winter, but it`s worth a try.I couldn`t plant the container because these were plastic ones.

Put the bright purple astors by the butterfly bush and the purpley pink mums too. I call it the purple corner. But looking at it, I think I may swap them around and have the darker farthest from the butterfly bush. It would look better I think.

Just left the rest that I had in back here down the end with the ones I`ve potted myself.

Now all that`s left to do is fertilize the soil. I read somewhere that sheep manure fertilizer really isn`t sheep manure. But regardless, it`s waiting for another day. Maybe tomorrow if it doesn`t rain all day.

"But I Thought This Was My Couch"....

I`ve given up on shooing Elvis off this little couch. It`s at the end of the front room and no one sits on it anyway, and he does look cute there, if not a bit guilty.

Didn`t turn out too bad considering I took it in the dark last night and couldn`t see exactly where he was on it.

Remember the Barbie Feet in Toe Tales?

http://teaandmargaritas.blogspot.com/2006/07/when-i-was-child-i-played-with-barbies.html

If anyone happened to read the above in July, here they are on my wedding day in those shoes.........see what I mean! I just wore a simple high necked ivory silk dress with a dark silver shawl, carried a little vintage beaded bag and a single red rose and made some delicate pretty beaded bracelets and drop earrings. I would never normally dream of putting ivory with dark silver, but it worked after darkening my shoes a bit. Silly maybe, but I wanted my outfit to match my white gold and blue sapphire ring and hubby looked so handsome in basic black with an ivory shirt and black tie. I`m thinking of dying the dress black now so I can wear it again. I wonder if it would work....
The full picture is one of my favorites of us right after the minister announced us as husband and wife. But for now here`s one of us lighting the candles...

My Sweet Daisy

This is a sad posting but since my camera is out of batteries I pulled up some more pictures I took in the summer while walking around the pond......

In 2001 I lost my sweet Golden Reteiever Daisy. She was only two years old and it broke my heart. I was at work and got a call saying she had been hit on the road and was badly injured in her back area. We usually had her tied up because she wasn`t road wise and the road is very busy out here. She got loose. I rushed home in a panic and we went to the vets where she was and the vet kindly came with us to another for a second opinion. The other vet said that even if we took her to where they do intensive veterinarian operations and had the hundreds it would take to pay for an operation that they wouldn`t be able to save her. So I layed on the floor with her, my arms wrapped around her as the vet gave her the leathal injection.
We took her back home and hubby and my dad dug her grave under the apple tree by the woods, while Elvis and I watched, seeming to share in our misery and sadness. I knew that it was important that Elvis see because he would have been searching for her constantly otherwise.
This is Daisy with Elvis.....

This is out little pet cemetary. It now also has my sister`s cat and guinea pig, one of our cats, Clover, and my Mum`s chinchilla resting here.

This is Daisy`s grave. Engraved on the plaque is " In Loving Memory of Sweet Daisy, May 1999- July 10 2001 Who Frollicks safely In Gods Country" My Dad got the little dog statue and hubby got the plaque made for her.

I wish so much that my beloved Ben dog was buried here too.

He was with us for nine short years. They are both missed tremendously.

"Angus the Owl" and This and That

Later Note... Hubby squeezed out enough juice from the batteries to upload the picture, so here`s the trees out front at the moment...

Here`s a weird picture of Angus I took late Sunday afternoon not long after we arrived back from Toronto. He looks like a mutant fuzzy ginger owl or something. I wanted to get a better one but it began absolutely pouring hard rain down and I ran back in!

The trees are changing fast now. They`re so pretty but I hate when they become bare which will happen before long.
I took a picture and then my batteries ran out before I could upload it. Have to wait a few days before I can get out to buy more.
We decided to watch "The Dark" last night. Hubby had the DVD in his collection....

If you like a good spooky ghost story then you`ll like this. It`s not a gore movie and it`s steeped in Welsh mythology with really great photography and special effects with the camera lens. The story is good and so are the actors.

Toronto

Entering the city with the CN Tower in the distance...

A little flower garden on a street near my daughter....

Everything towering above us....

On the way to meet my daughter`s boyfriend and go to the market we sat in the park of Osgoode Hall which is an old law building...

We walked passed Toronto`s City TV and Much Music building...

This bridal party was trying their hardest to get a picture right in the middle of the road in traffic, but gave up....

After meeting up we went on to Kensington Market area...

It`s packed full of vintage shops of mainly clothing and jewellery....

But also lots of fruits and vegetables....

A display above one of the shops....

Some outside home decor....

We went and had something to eat and then headed back to my daughters.
That night she was given three guest passes to the opening of a new club called "Marrow" on Liberty Street by her neighbour so we decided to go. It was very upscale in an old warehouse and Nelly Fertato was there as a guest, though there were so many people we never got a glimpse of her. It was an interesting experience. We cabbed it that night and it was the only time it rained all weekend except as we were leaving Sunday afternoon.
After leaving my daughter we decided to drive around a bit and see some more of the city..

Too bad I missed the other half of this. It`s right above...

This little guy posed for me....

An interesting contrast...

Thanks to Calamity Jen http://calamityjenni.blogspot.com
for identifying this building which is the Old City Hall (on Queen Street West, near the Eaton Centre).

Some art.....

We decided to find some parking and walk around because we saw that we were near St. Lawrence Market...

Lots of antiques...

I bought this to add to a wall collection...

We stopped for a drink and people watched....

We drove down Bay Street...

There were some great old buildings amongst the newer ones. This was on the Imperial Bank Of Commerse


It took us a really long time to get out of the city because traffic was jammed everywhere and we went the wrong direction at first so had a look at Young Street. We finally got a glimpse of the CN Tower and knew we were going in the right dirction.
It was a great weekend and wonderful to see my daughter, meet the boyfriend and also meet Bud :)
Here`s one last picture which I call "The Concrete Jungle"

Off To Toronto For The Weekend

I just had to take another flower picture! I can`t really put anything too autumny in colour outside because I`ve still some summer colours going on. This English Shrub Rose ( "Eglantyne" Northern Pride) has tons of buds on it still. It`s my favorite of all my roses and is in the front garden. It`s so frilly and such a pretty pale pink. Maybe next year there will be more than one rose blooming at a time. I guess until frost hits, it will keep blooming. It`s more like October weather here. Either wet or chilly or both all month mostly so far. Harder to wake up in the mornings now.

My sister and I are going to visit my daughter on Saturday and she wants to take us to Kensington Market. That should be fun except that it`s supposed to rain all weekend. Well hopefully the weather changes just for that day. We`ll take our umbrellas and prepare for the worse and I`ll take my camera and hopefully get some pictures too.
Can`t wait to see her again.....I miss her and worry about her living there. But her career is there and she`s a city girl. We get to meet her new boyfriend at some point and also her new cat. She adopted him. The cat...not her boyfriend. His name is Bud, seven years old, and he`s so cute!

She says...

"I got Bud yesterday! He's much bigger than what he looks in the picture. He's huge! He's not fat at all, just a really big cat.

He's not as nervous as most cats are when they move to a new house. He's probably used to being moved around a lot. He scratched M. when we tried to get him out of his carrier bag, but that was it... and he only scratched because he jumped; he didn't swat at him. I kept him in my bedroom for the first night. Tonight I'll let him wander around the upstairs and get used to that and then I'll let him go downstairs. Just so he can get used to one room at a time... he's already curious about what is outside my bedroom door and tries to sneak out."

And here`s the picture she sent of Bud......isn`t he beautiful? What an expression he has!

I think I`ll take a few days off posting. Have a look through my Richters Plant catalogue, catch up on some blog reading, get ready for the weekend and then pretend technology doesn`t exist for a bit. Need to do some good old fashioned things. I find the computer overloads my brain sometimes. Back to it Monday....Happy Weekend!

All Finished Now Until Next Spring

Lining up the bricks........

Awwwww...one of my son`s toys from years ago that hubby dug up .....

Putting down the sand and sweeping it.....

All done....

The centre, with bits of leaf that was blowing around and stuck here and there. I took these two pictures in the rain yesterday after work. It`s swept away all the excess sand anyway. The lava rocks turn almost the same colour as the heart shaped stone in the middle when the sun shines. .....

I got a couple more potted mums, creamy white this time, and put one here with the other mums and asters along with some I potted myself in early summer. You might notice that in some pictures the bricks look very dark and in others very light. They are inbetween in reality......

Angus was out chasing Isobel, lost her, and gave up.....

Isobel found a good hiding place.....