The Stop Go Animation Boys

Oh those wacky stormtroopers: they get up to the craziest stunts.

(I hope you can hear the deep deep irony in my voice as I am forced to endure more than one lecture on the difference between storm troopers and clones and sith lords and jedi guys and the fact that it's KWAI Gon Jin and not QUEUE Gon Jin...)

Ahem. (Sheila clears her throat)

I am using this blog as a platform for the advertising purposes of my male children, who have changed their names to stormavenger12 and 99skyguy and are now living on the planet of YouTube, making stop-go Star Wars Lego videos, not to mention requesting that I post every single one for them (except for two that stormavenger12 is desperate to upload but my really nice but slightly slow "stupid slow and REALLY ancient computer" can't read the disk from the fancy pants new computer that Richard has so they remain suspended in hyperdrive). And you too can see every single of the current videos if you go to YouTube. Or just click on the links. T

Told you I'm using this blog for the purposes of advertising. But I don't get any revenue from this, sadly. Maybe a few dishwashing sessions, or the odd sweep-the-stairs extravaganza...

Last of the Really Great Sun Days

At least, I'm thinking these will be the last of the really flukey hot days. It's been gorgeous all week, thankfully, because none of of us are really ready for Serious Fall Weather. I'm still clinging grimly to my sockless wardrobe attire. Today we wore sleeveless clothing, worked a bit in the garden ("In Which Sheila Transplants A Japanese Maple When She Really Shouldn't and Discovers That She Really and Truly Hates Bishop's Weed"), hung the laundry outside to dry in the morning sun (it dried in an hour!), and then, because we were all at rather desultory loose ends, went for a walk.

We live near a secluded nature sanctuary, so we went there to do the loop around the lake. And no, don't listen to people who tell you that it's a swamp. It is a lake. A small bird-bug-amphibian-filled lake.

Harumph.

The first thing we noticed were the grasshoppers. They do this every year at this time, and today I was glad to have the camera handy. Can you see what this one-legged wonder is doing?
Hint: I'm humming The Circle Of Life from The Lion King in your ear right now...
No wonder it's one-legged: there are many brisk walkers traversing these paths and I don't see many of them leaping and shrieking and gasping "Watch out for that grasshopper!" the way that FDPG and Dominic do.

It was sublimely peaceful to walk across the bridge, even if the silence was continually punctuated by Max and Dominic experimenting with reasons for why jogging was not allowed on the floating boardwalk...

Thump!

Thump!

Thump!








The other thing we noticed was all the algae on the lake. There was more than we've ever seen before. It was odd. So odd that a biologist and her assistant were gathering samples to take back to their lab to see if they could find a reason why the algae was so, err, vibrant this time of year. She joked to the twins that they had a café at work and she would sell Algae Soup after they'd run their tests. FDPG was deeply suspicious that they might actually try such a thing, even after the biologist reassured her (more than once) that she was just joking. A very literal girl, is our FDPG.








Look! Crop circles! (at least, that's what FDPG said they were)

I'm thinking they're pretty sloppy aliens, with crop circles that irregular.

Max Makes More Movies

(there, no one can accuse me of not liking alliteration)

We finally loaded Max's Star Wars stop-go animation movies onto YouTube. They mostly involve clone troopers doing very silly things that cause great hilarity amongst the younger set in this house. I think this is the first three he made (I think he made these in late spring). I was deeply amused to discover that there are a lot of people out there who like to call themselves Stormavenger. Ahem.

Warning: a shark may or may not have been injured in the making of one of these movies. It's hard to tell.

Here's the first one. Here's another one. And here's yet another one, in which coffee seems to feature prominently (sort of like how it does in our house).

Oy, have you ever tried to load something onto YouTube? I guess I have more of the Instant Gratification Princess in me than I thought, because it sure seemed to take a long time. He wants me to load several other movies onto YouTube today. Soon I'll be saying "But wait! There's more!" Because there are more. (gosh the fun never ends around here)

Fall Air

I don't know how it happened, but suddenly Fall is in the air. I had a friend call me from Bolivia tonight, and her first sentence included the phrase "so it's cold up there, I hear." She might even have cackled after saying that. And I, much to my chagrin, had to sigh and agree. It IS getting cold up here. One day soon we might have to turn on the heat in the morning. I've discarded my thin summer morning fling-on for a full length dressing gown. And because I'm a product of my British heritage, I'm also chiding the kids to come up in the mornings with their slippers on. "Where are your slippers?" I say, "Go and get them on. These floors are freezing!"

Yes, I am turning into my mother. And my aunties. And my grandmothers. And my great-grandmothers. It's running in the family (to quote Michael Ondaatje).

The garden is showing signs of chill: there are still a lot of things growing, but you can see the effects of the cold. There is a surprised look on everything, as if the cold has caught them unawares. The green tomatoes still left on the vines have that slightly shrivelled look. I went out today and picked everything that looked even vaguely reddish, and put them all in bowls in the greenhouse window on the deck, so they can a) ripen in some warm air, and b) ripen without bringing bucket-loads of fruit flies into the dining room.

So far I have many many many quarts of tomatoes in various guises in the cold room and freezer, mostly in the form of salsa because it's so versatile. A quart here in a pot of black beans, a quart there in some soup to spice it up, a quart on top of enchiladas or burritos, and a quart in a bowl with some corn chips when friends come over. Last year I canned 25 quarts of salsa and we had eaten them by mid-January, so this year I grew more tomatoes...

The other form of cooked tomato we love is the Simple Sludge: get a large stainless frying pan or dutch oven, drench the bottom generously with olive oil and plenty of pressed garlic, stir and stir until it's all sizzling nicely, then add many chopped up tomatoes. Stir and cook, stir and cook, until the mixture is bubbling and thick and you don't see any recognizable tomato bits in it (about 25 minutes). Once it's all lovely and sludgy, pour into a bowl (or a freezer bag) and maybe stir in a little salt. This is a particularly handy recipe for cherry tomatoes, cracked tomatoes, and tomatoes that are a little on the Overly Ripe side.

FDPG and I picked all her gourds and deposited them on the front porch, there to await our Halloween Summons. We hauled all the pumpkins under the deck, where they could cure in relative dryness. And I went out front and spent an entire day digging up the front rockery, so that I could put in some bulbs and get old weeds out before the winter comes and sends everything into hibernation. I felt slightly conflicted about this, because I know there were more than a few leaf cutter bees with little nests in that rockery, and while I am always neurotically careful about not disturbing the nests of such creatures, I do fear that several must have crumpled under the loving crunch of my shovel.

Thanks to a Bulb Fairy I have a new bag of bulbs to plant. I will inflict some names upon you, just because I can:

Frittilaria Persica (40" tall)
Baby Moon Mini Narcissus (10" tall, fragrant)
Tulip Angelique (16" tall)
Striped Squill- Pushkinia (6" tall)
Bulgaricum Nectaroscordum Siculum (36" tall, fragrant)
Summer Snowflake - Aestivum Leucojum
Purple Sensation - Allium (36" tall, fragrant)
Imperialis Rubra - Fritillaria (36" tall, fragrant)
Striped Beauty - Fritillaria (36" tall, fragrant)

Thank you Bulb Fairy. You are sweet and generous and when these things bloom we will invite you over for a tea party. With cakes. Iced, even.

Did I mention that we turned over the composts last week? And when we did so we discovered layers of living quarters, like an apartment building. On one layer we found a mother snake and her two young snakettes; on a lower level we found a tunnel with two baby mice in it. They gambolled away as soon as we opened up their layer, as did the snakes (and snakettes), and while Max was typically vengeful about all things Rodential, none of us had the heart to do anything other than peer and hope for the best, in the end. We sent the snakes, who seemed to have absolutely no idea who was living below them, packing, and buttressed up the mouse house, despite FDPG's pleas ("can't we take them and put them in the aquarium and keep them forever oooh they're so cute oooh look at those little babies I love them they are so cuddly looking oh shut up you stupid boys we aren't going to smash them with the shovel oh can't we keep them as pets?").

I'm glad I don't live further in the countryside, where I'd no doubt be dealing with skunks and raccoons and deer and all sorts of other things I am ill equipped to deal with (I have a very low tolerance for things that mess with my gardening impulses).

And now I am going to contemplate what we grew and how we grew it and what we will or will not grow next year. (sounds so simple, doesn't it? sheila rolls her eyes at such simplistic hopes)

Putting On Our Thinking Caps...Literally.

Hmmm...let me think.

Here's FDPG wearing her thinking hat this morning, contemplating the trajectory of her day.

Poke your temporal lobe a little bit harder, FDPG!

You can make one of these hats too.

A Last Gulp of Summer

We're having what some are calling an Indian Summer here right now. It seems a little on the early side for this, because the leaves aren't turning, but it's certainly not a Dog Day, so I'll settle for showing you weird shots of the garden and saying "It's really hot right now and wouldn't you know it but I hauled the soaker hoses out of all my perennial beds and now I'm having to water by hand, ugh."

As I was digging out yet more tomatillos from my tireless tomatillo, I came across this. The husk had disintegrated, leaving the skeleton around the fruit.

There were half a dozen of these things and each one seemed equally mysterious and enchanting. They went immediately to the Greenridge Museum Of Strange Things (along with FDPG's cheezie collection, Dominic's collection of Zebra Pez dispensers, and Max's collection of old chocolate bar wrappers).

I grow sorrel in both the front and the back yard, and we eat a fair bit of it through the summer. It's such a versatile garden green, and last year when I saw a variety of ornamental sorrel (the blood veined one) I bought it, thinking it would be a nice companion piece for the edible green sorrel. I would sit them across the slate path from each other, I thought, and they could be old cronies together. Maybe smile. Wave fronds. Chat occasionally. Well, let's just say that the ornamental sorrel is a piggy piggy space hog. It's seeded itself everywhere. It's even managed to insinuate itself in amongst the Irish moss, and we can't have that, because I am cultivating that Irish moss. It's going to be a path one day: a soft sparkling green carpet gliding under the artfully arranged bench and interesting brickwork next to the beach wood trellis and no it will NOT be a really cool place for Max's HO train to thunder through OR for all that Star Wars Lego to have super wild battles on top of. So while I was digging out all that ornamental sorrel I suddenly thought of this teacup I found at Michael's the other day, in a bin marked "Damaged." It wasn't damaged, although the cup and the saucer seemed to be stuck together, but best of all it was only 98¢. Heck, I thought, it's ornamental too - just like the blood-veined sorrel. So I planted one inside the other. They were made for each other.

My first cantaloupe fell off the vine today. Here it is. You know those pictures of the planets? The ones where they show the various planets sitting next to one another, so you get a sense of their respective sizes? Well, here is my cantaloupe, sitting next to one of my Golden Boy Beefsteak tomatoes. Is that not the biggest cantaloupe you've ever seen?

And no, that is NOT a cherry tomato. Whatever gave you that idea?

We were coming home from a friend's today and I stopped at the local farmer's stand for some corn and saw this: local pop. It's even made in BC, even though it has the word SODA on the label (we Canucks don't usually use that word so I'm wondering if their marketers are American). Do you know how you can tell this is Canadian? Hint: check out the flavour. What other country do you know that has pop in Saskatoon Berry flavours? Ah, my country. So wacky.

Dominic made me buy it because a) it doesn't have HFCS in it, and b) it's called Beaver Soda (he used to be a Beaver so he saw that as a sign that he was meant to drink it).

We have GOURDS this year. And lots of them. Here are but a few. I'm guessing it was a good year for gourds. My dad said "What do you do with those things?" "They're decorative," I answered. "Oh," he said politely (doing that internal eye roll parents are so good at). Later that day Dominic asked "What do you do with those things?" "They're decorative," I answered. "Oh," he said (looking completely puzzled) "Why are they so small? Are they supposed to be like that? Why did we grow them if we can't eat them?"

Two days later Richard said "What are you going to do with those things?" "They're decorative," I answered. "Oh," he said smirking widely, "are you sure they aren't just pumpkins that failed in their mission?" (suppressing his eye rolling very poorly considering he was but one shin-kick away from me).

One week later FDPG said "Did I grow all those?" "Yup," I said. "Oh," she said, "what are we going to do with them?" "They're decorative," I said, "we stick them places and they look cool. Maybe we can hollow them out and stick candles in them and put them on the table at mealtimes. Or float them in a big planter at Halloween - or even string them up like lanterns." "HA!" she said, "I knew they were good for something. Dad said they were pumpkins that failed in their mission. But I knew he was just mad that he's such a bad gardener and I'm such a great gardener."

HA! Take that, ye scornful men of little imagination. Failed pumpkin, indeed.
(sheila aims her pointy little toes at some shins)

Got a free plant with my garden points at Ye Olde Garden Centre today. It's called Zebra Grass. Bet you can't guess why...










A Study of Two Personalities

The Zen Michaelmas Daisy. Free flowing. Loose. Always late for everything. Loses keys and driver's licenses regularly. Likes riding around town without a seat belt. Has a tinkly laugh and long curly hair. Wears lavender coloured lipstick and voluminous yoga pants. Carries a large red velvet purse from 10,000 villages. Absentmindedly chews nails.







The Type A Michaelmas Daisy. Always on time. Has specific places for keys and driver's licenses. Never loses anything. Is very thin and well dressed at all times. Probably wears tasteful makeup. Heels click when walking. Has a place in the bathroom for everything. Does not like mildew.



And I love them both equally, as every good parent does...

Latest garden surprise. I don't know where this plant came from, and I have no idea what sort of grape it is (by the way, Moira, you were right about the crocosmia), and while they are very sweet they also have a lot of big ole seeds in them. Any suggestions on what to do with them?













Finally, drum roll please, this is why they call this variety of pumpkin a Cinderella pumpkin!
There you have it - my garden weirdnesses in the last days of summer.

The Passing of Days

I've had a cold these last few days, which might (or might not) account for my relative silence here (it might be plain old NothingToSayitis). I spent all of Saturday lying in bed, feeling utterly miserable. When I was fed up with that, I wandered around the house a couple of times to make sure everyone knew just how miserable I was feeling, although with the weather being so lovely and hot they were all outside. No one present to witness my ability to be a tediously pathetic weeniepants about having a cold stoic and bravely ill, sigh. It was rather pleasant, now that I look back on it, because at least Richard was there, and able to be the Other Adult around so I actually could lie in bed the whole day. For some reason I kept remembering the audio commentary to the film Gosford Park, and thinking about what Julian Fellowes (who wrote the script) had said about an old aunt of his. Apparently she spent each and every Friday lying in a darkened room, eating nothing and drinking only water. She lived to a ripe old age and looked wonderful for most of it, according to him, and he thought her Friday routine had something to do with it. So while I was (mostly) lying there feeling horrible, occasionally I tried to think Pleasant Youthful Thoughts, in a (mostly) vain attempt at using the opportunity as a multi-tasking moment. Hard to feel youthful and healthy when one is sick and feverish.

Why yes, I do listen to audio commentaries of films. Sometimes they're better than the actual film. The ones for Gosford Park and Chocolat are fascinating, but that's probably because Lasse Halstrom and Julian Fellowes are good talkers. The Dr Who episodes are equally riveting. I now know just how they get those Daleks to glide across the floor. And no, it's not highly technical. Or even computerized. Think bare feet...pushing cardboard boxes...

Sunday I woke up, saw glimpses of the early sunrise all pink and yellow and gorgeous outside my bedroom window, thought briefly about attempting another stab at the Sitting In A Darkened Room, then remembered my giant pot of tomatoes, sitting all naked and peeled on the deck. See that big silver pot there? To your left? I had that pot, all 18 quarts of it, filled with tomatoes. Peeled tomatoes, might I emphasize.

If you have no idea what I'm on about, imagine if you will a long wooden counter, in a kitchen, an old fashioned farm kitchen perhaps, and a stove with a giant pot of boiling water on it, into which some kitchen maid (who probably doesn't spend her Fridays in bed thinking Pleasant Youthful Thoughts) has emptied masses upon masses of fresh, ripe tomatoes. She lets them sit there, briefly, in the boiling water, before she scoops them out and sets them gently but firmly in an icy water bath on that giant counter. Then, and only then, does she put the cruel knife of fate to their tender innards, removing their skins and the odd core. The whole process takes our kitchen maid an awfully long time. Because she has an awfully large bucket of tomatoes.

Got that image in your head? Right, well, remove the kitchen maid, the wooden counter, and the icy water bath (I've always thought it a little excessive to use ice cubes for this purpose). Oh, and the giant kitchen too. But the rest? C'est moi: sweating, cramped, and endlessly toiling. All in the service of the charming tomato.

I think I'm still a little feverish. I'm finding it difficult to stay on topic. My mind keeps wandering off on Chaucerian tangents. Kitchen maids? I wish.

Anyhow, Sunday morning I woke up and saw the sun through bleary weary eyes. I watched it send out tentative beams of light onto the deck, flicker across the pot of salmon-coloured geraniums, wander over the table, settle briefly on the luminous dishes of drying garlic and potatoes, and then on the...silver...stockpot. The by now effervescent-with-too-much-sitting-in-the-sun stockpot full of peeled tomatoes...into which I had poured at least 3 hours, picking, washing, peeling and chopping. I think I might even have gaped in horror, right then and there. I'd been so busy lying in bed being pathetic that I'd completely forgotten about that big ole pot of soon-to-be-wasted time sitting out there. And that was how I left my sick bed. I did my Super Jane Austen heroine routine again, even. I forged out onto the deck, lifted my Ton 'O' Silver and hauled it into the kitchen, where I promptly rescued it from Imminent Death By Fermentation.

And now I have 30 quarts of salsa sitting in the cold room, many quarts of antipasto, and a number of quarts of tomatillo salsa spiked with Thai Dragon Peppers. Once I got working on the tomatoes I figured what the heck - might as well clear the deck of Potential Fruit Fly Bait. Besides, the tomatillos were sitting alongside the bubbly tomatoes looking sad and ever-so-slightly shrivelled, as if they knew they'd soon be Permanent Residents of the Compost Heap if I didn't leave off with the Youthful Thoughts crap and get out the food processor right this minute.

So I did.