flowers, and a cat

I usually take a quick glance at the garden when I leave for work in the morning, and yesterday I received a nice surprise:


I had given up on its blooming. It seemed healthy enough, but it's been growing much more slowly than its cousin, which has been blooming for about two weeks. It's not in an ideal spot — less sunny as it is closer to the porch, slightly shaded by a forsythia, and much wetter — I found out recently that part of our downspout drains into that bed — so I had reconciled myself to only one blooming calla lily this year.

When I bought the bulbs (they came in one package), I had thought that they were going to be full-size callas, but it looks like they're miniatures. Which I prefer, in any case.


The basil is also blooming. I know I should be plucking its flowers to encourage growth, but as it's an annual and will die off anyway (and I've got more than enough leaves to use this summer), I can't be bothered.


Besides which, I am hoping that maybe it will seed itself into the plot and grow back after all — although I doubt that, in this climate. But perhaps I will be able to salvage enough to pot up to last me through the winter.

...
Also, and I should have mentioned this yesterday, Tuesday turned nine years old.


We didn't do anything special to celebrate (uhm, she's a cat), but I thought I would note it for posterity. Happy Birthday, Cat. You are just as adorable and annoying as you were eight years and ten months ago, but I love you anyway. And I can't believe I've spent the last almost-nine years dealing with your fur on my clothes.

ensconced

Still at the farm right now — reading my new Christmas books, doing my (not-so-new) Christmas knitting, and playing with my in-laws' new-to-me kitten.


More later, when I return to my normal life.

street urchins

I have lots of photos of Toronto from the past week, but first I wanted to share how hard and difficult life is for our cats. This morning, for example:




I mean, really. It's amazing they don't run away to be street cats; life is so horrible here. We even force them to be in the same room together.


How do they bear it?

Dude.

We had a lovely Easter weekend! As did everybody in Toronto, I think. You couldn't have a bad weekend, not with a three- (or four-)day holiday and all that sunshine. The universe simply wouldn't have allowed it.

Granted, our weekend was made infinitely better by something we discovered on our back porch. Or rather, something missing from our back porch. Let me explain. On Friday morning, our back porch was covered with all of the construction and demolition debris that had piled up since our last dump run (in February). It was, to say the least, a giant mess.

On Friday afternoon, our back porch looked like this:


It turned out that the roofers working next door were so grateful that we gave them permission to drop debris into our alley (apparently, lots of people don't), that they went and hauled all of our crap away for us. (We confirmed this with our neighbours later.) We assume they were using the pile to put their crap onto, too, which is fair, because — dude. Dude.

You should have seen us when we realised that all the crap was gone. We were literally giddy from the glee.

...
It's been a little while since I blogged anything about the renovations (mostly because most of the stuff that's left are small, little things, and unpacking), but this weekend we finally put in the last big thing that was waiting.


The glass for the shower. We didn't have brackets for it, so we braced it with what used to be parts of our cheap Ikea shoe rack (I'm sure you know the one — they're everywhere), applied the silicone adhesive, and waited for it to dry. We have to put more silicone on — mostly for aesthetic purposes; the glass is secure enough as-is — and re-install the shower faucet (we took it off so Pd could seal the grout and caulk the tile) and ... that's it. The bathroom's done.

At the risk of repeating myself — dude.

...
And finally: after four days of careful observation, I have concluded that this is what the cats do every single afternoon, between 1 and 5 o'clock:


Apparently it's a very hard life, being my cat.

packing

So, as predicted, I have been packing. Which is really kind of boring, and not very interesting to write about. One point of interest, though: I thought that I would be able to fit most (if not all) of my books into maybe 5 banker's boxes.

Well, I packed those 5 boxes, and this is what the main bookshelf looked like:


I may have underestimated the size of my library a little. Granted, a lot of those 5 initial boxes had books which were not on this shelf (which is really only about a quarter of the entire collection), but I still thought I would make much more of a dent.

(Yes, there is yarn up on that shelf. I have been filling the top third of the bankers' boxes with yarn, because it's light and fluffy; if I fully packed every box with books, the boxes will break. Ask me how I know.)

I'm up to 12 boxes now, and it's starting to look a little sparser. Not empty, mind. Just sparse. I think another 5 will do it. Or possibly 10.

Meanwhile, the apartment has become a complete maze of boxes, both empty and packed.


I can't believe I'm going to have to live like this for another month or so. The cats are loving it, though.


Weirdos.

So I think, in about three weeks, this blog is going to turn into a renovation blog. It'll be fun. You'll see. There's gonna be demolition involved. I'm hyperventilating thinking about it already.

Shop Announcement! (hee.)

My Etsy shop is up! I will be selling my handmade Christmas cards there for the next little while. What I will do after Christmas ... I don't know. I'll figure it out later. But this has been something like two years in the making, so it's nice to have it finally done. Now I can get back to actually making the cards, which would be nice. I've got a few new ideas I've been doodling around with ...

Anyway, in case you can't guess, I spent most of the weekend setting up the shop. (Well, there was other stuff. There was an excellent brunch, for example, and open houses, and a hockey game that would have been heartbreaking if we hadn't already given up on the Leafs.) I also knit:


This is Pierre's not-unexpected Christmas present. (Big sweater cardigans are not good stealth projects.) It's the Daniel pattern from Twist Collective, and it's knitting up fast, which is a bit of a relief. This is the left front; I've already got the back done. The yarn is Manos del Uruguay Wool Clasica, in the new naturals line, and the colour is nothing like the picture — it's much more of a woodsy, dark brown oatmeal kind of colour. I love it. It's a bit thickie-thin and rustic (but softer than it looks) and the heathered colour and slubby bits give the vast yards of stockinette good interest. It should be warm, too, which is just what he wanted.

When I went to the Purple Purl to buy an extra skein, they told me that Manos del Uruguay just got their fair trade certification. I didn't even know that yarn could (or couldn't) be fair trade, but it made my hippie little heart happy.

And finally, about a week ago, we had some friends over to play Beatles Rock Band (which is über fun, by the way), and it turns out that my cat has a secret life as a roadie:


She may want to work on that narcolepsy thing first, though.