Summer is Oficially Here

Don't April showers bring May flowers? Here it's more complicated; winter is like this stubborn teenager who just doesn't want to leave and when she just absolutely has to she decides to break a few glass vases on the way out. Basically in May, winter decided to trash my poor plants I left outside. But we're not thwarted by you stubborn winter you. In fact to celebrate your departure we went out and bought some beautiful planter fillers to replace the dried out ones in our current planter. Here I offer you a some before and after shots.

Here's before.

And here's after. Getting soil under your fingernails is quite satisfying, specially when you don't know a thing about growing things but you can look at this in the end.
And for my poor tomato plant who got a beat down by my lady winter, we shall not show her bruises but her beauty.That was a week ago, now she's turning red. Wow, I mean it's turning red. Ahem. I do love my tomato plant though, it's like a darling friend who I've known has gone through so much hardship but still lives life with a smile.

So with the natural progression of things, yesterday we felt the heat of summer. So much so that I think we both lost our minds a little bit. Gosh it was hot yesterday. The story is, it was so hot, we jumped into our car and drove right to Best Buy to get a portable air conditioner.

Side note: Have you seen these portable air conditioners? Portable makes it sound like you could tuck it under your arm and carry it around for the day but my goodness, they're twice the size of a window mounted air conditioner.

Anywho, so we went straight out to Best Buy, got there at 8:50 and left at 8:57 with a portable air conditioner that blocked the whole rear view. I say this because I get queasy when things block the rear view. We get home take it right out of it's packaging. Now it's getting late so it got a little cooler and the heat that was clouding our judgment dissipated. So we turned on our fan for the first time in the day. That's the punch line. Am I an awful story teller? We turned on our fan for the first time in the day! Anyway we packed the A.C up again and Best Buy will just have to take it back again. Cause our fan quite nicely cools us down. I just have to remember to turn it on.

And because that's the most I've ever written out without giving any visual aids, I think I deserve an award. I actually thought I'd post a picture of the A.C. box, but it's kind of boring, and there's no green in it anyway. I like green and if it doesn't have green in it, it better make up for it somehow. The A.C. box didn't get the memo but the tree outside my window did.

Quick Craft - Ribbon Blanket

Baby, like babies are wont to do, loves the tags on her blankets and toys. She is quite content to feast on them for minutes on end. She'll even taste thin strips of Velcro, make a grossed out face, hold it a few inches away from her face as if surveying it, and put it right back in her mouth.

So remembering a ribbon tab blanket from a blog lurk on, I went to work on making a small two sided one for baby to suck to her hearts content. Two days later and only maybe an hour and a half of work later, I've finished it.

Above you can see the two corner ribbons that melted from the heat of my iron. I wanted neat edges, but didn't think of the poor ribbon. Now it's all mangled, but if I didn't tell you, please tell me you wouldn't have even noticed.

Everything I had on hand since I buy pretty ribbon and material when it's on sale. I think this is the first time I actually used my bargain buys though. I'm so proud of myself.

The mess of ribbon and cloth is still on the desk, but I'm going to clean it up, right after I post this! Oh, never mind, baby's up, clean up will have to wait.

Elk Island National Park

Elk Island Park is only a 30 minute drive away from us, so it was easy for us all to pile into the van with little preparation and drive to it after breakfast one day. Baby and I probably did delay the beginning of the journey a bit, but hey we're both so cute. Well, to be exact, baby has enough cute for the both of us.

It was a gorgeous day but I think a little too soon after winter, things had not seemed to have just yet fully recuperated after the cold. Take for example the bison,
and the cattails
It's like they just woke up and have bed head but they're so beautiful it doesn't really matter.

We did see the customary welcome bison by the side of the road. Just not the herd that blocked traffic for 30 minutes last summer until a white pickup decided to show all 25 cars how we do it in Alberta and drove right through the bison like Musa (peace be upon him) parting the sea. Apparently the bison know not to stay in front of a moving vehicle. Ah, memories.

The park was very empty when we started out but while we walked along the boardwalk there was a group of kids along with their parents participating in some group geocaching. I always wanted to geocache but it just wasn't the time to start, baby wanted to sleep pronto. And instant sleep meant a moving vehicle, so we headed back home. Not before we got some free juice boxes though (and politely declined the hot dogs), which also meant spilling fruit juice on my baby's cutest little sweatpants. Oxyclean, I think I shall look you up and I leave you, my dedicated reader (yes I know there is only one of you) with a signature green close up.
Oh and if you want free juice to spill on your baby's good clothes, visit the Parks Canada events page for Elk Island so you know when they're handing it out.

Plant Update

Keeping with tradition, the plants I had first photographed are now doing quite poorly. The clan and I had gone out into the mountains for two nights and we came home to this.

My mint plant had dried out and so we decided to harvest it and dry the leaves to use later. Um, but the drying had mostly already occurred, so um, less work for me?

The coriander decided to pale on me and is actually growing flowers, I should read up on what exactly that means.

And now for a never before seen plant that is unfortunately also sporting wilted leaves.Can you imagine that those are the beginnings of a tomato! Please excuse my dirty windows. I should figure out how to blur the background because that darned building is looming over my dear plant.

Oh and on a tangent, I'm totally the green one.

Source: http://www.amuniversal.com/ups/features/wtduck/?sample=3&type=sunday