Raindrops

 

One of my very favourite things to do in the garden is to take macro photos of leaves when they have rain drops or dew on them. I captured these the other day.  The last one was taken with a flash as the day had drawn to a close. That's why it's a bit bright.

The excessive rain of the past week and a half is more or less finished.

I'm looking forward to some sun to dry out my container pots and give some nourishment to the sprouts that are emerging in the garden.

Linking with Our World Tuesday.

Happy May 🌱🌱🌱

Have an awesome week ahead.

My World Tuesday

Hi friends,

I hope you are all doing well and finding ways to keep happily occupied.  What follows is a general summary of  how I'm coping with the lock down and how the province as a whole is coping.  It is  not a pity party or a complaint, just the reality of things at the moment. It probably looks and sounds quite similar to what is going on in your part of the world.

Since we've been told to only go out for essentials I really try to stay home. I don't even go for a walk. In the beginning I went shopping once a week and went to 2-3 places to try and buy everything I wanted.  Now I don't bother with that.  If I don't find something at one place, chances are it isn't at the 2nd or 3rd place and I don't want to expose myself to too many people.  These days I am going out about once every 8-10 days to one grocery store.  I also go to the pharmacy every other week for eggs, milk and some small things I may need.

Just before Easter weekend I noticed that we had to queue at all the shops and pharmacies. I thought it was due to larger numbers of people out on a sunny, long weekend.  But I've learned that it seems to be the new normal for grocery shopping.  It helps with social distancing inside the store when they limit people who can go inside at one time.  They also mark where to stand in the line outside and that helps too because no matter what there are always those that just don't do the right thing.  For some reason this seems to make most people behave better and do the right thing.  I've been fortunate that the lines I've been in have been short and fast moving.

According to our head doctor who along with our Health Minister, gives a daily update on Covid 19, we have been flattening the curve in British Columbia over the past few days. She thinks that some restrictions can begin to be lifted by mid-May.  Even so she has been cautioning us that things will not go back to the way they used to be and there won't be any larger gatherings of probably more than 50 people throughout the summer (concerts, fairs, festivals, sporting events, weddings).  Our Prime Minister has also been saying that things won't be going back to normal until there is a vaccine available.

Right now all schools and universities are either closed or carrying out activities on line as best they can.  Governments are mulling over how to return children back to school but say that it won't be back to regular classroom sizes. More information to come in future for those parents who wonder.  Sadly many businesses are probably bankrupt. Though the government did provide assistance to many individuals and for many different purposes, I'm not sure exactly what happened as far as places like restaurants and small retailers go. Those are the ones that struggled almost immediately.  Then in the last few days we've been hearing about drastic reduction in public transit services (buses, sky trains/subway, sea bus and trains). There are also layoffs in many places. I'm sure this is a similar situation the world over so things will look very different in our communities in months to come.

I came across what I thought was an interesting short video about what Vancouver, British Columbia looks like during this time of quarantining. It may look like a ghost town and though most people are staying home there are people on the streets each time I go out.  I know there are people walking on the beaches where permitted.  The provincial parks were closed until further notice just before the long weekend to prevent people from crowding at the parks.  The large downtown park, Stanley Park is not open to the public at this time either though I think the smaller city parks remain open for the most part.  The community gardens in a park near me remain open for gardeners though I haven't been to mine yet.

My nephew who is doing his Ph.D. here has said his life is actually busier with all the teaching and other requirements that now have to be done on line. The university is even planning for graduation ceremonies on line.  I'm not sure what will happen to admissions for foreign students.  I  have a young friend in Kenya waiting to hear if he will be accepted to study at University of British Columbia. Sadly he did not receive an offer from the Vancouver based program.  He is waiting to hear about the program at the Kelowna campus of the university.  Kelowna is a resort town located about 5 hours north east of Vancouver.  If he gets an offer I think there will be other challenges that did not exist before Covid 19. But we take one step at a time.

The quarantine has brought out a lot of creativity in the way Canadians try to stay connected.  Have a look at this short video.

On Sunday I waiting for a cousin to come by with her friend and pick up 6 dining chairs which I've been holding for her for many weeks.  She lives about an hour and a half away and  I haven't seen her since my dear mom's funeral.  We couldn't even hug and so we just did our business at a distance and she left.  I am so glad that she took the chairs though.  The chairs were a gift from my mom and I really didn't want to get rid of them.  But after years of hanging on to them and not using them I just wanted to find a new home for them.  My cousin absolutely loves antique furniture and items with sentimental value so I know she will appreciate them.  Moreover she lives in a small town where people appreciate old time things antique furniture and decor items and quilts made with fabrics and yarns. She also says she knows someone who can do the minor repairs that the chairs need.

Sunday was the day I also started working in my patio garden. There is so much work to be done to clean all the debris from the garden and the many containers I have. Everything also needs to be washed, the patio tables and chairs as well as all the cushions and tablecloths. I do not bother washing the container pots since they quickly get dirty if it rains even once.  The furniture and containers have to be moved around and some of them are very heavy.  Then of course the 40L bags of soil amendment material is also heavy.  Even 20L weights quite enough.  The next day I could barely move or get up and down without a lot of pain. The past weeks of inactivity resulted in more impact on my slack muscles than usual but this too shall pass.  I did only a very little work on Monday and need to do a lot more before the patio garden can be considered ready.  I like using starter plants in the container pots but I was only able to buy 5 pots when I went out on Friday.  They were too expensive and the variety was just not there. Much of what was on offer was in baskets (lots of hanging baskets) and big tomato plants in buckets at a steep price.

I am not sure what I will find when I try to go out later this week. I do have some seeds but have basically run out of time to start the seeds. I bought them before the Covid 19 pandemic was announced and I just didn't have the get up and go to get started before now.   In fact I don't really have the get up and go now or even all the tools and materials but I have to get rolling or just forget about it all for this year.  Hopefully I can get everything planted soon.  I think I'll be spending a lot of the summer sitting on the patio. It it will be a good place to have my coffee, read my Bible and listen (quietly) to music.

Today I made some turkey rice soup with dumplings. I used the leftover turkey chunks and turkey bones from the Easter dinner. I didn't try to pretty it up so you can see some tendon or sinewy chunks in the soup.  I fish them out and throw them out after cooking.  This is only the 2nd time I've made dumplings in the pressure cooker. The first time I added the dumplings  at the beginning of the cooking process.  That didn't work.  The cooking time was too long and the dumplings fell apart.  This time I added the the dumpling at the end on the soup settings but without putting it under pressure.  The dumplings turned out well enough but next time they should be even better.  I read that you should let the batter rest before putting them on the soup. It is supposed to give time to the baking powder to work and make the dough fluffier.

I made big dumplings. The photo shows the soup after 2 dumplings were removed.

I used this recipe for a guide and added some herbs.

The recipe doesn't use butter but I saw a variation of this recipe using butter.

Take care and have a wonderful week ahead.
Stay safe. 

Joining with Our World Tuesday today.

My World of Hail

I was preparing to go to the community garden plot on Saturday because we had a sunny day. 

However we had a snowy hail fall down fast and furious that afternoon.

It looked quite eerie and the sky was quite dark.

The birds were flapping crazily but they quickly disappeared.

I couldn't do any outdoor gardening but I managed to repot a number of indoor plants that were very much in need of it.

I've done a lot of reading over the cold, darker months. These are the books I've completed to date.

Out of the completed books I most enjoyed A Trial in Venice, Pure Land, The Shogun's Queen and The Goldfinch.
You can learn more about each book by clicking on the titles if you are interested.
I'm currently reading The Last Concubine (the 2nd in the series written by Lesley Downer), Wardrobe Wake Up and The Orphan Thief.

Linking up with Our World Tuesday.

My World on the First Tuesday of March 2020

Hi everyone,

The few days of sunshine are but a memory and we are back to rain. Today as I walked to a hospital to get some x-rays done it was raining heavily. I was very surprised and pleased to see a few bright blossoms along the way.

Joining up with Our World Tuesday

Christmas Happenings 2019

Christmas draws ever closer. I hope you are all enjoying the festive season thus far.

I am enjoying everything and the pace of activities. It isn't quite as quiet as I had hope but that isn't so much because of Christmas activities. It has more to do with unexpected events and timelines concerning my dental work. After all the planning and waiting for insurance approvals and so on, it turns out I can't get a bridge after all. Or at least I've decided not to proceed with it after discussing with my dentist.  One of my teeth is not so strong and over the long term the bridge isn't a good solution. The alternatives are a partial denture or an implant. I've decided to go for the partial and have talked to the dentist about possibly doing an implant in the future.  Unfortunately, this unfinished business will be going with me into the new year though I had hoped to complete the dental work in 2019.  At least I have now have a firm plan of action and I am comfortable with the way forward.

I finally completed the book on Coco Chanel. I say finally because when I really enjoy a book I can finish it within a few days even if I'm busy. But this book took me a few weeks to read. It was interesting and very detailed. I think the detail put me off a little because Coco Chanel lived a very long life.  Of course, like most people, the events in her life were repeated a few times over the decades of her life. So the book was a bit repetitive in that way but necessarily so.  Her rise to prominence is made more interesting because she lived during the WW2 and she retired for a long while before resurrecting her career and focussing on inroads with the United States.  Besides discovering these things I also discovered a lot of things I didn't like about Coco Chanel.  However, one thing is clear.  She achieved a lot and she left a lasting legacy despite not having any children of her own to carry on the business.  The author of this book did a good service in writing such a detailed and well researched book about Coco Chanel.

On Sunday afternoon I joined a friend for the one and only Christmas concert I planned to attend this year. It was quite enjoyable and different from what I usually see.  My friend and I enjoyed the concert and we exchanged some small gifts with each other.

The concert itself  featured JS Bach's joyous cantata BWV 62 ‘Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland’. It also featured Christmas works by Poulenc, Chilcott, Rutter, plus audience singing.  Next year I plan to try and see a Christmas program featuring harpists. It is a very popular concert here and generally gets sold out each night.

Some of you might remember I purchased 2 small fiddle leaf fig trees. I was a bit concerned about tending to them over the cold winter months. They are tropical plants that need very precise and favourable conditions in which to thrive. I'm happy to report that one of the two plants, the one that looked less healthy, is actually sprouting a new leaf. Can you see it in the center? I am very happy about this and I hope I can continue to nurture it through until repotting is necessary in the spring.

A few years ago I saw a humongous Christmas cacti in the window of a barber shop and it was in full bloom. It looked so beautiful that I had to find myself one and see if I can get it to that point too.  I purchased a small Christmas cacti about one week ago and right now all the blossoms are coming out. I heard that they only bloom at Christmas.

I have finally been able to coordinate and organize a short trip with close family members to visit out of town for a few days. I'm looking forward to seeing my niece and she is looking forward to going to a movie with us and a good old family visit.

🎄 🎄🎄

I don't usually do much baking at Christmas but this year I decided to make Christmas bark. Later I may also make some dream bars (my late mom's recipe).  I made the bark last night and it was so delicious and surprisingly easy. I thought you might like to try it too.

Ingredients

• 1 pkg. (225 g) Baker's Semi-Sweet Chocolate
• 1 pkg. (170 g) Baker's White Chocolate
• 1 cup chopped toasted almonds, divided into 2 batches

I also added about one half cup of chopped, dried cranberries to to each batch of chocolate

Directions

1. Microwave semi-sweet chocolate in microwaveable bowl on MEDIUM 1 to 2 min. or until almost melted; stir until completely melted. Repeat in separate bowl with white chocolate. Stir 1/2 cup nuts into chocolate in each bowl.
2. Drop spoonful’s of chocolate mixtures alternately onto waxed paper-covered baking sheet; swirl gently with knife.
3. Refrigerate 1 hour or until firm. Break into pieces.

TIP: Prepare as directed, substituting pecans for the almonds, and stirring 1/4 cup each dried cranberries and chopped dried apricots into the melted white chocolate before spooning onto prepared baking sheet as directed.

Substitute toasted flaked coconut for the chopped almonds.

How to Store: Store in tightly covered container at room temperature.

Joining Our World Tuesday today.

That's all for now blogging friends.

In my next post I hope to continue with the travel update.

Thanks for stopping by.

Enjoy the week ahead.

♥♥♥

Early Sunday Morning on the Patio

 I snapped these photos in the wee hours of Sunday morning. 

I couldn't quite get the clarity I wanted but I did enjoy my time in the quiet.

The seagulls were not out squawking for some reason.

Instead there was a beautiful chirping sound from an unknown to me bird. 

It was lovely.

I hope you enjoyed these photos.

~~~~

I also wanted to invite my long term readers to please take a moment

to read and

 share the following link with your networks and friends.
(I've also added the information on the side bar, top right of this blog).

 https://www.facebook.com/donate/378998659402985/?fundraiser_source=external_url

 It only takes a few seconds and you will help by making it possible for more people to read and possibly respond.
Thanks so much for your time

and have a lovely week.

Joining

Our World Tuesday

Starting the Week off Right

Last week was the first sunny week for some time and in fact the week ended on quite a hot note. That is about to change and thankfully I was able to complete planting both my balcony garden and my community plot before the weather cools a bit. It is expected to cook by about 10 degrees Celsius this week and hopefully it will rain for several days.  According to the weather forecast it looks like the best chance of rain is on Tuesday with 90% chance of rain and Sunday and Monday with 70% chance of rain respectively. I find the garden does much better with rain water than with tap water and the ground just soaks up the rain which is great for the tender plants.

On Sunday evening (Mother's Day), I was walking back from the community plot and came across these gigantic poppies. They were simply too beautiful to pass by without getting a photo or two even though the sun had set about half an hour earlier.

The photos are not the best quality but I think they look a bit like paintings.

I went out on the patio in the wee hours of Saturday morning to take a few photos. I was excited to find a hummingbird perched high on a nearby tree.  My camera battery was dead and I had to use my phone so the quality is not the best but I think you can make out the outline of the bird at the top of tree (right side of the photo).

The hummingbird was perched quietly on the tree top for almost 30 minutes in total.  I was hoping it would make it's way to my patio garden but it never moved until it flew away.  I spotted another hummingbird flitting about and drinking nectar from the blossoms on the Solomon's Seal on my patio.  It moved  far too quickly to take a photo and didn't stay very long to enjoy the nectar.

The sunrise is always so peaceful and beautiful. I love the golden colour of the sky.

At about 4:30 a.m. it gets rather noisy with the seagulls squawking overhead. They zip back and forth and back and forth like they are going crazy. It is almost like they are excited about having freedom in the skies at that early hour. I do not know why they don't do this during the day time too.

There are always several seagulls flying about but I only managed to capture one as my main subject was the hummingbird.

Thank you for your visit to my blog.

Wherever you are in the world I wish you a fabulous week ahead.

Our World Tuesday

Easter Long Weekend

We had a mixed bag of weather over this long weekend and I found it still a bit chilly.

 This week we have a mixed forecast once again but more sunny days than not. 

I hope this means we are now heading into mostly sunny days.

Joining in with

Our World Tuesday

Thank you for stopping in for a visit.

Have a lovely week ahead.

Spring Activities Continue

Hi friends,


It's been raining a lot here this week so I didn't get to plant my 2 gardens plot yet. I am happy about that because it gave me time to shift to doing a few other things. I'm still in Spring cleaning and spruce it up mode.  I'm making notes here for my own record and for future reference.

 I'm constantly in the process of decluttering and getting rid of things some of which has piled up for over a decade.  Things piled up when I spent years looking after my late sister's children then looking after my late mom.  I couldn't spend time to properly deal with my business while others in the family were in great need. The declutter project I'm doing will still take a lot more time.  I don't easily get rid of things and like to take time going through everything meticulously.

Sometimes I go through things 3 or 4 times before making final decisions and over the years, needs and wants change and things come into clearer focus as to what is needed or can be let go. I am no hoarder though and over the years have gotten rid of a lot of things mostly through giving to the thrift store or posting things on the local Freecycle website.  For now while I'm still in declutter mode I'm trying to spruce things up a bit.

Spring Cleaning

• A new bathroom shower curtain. I just changed it a year ago and felt the colours (navy on white) needed toning down. My new curtain is mostly white and has small designs in navy and gray). I intend to paint the bathroom (something I never seem to get to) and install a train rack for extra towel storage.
• Purchased some command hooks for the laundry closet on which to hang my mop and broom. I've had metal ones for many years but never got around to nailing them in the wall. So at last I have some stick on ones. I've purchased extra command strips if needed. One of the shelf units in the laundry closet came out of the wall so rather than put it back up I purchased some narrower plastic shelves from Wal-mart a year or two ago. I am happy with the new arrangement because I don't have a laundry room as such and have to make do with a very small laundry closet.
• I emptied and cleaned the vacuum cleaner, vacuumed the living room/dining room and moved the area rug from the front room into the master bedroom. I'm looking for another one or two larger area rugs for the living room and dining area. I've been looking for a very long time. I am not in a big rush because of all the other things I have to do and because I hope to live with my purchases for many years to come.
• I bought a new larger entry hall rug to replace the temporary one I bought last year.  I went back and forth to the store 3 times to buy and exchange the rugs. In the end I got a different colour than I wanted.  That's okay because the entry hall rug and the kitchen rug are now the same design (different colours) and can be interchanged if I want to change the colour scheme in the kitchen.
• I bought a new tablecloth (narrow brick red and tan stripes on natural background) and natural coloured napkins.  I've got a number of tablecloths I bought many years ago but wanted something to freshen things up. I think I can get rid of at least one or two tablecloths that have seen better days.
• New (slightly larger) kitchen rug, dish rack, draining mat and oven mitts. I've decided I'd rather have a dish tray under the Umbra dish rack but have been having problems finding just the right one. Maybe I'll change my mind as time goes on and stick with the draining mat. I will donate the well used teak dish rack and several drying mats. If no one wants them I'll be fine with putting them in the trash because all of the items have been used for quite a long time.
• I bought an under the sink shelf. I'm not sure if I'll use it in my kitchen or in the master bathroom. If I like it I may buy another one later. Right now I use plastic containers under the kitchen and master bath sink to keep things organized. Right now though the  master bathroom stuff is out of control and needs to be reined in again (I'm working on not buying more products and using up what I have. It takes discipline).
• I used some white wood putty to fill in some cracks on my kitchen cabinets. I'm not sure yet but I may paint out the lower cabinets some time in future or I may reface the kitchen cabinets.  It will depend on whether I can make a small repair to one of the cabinet hinges and also on overall costs. This is just one of so many projects that need to be done.  For now I am focussing on the smaller projects to try and make the household flow a bit better.  It seems to be a never ending process.
• I purchased a can of Scott's Liquid Gold to shine up the kitchen cabinets after washing. I only buy this stuff about once every decade and mainly use it on my laundry closet shutter doors to shine them up a bit. I got this tip from an Executive Assistant to a former boss.  We would share a few decorating ideas from time to time. I was surprised to learn that this product is multi-functional and can even be used on kitchen pots to shine them up.
• Notes: Most of my new purchases were done at HomeSense so the items were all at a discount.  Of course the stock changes daily.  If you waffle a bit and return another day you take a risk that it might not be in stock when you return.  Imagine my surprise when I returned the very next day for a red & beige rug for the entry hall (there were 3 of them less than 24 hours earlier) and they were all gone! Since I visited the store daily for 3 days in a row it was clear to me that stock turnover happens very quickly.  Overall though I've been very pleased with what I found there. I'd been wanting to stop at this store for years. I didn't realize it's location was convenient to me.

There is a lot more work to do in the coming weeks to continue spring cleaning and decluttering though I won't likely write about all of it in this space (lucky you).

Gardening

I bought some pansies to plant in the containers on the balcony. I should have time later this week to undertake this task. Pansies are one of my favourite little flowers and each year it is hard to find the starter plants here. When I saw a few earlier this week I snapped up 10 pots because the store didn't have much stock and very little of the purple colour I love so much.  I have to plant them soon and hopefully the weather will cooperate later this week.

Frugal Cooking

I've baked bread every week for the past 3 weeks. We haven't eaten it all up so I made bread pudding with some of the slices. I forgot to take a photo. It was good but I'm still looking for a good recipe. I find most of the recipes I've tried result in what I consider to be a dry pudding.

I want a pudding that is much creamier and similar to what my late mom used to make. Too bad I didn't learn her recipe but back then I really didn't enjoy cooking at all and had no interest in learning much about it.  In the version I made today I added more milk (find it here) and used less sugar. It was a decent outcome as in tasty but lacked the creamy texture I'm after.  I think the trick might be more eggs and milk though that might make a bread omelette, lol.  If you are a cook and have a creamy bread pudding recipe that you wouldn't mind sharing please let me know.

Right now I'm cooking from my food stock and only buying the barest minimum of foods, like a bit of fruit or eggs and milk to supplement what I have on hand.  I've got a lot of dried and canned goods as well as stuff in the freezer that I want to use up before I do any more grocery shopping.

So for today we had garlic mashed potatoes, fried pork chops and canned cream corn. I have salad fixings but I didn't make any salad.  Once I eat salad I tend to be too full for the main course. Dessert was bread pudding.

Yesterday we had baked chicken breasts (bone in) with canned browned mushrooms and mushroom soup "sauce" over steamed rice with steamed asparagus on the side. We had oranges for dessert.  I think Monday I'll make breakfast for dinner (bacon, eggs and hash browns or bacon with an omelette so I can put some veggies in there).  The goal is to use as much of my stock of food as possible so I can clean the freezer and the inside spaces of the cabinets.


If I run out of meat or fowl I will make vegetarian meals with chick peas, lentils and so on. In fact I hope to intersperse some of the meat and chicken dishes with vegetarian ones. I was inspired by browsing through the book by Mary McCartney (daughter to Paul and Linda McCartney). I didn't buy the book. I just sat down for awhile and thumbed through it (and a few other books) enough to be motivated once again to eat more vegetarian meals. One thing I want to make (which I saw in Mary McCartney's cookbook) is a corn meal bread with jalapeno peppers and corn niblets. I have several bags of cornmeal that a friend gave me and I need to use it up soon. In fact, I'm not sure what the expiry date is (it's in sealed plastic bags with no markings).  Perhaps I should open one bag and smell it first.

Creativity

The crochet afghan I am making is going to be large enough to comfortably cover a twin sized bed so it is much larger than the throws I've been making to cosy up while sitting on the sofa. I think I'll be gifting it to my uncle who is now in long term care but first I'll call his wife and see if this is okay with them because my idea is rather last minute.  I'll take some photos of the finished product and share them when I'm done.

Television/Movies

I started watching a new series called "Hanna" on Amazon Prime.  I'm on episode 4 and find it very interesting. Are any of you watching it? I wanted to go and see the movie Dumbo but haven't got around to it yet. Have any of you seen it and do you recommend it for adults?


Reading

I am also reading a bit here and there. I am slowly working my way through the book Beyond Expectations which  I  picked up during my recent travels to Kenya.

It is quite interesting and chock full of information about the early days of Kenya's independence and the power brokers of the day.

I also picked up 3 more books at the library.

The Piano Teacher,  set in the 40s and 50s in Hong Kong. It's a fictional story which is primarily about two separate but intertwined love stories set in the period before and after Japanese occupation.  I've just finished the book and I would probably give it a 3 or 3.5 out of 5 stars.

I'm about to start on the next two books.

On Island is a book of fictional short stories written by a former Canadian Member of Parliament. The stories revolve around island living.

We're Going to Need More Wine is a memoir by actor Gabrielle Union. Her essays are true stories about power, color, gender, feminism and fame.

Other

I was hoping to see an old friend for lunch but she's had some family issues come up as well as some health issues so our get together is temporarily on hold.  I have another friend who I hope to see early in the week. I've suggested we go and see the Monet to Matisse exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery. I thought we were going on "cheap night" but I now see it may still cost quite a lot so I'll have to reconfirm with her tomorrow. Next up I have to meet with a new financial advisor. I've been wanting to change up advisors for some time now but never have time to do the research. I've been called by a new to me advisor at one of the banks I deal with so am hoping to have a meet and get to know you session before any decisions are made. There have also been a number of dental and medical related appointments on the agenda this month and some family matters of my own (all is well) and the ongoing charitable work in Kenya. I didn't expect April to be so busy.

 ~~~~~

I hope you are well and busy and that you

 have a wonderful week ahead wherever you may be in the world.

Joining

Our World Tuesday

~~~~~~~