Wilted Tomatoes.....

all my fault!!! i have several tomatoes in pots, i had no more room in my garden and one day of not watering them.. poof... wilted and i'm hoping that they perk up now that i've watered them... they are looking pretty sad i must say... i feel bad.. it's like not feeding your children... they languished in the sun, soon the Ministry of Wilted Gardens will visit and remind me of my duties... well not really, but hey, i've done the 'babies' a disservice... i need more space!!! then no more pots.... already i'm planning out the garden for next year.... my dream is to have enough space for growing some corn... everyone else seems to be able to grow it!! why not ME!!!

Tansy Tanacetum vulgare

(not to be confused with Tansy Ragwort Senecio jacobeae which is highly poisonous to cattle etc., but loved by the beautiful Cinnabar Moth)

is everywhere in my acreage.. it's beautiful, but falls over when its about 4ft tall.... it's well liked by bees, wasps and other manner of insects.. its a natural repellent for cabbage worms and cabbage butterflies, discourages ants, aphids, beetles and fruit fly.. apparently dried tansy can be sprinkled on pantry shelves to discourage flies..

so Thursday daughter and 2 grandkids escaped with me to the West Coast of Vancouver Island... we escaped the heat, the dry and miserable weather..... and found FOG!!! we were actually chilly!!! on the way we stopped in a few places, grandson had a dip in the river, and we just took it easy.... we went to Tofino had dinner and made our way back to Nanaimo was a great day trip..

Mother's Curry.....

Yesterday was so hot I just sat outside in the 'garden' and took some pictures of Tansy, Curry Plant and Lavender... i was trying to get my little Canon G9 to take some close ups.. its not as good as my Nikon D100 but not to bad for a point and shoot!

a wee Skipper on a Lavender stock... i think of the insect world, Skippers are just the cutest, flitting about from flower to flower..


Tansy Ragwort being visited by one of our local bees


the beautiful and much maligned Curry Plant most people i know don't care for it... because it 'smells' like curry, but i love it and i love eating curry!! reminds me of a childhood favorite meal that my mother would make with leftover roast beef... there was no 'recipe' it was always just what was leftover!


boil several eggs, peel and cut into quarters (or close to)
chop leftover roast beef in small cubes
handful of raisins

dice an onion and saute in 'butter' (my mother used butter) with the cubes of beef and raisins
add a tsp of 'store bought' curry powder or garam masala if thats what you have,
a HEAPING Tbs of flour and mix all together...
add your chopped eggs, mix gently and then add water to make a sauce.... ( i add a bit of Yogurt if i have it)
salt and pepper to taste

serve over a bed of cooked rice...
that was it.. pretty simple ingredients but most delicious and stretched out that last bit of roast...



the setting sun and rising moon, the end of a very HOT day... thank goodness for the coolness of evening... we westcoasters aren't used to the baking heat, will be glad when the temperature drops down to 80!!

Bountiful Beans.....

yummy yummy, beans and more beans!! and did i mention zucchini and cucumbers AND my first eggplant!! behind it is a lovely bouquet of kale, swiss chard and cilantro.. the cilantro is bolting like mad, so decided i needed to pick the flowers, so i'll get longer use out of it... i'm thinking a stirfry this evening.. yum yum!!!
yesterday i had to leave the house, was sooooo hot, so off the puppies and i went... and went and went.. drove from Nanaimo to Port Alberni and then over to uculet.. was a lovely, abet, very HOT drive.. we stopped in several places for puppy drinks and wading in water.. felt so good!!!
stopped in Port Alberni to check out the Mars Water Bomber..they are located on Sproat Lake in Port Alberni and being used as water bombers for forest fires... next time i go, hopefully will be much cooler and i'll be able to go into see them better... if your familiar with the fires in california last year, they were utilized there... as well as forest fires in b.c.





on the way back fro Uculet i took a picture of the temperature in Port Alberni... was more than a little toasty... the humidex figure was much higher... 41 celcius is 105 Fahrenheit... so yep yep.. toooooo hot for me... it's not so bad when you don't throw in the humidity factor..

Accessories....

well, doggie accessories that is... home'spun' sorta kinda... with a flick of the nose a full wrapping of slobber then down to check out some bug on the ground.. and tada!!! self made glued on nose accessory... only a doggie lover would appreciate i'm sure...

today i went on the hunt for a new doggie friendly swimming hole and actually found one! i'm not sure how empty it will be in the heat of the day, but thought that i'd go back later for another check.. it's not far from the house, and was just deep enough for doggies to swim in.. not suitable for human swimming so don't think too many people will go there... anyways... my car now stinks of two very happy wet cool dogs.. i guess i'll live with it ;)

made a new suntop today, out of my head... wrap around with elastic and straps.. done deal.. cool and comfy!

The Joys of Poo....

are wonderous if you have a garden.. and try to be organic... i have a half dozen large, filled to the brim and over, wheelbarrow loads, and 3 very old but still usable bales of hay... i used several loads on my compost pile and the rest are 'stored' in a hay bale 'compound'... to be tossed on the compost heap when i get another load of grassclipping, weeds or maybe even some soil!



in the process of organizing my compost pile, i found my little lizard friend.. i hadn't seen him in several weeks and thought perhaps a raven had picked him off... there were a few empty flower pots in my way and i went to move them, there he was! Lizzie (why not huh) scurried under the pile of bricks and haven't seen him since.. Lizzie could be a female, didn't stop to chat and find out :D if so... lets hope there is a family of Lizzie babies in the rubble pile..

speaking of babies...... Mr and Mrs Limpy had 4 baby peacock chicks.. will go take some pics in a few days, hopefully they will be good till then.. i've not gone to see them yet, just letting the family be for now... baby chicks are food for many critters so hopefully Nora #2 will be a good momma.... up to this point she's probably laid a 100 eggs and never sat on them.. that job was left to Lucky the duck who didn't seem to mind being broody...


not the greatest picture... but......
my new quilt is on hold at least until the weather cools a bit.. even to hot to sew these days...i found some 'sally ann' specials, all of $3.00 worth, which should join all my beautiful Moda squares... for whom the quilt calls.. i know not... ;)

somethings grandbaby was doing may be in the quilt as well... i've been saving her art and was hoping to use it at some point.... she does everything from memory.. will just ask for paper and pencil and for an hour or so will draw and draw then whoosh she's done ....these days she's got a fascinated with Pokemon....

Bon Voyage........

grandbaby is leaving for a month.. ah well, i'm sure she'll have a wonderful time and life will be good... Calgary isn't so far away and she loves her daddy....today we had a bon voyage party for her.. she loved it.. cake and hotdogs and chips.. what more could a 9 yr old want!!

in case your wondering.... i've not posted in the past few days.. been busy quilting, gardening, ummm cleaning (not my forte) and sorting fabrics.. i'm going to take some pics of them and post them, should be fun... i got some nice prints from the thrift shop, and a couple of very large quilting hoops.. woohoo!.. more 'projects'!!!

i got lost in the blogging dept., instead of writing.. i was snooping!!! i'm still snooping and hopefully will be snooping for awhile.. it's funny how 1 blog can lead you to 10 and so on... been checking out a lot of art/quilting/textile art blogs... there are some extremely talented ladies out there in cyberland... i say ladies because i haven't found any male artist bloggers yet...

Flowers on the graves.....

sometimes thinking about past pets makes me a bit melancholy but i know that they're in a better place, they're time was up and life goes on... new pets/best buds.. and enjoying every moment with them... all the dog hair and bits of outdoors i vacuum constantly is okay, all is well, when one gets a lick or a wag of the tail... daughter and i have been trying to get things to grow on Uno and Shadow's graves, but with so little water in the summer, and multitudes of snow in the winter, it's a tough go for them. She's planted some roses for Uno and i sprinkled copious amounts of wild flower seeds.. of which.. well.. not much came up and pretty much everything is looking a bit sorry... but there were a couple of things doing not so bad...

unfortunately because of the dryness, not much is growing on Shadow's grave.. but a very few of these did.. and some very tiny tiny purple cosmos... something much like Shadow, when the going gets tough, we hang on!!

this very beautiful paperwhite hollyhock is struggling on Uno's grave, am hoping that a few seeds will make it and new holly hocks will sprout next year...
cheers to our past buds...

Sooooo onto a better topic.. BERRIES!!!! i picked this lovely bowl of berries.. in the bowl are Raspberries, blackberries, huckleberries all within about 50 ft of my kitchen... YUMMO!!! am thinking that i might make a cobbler, but will have to wait until later tonight when it cools off... going to be another dry scorching day..

mmm cobbler with these berries and perhaps... ice cream!!!