First the good news:
D's cousin is this close to taking over the world (she is number 9).  She is a close friend of mine and I am over the moon with all of the accolades that she is receiving.  I am also a little intimidated and hoping against hope that she takes care of me in my old age.  Very, very proud.

Next the 'not as good' news:
I am not a DIY person.
I typically do not enjoy 'Doing It Yourself'.
I am still not sure what prompted me to take on this project aside from saving money and not knowing anyone who might be stupid enough to do it for me.
I also have a sore throat.
I have not cooked much but just enough to keep everyone alive.  This is still our kitchen...

Please note the big holes where normally the solid surface of a counter top would be.  This also means that we have no sink or drain in which to wash dishes.  Apparently dishes chores are off once the location of the sink changes.

I have distracted myself by stripping, scraping and sanding two sets of stair rails.

This is one of those stair rails

This is what it looks like after one coat of stain.  I am scared and not quite sure what to do next.

In other news, we have raspberries.  This is a big deal for us because the last two years have produced nothing even close to 'bowls full' of raspberries. We are happy.

You know me and my books.  I've got hang-ups about reading my books in the order that I get them.  It's just a thing.  I don't know why but it's my thing.  My BFF KT tells me that I read serious books a lot.  History, Politics, Environmental whathaveyou. For the record, I do read fun books sometimes too.  I've read all the Harry Potter books.  I've read 'Game of Thrones'.  Among some of my recent 'fun book' favourites is this series.  The accents read perfectly and Vish Puri is a fantastic character.
However, I've also been reading this book recently.  It's quite light in comparison to this book which made me want to build a bunker in the woods and wait for impending doom.  Joel's book, though light, has an edge.  This is no slouch.  This is a man who is a farmer as a vocation.  It's a calling.  He loves farming.  He loves the soil.  He loves the animals and he loves the life it provides him.  You feel that love in each page he writes.  You can also feel the depth of his frustration and his desperation to see the system, the system that we now call 'the food industry', change.


One chapter that has challenged me more than any other yet (I'm not finished reading it of course) is the one about energy.  He writes in depth about how cheap oil has changed how we think about expended energy.  When you can afford to pay for gas or oil.  When you don't have to think about where to get that gas or oil.  When you don't have to wonder if your horses can make it up that hill with their load or through the snow or whatever it is... well, that changes how we feel about energy in general.  We don't wonder about the energy that it takes to get from here to there, to make those plastic containers, to make our garbage disappear, to feed cattle in a factory farm all that shipped in grain... etc.
I decided that I'm going to make an even deeper effort to stop using the car.  Now I don't use it for much but I know that there are quite a few instances over the course of say a month where I could easily hop on my bike to run that errand or get the kids wherever.  We've got a bike trailer and Kid #1 is old enough now to keep up with me on her own bike.  So... off we go.


Our first trip of the year together on our bikes is downtown.  We're going to the bookstore and then to my BFF's house to watch the Olympic opening ceremony... and bring her some belated birthday cupcakes.  Just in case you were wondering, bike trailers don't have shocks per se.  They don't absorb the bumps like a car would so when you want to transport the lovely cupcakes with fresh raspberry cream icing you might also want to consider a better mode of carrying them than your tupperware cupcake holder.
FYI -  it doesn't work.  And you get very stressed out.
FYI #2 - your cupcakes will be completely sideways and/or upside down before you are anywhere near your destination.
FYI #3 - if you put them in the fridge after that the icing will stick to the tupperware and not back on the upside down cupcake.
FYI #4 - just go ahead and listen to your gut in the first place and carry the icing separately and ice them when you get there
FYI #5 - fortunately none of this affects the taste of the icing one little bit.
Another life lessons learned.


Raspberry Buttercream Icing adapted from 'SweetSavoryLife'
makes about 3 1/2 cups

1 cup butter (the higher the fat content the better) at room temperature
3 - 4 cups icing sugar
1/2 cup(ish) fresh raspberries, roughly mashed.

Beat the butter until it's a cream glob (just a minute or so).
Slowly add the icing sugar (if using a mixer turn down to 'low' speed) and once it's all added then mix more vigorously.
Add in the mashed raspberries.
Mix until everything is creamy, there are no lumps, and spreadable.
Spread or Pipe over a completely cooled cake or cupcakes.
Freeze whatever is leftover.

I have just spent some quality time helping my zucchini plants have sex.  The equivalent would be explaining sex in alarming detail to a virgin 30 year old I would imagine.  It's not exactly something you ever imagine yourself having to do but then you find one day that you are crouching around your zucchini plants with a tiny paintbrush in hand.  Digging in to flowers here and there and then brushing gently on others.  Quality time.  I damn well better get some zucchini for my efforts.  Kinda like begging your kids to produce grand's for you...
I spent the past week immersed in a choral and vocal pedagogy symposium (yeah... it's meant to sound impressive and intimidating) at the University of Toronto.  A week of remembering that I'm both a musician and a singer.  A week of reaffirming my love for what I do.  A week of sight reading and learning to conduct a choral group without looking like a complete dork.  A university campus is a strange place.  It's like this parallel universe that exists in a place (usually but not always in a city centre)  but is a whole living, breathing entity all on it's own.  Anything could happen out there in the city-world and you might never find out... or it might take a long time to find out.  And you would be ok with that because you were sitting under a tree on campus having a leisurely but intense discussion with someone about something very important that you can't quite recall at the moment.  Strange, Sacred Places.
Back in the world of Toronto the heat was overwhelming and my poor garden has been growing in spite of itself.  I haven't been watering as much as I should and I've decided that if I'm to continue with this whole garden idea then I'd better get my act together and get some manure happening in there.  Gardens need crap.  The tomatoes are intensely unhappy that the sun is still shining and the rain is playing very hard to get.  So the tomatoes have sulked off and gone to sleep.


The Chard and Kale are doing as well as can be expected in the heat.  In fact, given the heat and the lack of rain they have surprised me with their vigour.


My first, very first, haul of green beans have just come in and with them a picked a few strawberries and two... count 'em 2... raspberries.  This is today's haul.  And I'm proud of it.


This is a potato flower.  I'm chomping at the bit to dig into my potato barrel and see just what's going on under the ground.  I keep wondering whether if I dig them up can I just put the soil back and the potatoes won't figure out the difference.  That would be crazy though.  I need to be patient a little longer.  Apparently the flowers are supposed to die off and the plant itself just a little.  Patience, at least when it comes to waiting for new potatoes, is just not one of my virtues.


I finally have some cucumber flowers and please don't get on my about how late they are.  I know.  But there they are.


I just took this picture because I'm keeping this oregano stuff around mostly because the flowers are such powerful bee attractors.

I do promise recipes soon.  I have a fridge full of things to do.  I finally got to the market and loaded up on some cherries for example.  It's just so damn hot that I haven't had the heart to do any further heating up of any kind.

It just doesn't get better than this. My raspberry patch has finally, after years of underwhelming results, decided that it's ready to do some serious berrying. We got some bowls full! I had all these fantastic ideas about jam (we're not there yet though - maybe 3 more years) and baking and all that but it seemed like I couldn't get to the raspberries before they got eaten - how frustrating is that?