The Easter Bunny paid us a visit Saturday night. He brought candy and Lindt chocolate Easter Bunnies for the girls (dark chocolate for Spice and milk chocolate for Sugar, of course.) Then he hid their eggs all around the bedroom, and they had to find them before they could eat them for Sunday breakfast…

… and this afternoon we went to the neighbors for an Easter egg hunt in their backyard. The girls had a blast.  The neighbors’ little boy goes to the same preschool; the rest of the people were new to us, but a nice bunch. As I type this (to be posted tomorrow!) the girls are settling down for a nap. I thought that, after all the sugar and chocolate, they would be too wired, but they seem to want a little downtime. They’ve goot all their goodies screwed up tight into spaghetti-sauce jars on their dresser, far from Maggie and Laughlin’s prying noses. Now, if I can just restrain myself…

I feel sanity approaching… for the last couple of days the girls have spent at least an hour outside by themselves, mucking about in the dirt. They are working on a couple of vats of dirt soup, and discovered the water standing putrid in the wheelbarrow. You know – kid stuff. Aside from having to wash the dog, and one of the girls (who “forgot” to ask to come inside to pee,) I definitely am in favour of children and dirt.

Spice beside one of our youngest apple trees.

Sugar on the prowl for marbles buried in the dirt.

By the way, the yarn extensions are still holding on.  Alhough they have pulled loose quite a bit on the “part” areas. Note, Jrock actually did their “two puffs” for these pictures. His first time handling elastics! and he did a good job.

Sugar turned down the opportunity to go to the movie store with Daddy tonight, just so she could help Mommy cook a fish! 

BTW, have I told you this kid is destined for culinary genious?  She tasted my wine a few weeks ago, and for the first time, I asked her “what do you smell?” “Strawberries,” Sugar replies.  Are you kidding me?  It was totally a strawberry-forward Grenache. Get out. Since she’s picked up the lime in a Sauvignon Blanc too. I would kill for a 3 year old nose like that!

To Spring
by William Blake

O thou with dewy locks, who lookest down
Thro’ the clear windows of the morning, turn
Thine angel eyes upon our western isle,
Which in full choir hails thy approach, O Spring!

Duck watching

The hills tell each other, and the listening
Valleys hear; all our longing eyes are turned
Up to thy bright pavilions: issue forth,
And let thy holy feet visit our clime.

My four stooges on a walk.

Come o’er the eastern hills, and let our winds
Kiss thy perfumed garments; let us taste
Thy morn and evening breath; scatter thy pearls
Upon our love-sick land that mourns for thee.

Huck and Tom

O deck her forth with thy fair fingers; pour
Thy soft kisses on her bosom; and put
Thy golden crown upon her languished head,
Whose modest tresses were bound up for thee.

Our neighbor and our conjoined twins swinging.

Eat your hearts out, prairie folk – we have tulips 4 inches high in our yard. (And the Vancouver people say “so what?” lol!)

But with the Olympics on the tube every night, we felt inspired to spend our day off up on the skihill.  Despite Spice’s pleas to ski, we decided they should start off tubing (read: cheaper) and had a blast going up and down the slopes together.  Then off to a Tapas bar for dinner – yum yum! What a nice day.  And a real pleasure to get it away from it all. It’s so nice Big White is 45 minutes away – we really should go more often.

This just gave me mushy eyes when I saw it.  Call me a sentimental ole BC Girl.

The snow bear, a communal effort.

The "baby snowman" – it looked like an invading alien to us "Big People".

We’re all pretty settled in with each other now, and ALMOST at the point where we feel “normal” again.   I’m sending off some emails today to some people I told myself I “should” contact sometime over the next month, for a new work gig / resume builder. 

Things are trucking along and it feels good.

And it’s time for fall activities – hikes, cracking nuts, crunching leaves, making birdfeeders, and getting the most of sunny days before the winter rolls in.

Enjoy the pictures from the last week or so.

July 1st came and went last week, so now we are in the meat of the summer.  We had a nice brunch out at J and C’s – goggled their new baby girl (new from China, anyway!) and then headed out to Harambe (family camp for families with kids of African heritage.) We actually had a camping place reserved, but had to cancel when we figured out the kids wouldn’t be here after all. We went for the afternoon instead, and ate T & J’s food and watched a West African drumming/dancing concert. Pretty fun.

Today is a rare rainy day in the Okanagan – it is a semi-arid climate, after all.  I guess when you live in a place like this you are greatful for the rain.  It means I won’t have to water the veggie beds; the one spot in the yard not yet tapped into the irrigation system.

Our yard is coming along nicely, by the way.  We harvested the cherries off our little cherry tree a couple of days ago; alas (I love that word!), alas! we had a worm in every cherry.  So our organic farming methods will have to be slightly tampered with in the cherry department next year.

Here are some pictures of the front and back yards.  Now I’m off to get out the tent.  We are supposed to be camping tonight but if the weather now is any indication, we may be sleeping in the back of the truck tonite and not the tent after all!  Oh, there is no bliss like sharing a bed with two wet, muddy, smelly, cuddly dogs.

Cats can get very poisoned by lilies – if they eat enough, they get kidney failure. So after a close call once with Haatim and some tiger lilies (he was force fed charcoal and barfed for two days) we only have lilies outside! It’s a bit of a shame, since they are Jrock and I’s favorite flowers… but they do look lovely out on the porch.  And the smell – hmmm… heavenly floating on the summer breeze.

 Ingredients for a nice summer afternoon:

• Green sun tea with mint (Add green tea bags to water in glass jar along with sprigs of fresh mint and set i the sun for a couple of hours.  Then chill, baby.)
• One friend with nice pastries from the bakery
• Her cutester daughter
• Mint and chicken spice (sage) ready to be picked, to amuse a 4 year old
• Good conversation
• A camera to capture the moment (and for the 4 year old to take 4 pictures with – see below!)

And here are Z’s pictures she took with my camera – there you go, kiddo!  Live on the internet, as promised!

Jrock can be pretty obsessive sometimes.  This year, he was all upset because he can’t use his toxic weed killing potions anymore… (city bylaw came into effect) UNTIL I gave him his handy-dandy-lion killer!  It’s a neat but simple device that rips up the offending weeds by the roots.

Our backyard is well aerated now, because of all of his de-weeding… he comes home and then heads out to the yard after work to see if any new ones have reared their ugly heads!

I had to send him back inside, though, when I caught him in his tie and dress shirt the other day.  His tie was dangling in the dirt and he nearly missed stabbing it a few times.

Now there is enthusiasm for yardwork, and their is obsession. Thin line.  I think he had crossed over!

Spring is here and it’s a great time to play a guessing game with Mother Nature – so all you gardeners out there… why don’t you give a try?

I’ve posted pictures below of five of our trees’ blossoms… can you guess which is which? The photos were taken two days ago.  Just post a comment with your guesses… and in a couple of days I’ll post the answer.  The winner gets all the gardening glory

Click on the photos to enlarge if you want.

The spring wine festival starts at the end of the month – it’s the biggest event in the year in the Okanagan – aside, of course, from the fall wine festival.  We have noticed that we have been drinking more wie since we moved here… not too much! but we did go through three barrels since the fall. Two were merlot – one was cab franc.  You know we had to mix the CF with the one barrel of merlot (we used the patented two straw approach.)  It’s definitely too harsh on it’s own. 

And what to do with all these leftover barrels?  Luckily, it’s easier to plant tomatoes in them than in a glass magnum. (Now if wine came in plastic bottles – well, I have heard that you can plant tomatoes in them. But not glass.)

So Jrock cracked open the power tools yesterday and cut the three barrels in half.  Didn’t he do a nice job?  Now all we have to do is fill the suckers with dirt and plant some tomatoes.  I haven’t decided what else should go in them. 

Any suggestions? They’re on the east side of the house, but they don’t have any shade until late afternoon, so they’ll get pretty hot. Gardeners?  Ideas?

Oh – and I have to be able to eat it.  No flowers. Ba humbug.

And PS: Happy Earth Day tomorrow!  These barrels, my learning to weed, our increasingly huge garden, the new berry plot, our freshly insulated basement and cellulose-filled ceiling, cooking more lentils and actually making them tasty, etc. are all some steps that we’ve taken to be more sustainable this past year – that I think also really enhance our quality of life. 

What are you going to do this year? 

I bought another apple tree. For the other side of the yard.

Don’t tell Jrock.

__

PS: No, we didn’t drink it all.  A barrel holds 27 CASES of wine, silly. That would be 486 bottles each.