Going By in a Blur

The summer, which seemed to take forever to start, is now going by at high speed.



Wednesday past was Canada Day as well as wee Ian's 13th birthday, and now he's off in Toronto on his first solo journey - to see his cousins. The trip seemed a long way away when I booked it back in March, but suddenly it was upon us. In the rush to get all things ready to go I neglected to give him his Auntie's phone number in Toronto. It was a tense moment while I waited for a call saying they'd recognised him at the airport (there's a big difference between last year's 12 year old and this year's teenager - in appearance only, his personality is still goofy as you can see in the snap). All ended well though, or rather, all began well. We'll have to wait and hear how things go.

I promised in the last post that I would weed the side bed (which I did!) and show off the lovely perennial garden that's been with the house for years; sadly, the one-two punch of the early spring thaw and late spring cold snap seems to have left little more than weeds (which I removed). I dashed out and bought and planted replacements for what I remembered had been there, but I'm afraid they don't look like much at the moment.

Here's an annual instead:



It's some kind of daisy, I'm not sure of the name. I think it should be called Mid-20th Century Daisy, as it's got that crazy sunburst/quasar thing going on.

One perennial that survived was this blue pelargonium:



a beautiful blue.

Our ceramic ducks survived.



To be fair though, they survived because I brought them in for the winter.

I was out thrift shopping earlier this week and came across two ceramic cookie jars.



One shaped like a wee cottage. Quite, quite adorable, but not vintage.



Also, this one. A true vintage one, Elly agreed that the deer eating the fruit was absolutely superior to the cottage, which, though very sweet, is a tad bland. Now sister Jane and brother Ian can correct me (since they're older and therefore have more childhood memories than me), but I'm certain we had a cookie jar identical to this growing up. Please confirm.

Everyone knows that the last thing I need is a new project, but I've only just heard about this one, which started sometime back in 2005. 101 goals in 1001 Days. The gist of it being, you set yourself 101 goals to be achieved in 1001 days - very straight forward. Since 1001 days is a little over two and a half years you're expected to set a few lofty goals as well as some easy ones. For example, someone might plan to run a marathon (not me) and also plan to read every Harry Potter book (already did that). Also popular choices are one's that challenge you to do things that are, perhaps, out of character, say, a shy person setting a goal to strike up conversations with three strangers.

As I turned this over in my mind, I thought it might be good to get some perspective on my weaknesses, so I asked Nigel, "What do you think is my worst quality?". After a long pause he said carefully, "...but you're perfect in every way." Since this wasn't the answer I was looking for I thought I'd put it to the kids. Immediately Ian chirped up, "I know! It's your temper!", to which Elly replied, "No, no. She's too fat!"

Ah, kids...good thing I didn't get mad, or I would've had to sit on them.