Apple Trees and Smores

This weekend the forecast called for storms. Instead there was sunshine and warm weather.

Saturday started with a dog walk, coffee, and a bagel at the local cafe. My spouse and I ended up spending most of Saturday doing yard work. The lawn was mowed for the first time and the garden was weeded. It was so nice to have it done and it looked so much better. We went to the local greenhouse to get some veggie plants. I know you’re supposed to wait until after the May long weekend, but we were too excited. While we were there I saw a tree that grew my favourite flavor of apple.

Honeycrisp! I bought that tree instantly. I love love love those apples. We got into the parking lot and it hit me…. How are we going to get this tree into the car?

Well, we did! I ended up sitting behind my spouse and we put the tree into the front seat and loaded the trunk up with the veggie plants. The tree made it home with all branches intact and we promptly planted it. We collected a lot of fallen branches from the yard and put them in the fire pit, and later that night we had the season’s first smores.

We bought Dandies Marshmallows from Healthy Planet and used Celebration cookies. They come with the chocolate, so it’s seriously easy smores with all the perfect amounts. They were so freaking good. We had smores and watched the bats fly overhead. I still plan on putting a bat box up somewhere, but I have no idea if they’ll use it. I went to bed around 8:30 that evening. I was wiped out.

Sunday I tried to make friends with the chipmunk in our yard bribing him with peanuts. He came as close as an inch away, but he was not there yet. By the end of Summer, I hope to have him eating out of my hand. I toss him some peanuts whenever I see him, so he is starting to pop out when he hears us.

Late afternoon we went on the first kayak trip of the season. I saw turtles! I haven’t seen a single turtle since I moved here and this weekend I saw at least 10 of them; painted and snapping turtles. There were some fish in the water that I had never seen before either. They looked like a suckerfish and had light and dark brown bands running down their body. I think they might have been northern hog suckerfish. They looked very similar anyway. It was fun and I think I will enjoy swimming there on a hot summer day.

We finished the weekend off with sunburns and a beer. The thunderstorms held off and I’m hoping to fall asleep to the sound of rain and thunder.

Cards, Kayaking, and Indulgences

It was a long weekend here in Ontario. I spent the first day making cards and catching up on some chores. I’ll post a video of the cards I made and the supplies I used to make them with, below. Some of them were really cute and I loved the new dies.

I saw the snake again this weekend. It’s much slimmer now, it’s either digested a giant meal, or has laid some eggs. It’s much more mellow away from it’s beloved garden hose (I mentioned in a previous post it was lunging at my spouse when he was trying to turn the garden hose on. We think it might have had a crush on the garden hose!). I was pretty close to it when I was doing some weeding, and it didn’t seem to mind too much. It was also between me and the door this morning and I had to step over it to get into the house. It didn’t seem to mind that too much either. I’m happy to see it’s in much better spirits these days. We had always got along in previous years.

We had wanted to go on a kayaking adventure out of town, but with potential thunderstorms looming, we decided to play it safe and stay on the local river. I brought my camera with the underwater case and took a looong video of the underwater view. It’s pretty murky as the day was gloomy for most of it, but I think it looks pretty cool. I’ll post that video below. I was looking for the really pretty rainbow darter fish, but they were mostly gone (I didn’t get them on the video). The Canada geese were also a lot more relaxed, including the ones with babies. They are terrifying and will come for you if you come too close. The local creatures seem much more friendly lately.

I indulged a lot this weekend. A LOT!

I had my regular big Sunday breakfast of a croissant and eggs with coffee and fruit. Monday, I had an omelet (pictured above). I had CRAVINGS this weekend. I wanted strawberry ice cream and cookies. And I had them, a lot of them. I have completely come off track lately. I haven’t worked out, or gotten that much exercise and my diet has been horrible the past week. I keep falling off the wagon and feeling discouraged with myself.

Time to pick myself up by the boot straps (what does that even mean??) and start again.