CANADIAN REGION - What are you doing in July 2015? 5

July 1st and I am celebrating my 32 years as a Canadian citizen.  

Kelejan wrote:July 1st and I am celebrating my 32 years as a Canadian citizen...

Jolly good show, eh?

Uh...wait a minute...I think I got several dialects mixed up!  

How do you celebrate the day?  Fireworks, or a cake, or an extra Molsons or two, or a catch up with others who became citizens at the same time?

A Two-Four of Molsons. Just looked as MSN.com, expressions by Canadians.

Woo-Hoo Kelejan!  Congratulations!

boffer wrote:

Kelejan wrote:July 1st and I am celebrating my 32 years as a Canadian citizen...

Jolly good show, eh?

Uh...wait a minute...I think I got several dialects mixed up!  

How do you celebrate the day?  Fireworks, or a cake, or an extra Molsons or two, or a catch up with others who became citizens at the same time?

I can't say I really did anything special except attend a pancake breakfast with a couple of hundred others.  I mentioned it to a couple of friends, but I just quietly enjoyed myself eating, chatting, listening to the music and just having a feeling of contentment that this is where I ended up. Everyone around was doing the same, so we were all in accord.  I did intend to go to our Millenium Ponds, a new and beautiful set of three outdoor ponds next to the Columbia River ready for this year and intended to walk down with my dog.  I started out and then realized we would be able to get down there but it was still warm and we still had to walk back and it is slightly uphill all the way and I did not want to have to carry a 16 pound dog and that last 200 yard/meters coming up from the tunnel would have been really hard.

Just finished mowing my grass, takes me about  an hour if I do it in one bit, but in this heat I did part in the morning when it was a lot cooler and just now finished the rest of it.  I could not believe that I was mowing with the temperature at 36F/96F,  but I was working in the shade and that made a big difference.

Even though I do not water, the grass in most places was deep green and rather lush, all due to changing my way of mowing.  Mow High and leave the cuttings down.  In two seasons  it has changed from dry, prickly grass and bare patches with doing nothing other then a change of method. No water, no fertilizer, no weed killer.

Where have all the Canucks gone? I am the only one commenting on this page.
If they are anything like me they are fighting fires, floods, or are too hot to do anything at all.

Have just picked the last of my strawberries and the first of my blueberries.

Mowed the lawn a couple of days ago so it does not need watering, but I am still watering the tomatoes and other vulnerable plants etc., and going out, when the sun dips below the horizon, to water my friend's pot plants.  Please come home, my friend.  You are three days overdue, but I do appreciate the fact that you do not have a car and  have to ride at your sister's whim.  Last year three weeks turned into seven.  I do hope for no repeat this year.

Hi, your adopted Canadian here. I sure hope your neighbor returns soon. It is very charitable of you to care for her plants. It is still in the 100s here. I can't believe you mowed the lawn, but maybe your heat is a little cooler than mine? [just checked and you mowed when it was 96*F but you were in the shade. My lawns are looking pitiful right now. The drought and fungus has decimated it.

I do believe that adopted Canadians are more faithful.  
Thank you sanderson for your loyalty.  Made me feel less alone.

I hope all our American friends had a wonderful July 4th. Picture Stars & Stripes Flag.

I've been very busy at work lately, and I have not had much time to post. I have most of my garden in: four 4x4 beds, four 1x4s,  3x3 for my grandson and pumpkins in an old tractor tire. Oh yeah, plus a few smaller containers. Pics when I get a chance.

I've posted a question shortly on a new plant.

FRED58 wrote:I've been very busy at work lately, and I have not had much time to post. I have most of my garden in: four 4x4 beds, four 1x4s,  3x3 for my grandson and pumpkins in an old tractor tire. Oh yeah, plus a few smaller containers. Pics when I get a chance.

I've posted a question shortly on a new plant.

Look forward to your pics, Fred.
I haven't been very busy, just surviving the heat, but I do get up early, 5 to 6pm and spend a little time in the garden before it gets hot.  Otherwise, Jazz and I have a siesta each day to keep us going.
It is the endless watering that gets me down just a little.

Ditto on the endless watering. Especially if it's hot out.

I'm trying to get my plants habituated to being watered every other day, but with beans that doesn't work too well as they can be killed off or stunted in a single day, and with containers, they lose water so fast that sometimes they'd benefit from being watered twice a day, so no go on the skipping there ... and while I'm out there anyway, I might as well water the rest of them. *sigh*

I'm actually glad my garden is so much smaller this year. I lost more than half my watering chores and it feels good!

There's always pros and cons, Marc.

e.g. I miss having a car for the ability to go anywhere on a moment's notice.
But I do enjoy the financial freedom, and especially not having to clear my driveway of ALL the snow, just a pathway so I can get out to the road so I can go snow shoeing.

Just checked out our local weather forecast as I noticed and smelled smoke yesterday.

Local smoke, I knew it would reach us eventually; temperature rising to 33C/99F this afternoon, possible thunderstorm tomorrow,  I sure hope it was not like the one we had last week. Major damage in the sourth part of town; I live in the north part and there was little damage. Our southern part actually had our mayor on TV and pictures. A friend whom I visited the next day lives next to a house where two trees fell on it.

If you can imagine our town as running parallel to the Columbia River it is a long skinny place with one main street so if you are a homebody like I am now, you just do not know what is going on. I had to see it on the evening news to see how bad it was.  No injuries, thankfully.

Rain forecast this coming weekend but I am not counting on it.

Fred, folks are responding to your tomatillo topic. Good to see you again, and yes, post photos when you can.

Marc, Water, water. It's suppose to be down to 99*F today. Late last night (as I finished the jam) it was delightful outside.

Kelejan, Snow shoeing at your age. You just amaze me! Is the smoke from a forest fire? Lightning strike? When you say thunderstorm, do you mean rain? I ask because we can watch lightning/thunderstorms and not get rain.

sanderson, snow-shoeing is a lot easier that skiing. IMO. One can stand still and catch one's breath.  Cross-country skiing is hard work.

The thunderstorm we had last week was very scary. Loads of thunder and lightening and torrential rain.  The road was a river and the wind was wild, coming in gusts so hard that you could not see across the road for the curtains of rain. The water from the road left and fight of me converged and went down the  road that turns down into the next street.  How no one got flooded out I do not know. It lasted about 45 minutes.  Downtown, which is about five minutes walk away, it only lasted 15 minutes.  The other end of town it lasted over an hour and some people had the power cut off for nearly two days. The tunnel under the railway track where I walk to get to DT was a foot deep in water that did not drain away as there was on a tiny outlet for it so it had to be drained by suction otherwise it was have taken days.

Kelejan ... CONGRATULATIONS on your 32 years as a Canadian citizen. 
     


I just got back to Ottawa ON after driving 550km from St.Catharines, ON.  While away for the past 12 days we 

• visited our daughter and her family in Cambridge ON
  
• stayed for two days in Gravenhurst On where went on a lunch cruise aboard the RMS Segwun which is the oldest operating steam driven and coal fired steamship in North America
  
• visited the Ripley's Aquarium in Toronto
  
• went to a Toronto Blue Jays baseball game (they gave up 8 runs to the Boston Red Sox in the first inning but we had a good time anyway)
  
• visited the Distillery District in Toronto which is right next to the athletes village for the Pan Am Games which are about to start
  
• visited my 89 year old mom in St.Catharines and brought her back to Ottawa for a short stay with us
  
• did a pile of geocaching.
  

My two SFG boxes survived the 12 days while I was away and are doing great. I will post photos on my "First Time SFG in Canada" thread

Wow TD that's a pretty good Southern Ontario tour!

Kelejan, sorry I missed that, congratulations on 32 years. `

I'm not watering that much here. It rained June 30-July 1st (a bit: 8mm total), but the past six days is the longest we've gone this spring / summer without rain. Everything is green and growing tall, except the stuff I planted late.

Rain is forecast tomorrow.


And our usual great sunsets are being enhanced by the smoke from the fires in the west: bright orange sun the past few nights. Pretty amazing when you consider that Saskatchewan is a three day drive from here.

And, belatedly: Happy Independence Day too all my American Friends!

(And, I celebrated Canada Day by working like a rented mule on various landscaping projects, collapsing in my chair with a medicinal wee dram of good Canadian Rye, and falling asleep before the fireworks).

Doesn't time fly when you are too tired to do anything?

Today Temps were 37C/97F so I was too tired to do anything.  The next two days  ditto.

Then down to 28C/88F lowering to 25C/62F with perhaps a bit of rain.  I know I am going to grumble and say I feel cold.

Perhaps I will be able to start my fall planting?

The fire situation is bad in BC and Alberta. It has come as near as the edge of Nelson, the next  town up the road from us, and a small half-hectare brush fire about a mile from us that was quickly extinguished. 

P:30pm and I am off to bed. "night all.

For what seems weeks and weeks, I haven't been able to do any real gardening due to heat exhaustion. Now that the temperature has come down to the 25Cs mark I will be able to get something done.

I harvested all my garlic and got about 100 good ones, quite nice looking.  Then I cleaned out the bed, put on fresh compost and turned the hose on them for a while,  We have a 60% chance of a thunderstorm tonight or tomorrow, and when that is over I will be planting radishes, lettuce, chard, carrots etc. with shade cloth ready in case the weather turns hot again.

Early in the morning I picked over three pounds of raspberries from a friend's garden and froze them after having a nice dessert with ice cream. This afternoon I picked a cupful of blueberries; I will be interested to see how they do next year.

I also pulled some weed from my wood-chips and got a piece of grass that had a root of about 24 inches. It came up easily, and kept coming and coming right down to the tap root. 

Keep cool, everyone.

I know what you mean about the heat and not being able to get everything done. You got a bed composted and ready for planting and harvested 100 garlic!! Sounds very productive.

Yes, sanderson, thank goodness the heat is more bearable at last. I have never felt  so continuously tired, but then it had been in the high 30Cs  for what seemed forever.  No wonder British Columbia have over 200 fires on the go.

We did have a thunderstorm that lasted for all of ten minutes and did not make a dent in the rain gauge. I had previously hand-watered the ex-garlic beds so that if the rain hammered down like last time the seed I had planted would not be washed away.  As we really had no rain, I put the hose on for fifteen minutes before going to bed, and did the same this morning so all the carrots and radishes should be firmly anchored.

I will be out later today to clear another bed and plant chard and spinach.  Then I must spread the garlic so that it can dry and get cured and tidy up the tulips and daffodil bulbs ready to plant in the fall when I get my new order of tulips to expand the little display I had this spring.

Then other jobs on my list include turning the compost pile and pruning the flowering shrubs that are really looking quite overgrown now.  I have learned that I must be ruthless to get the best results. The really old apple tree that I had neglected for umpteen years and finally gave some TLC starting with last fall when I mulched it  and cut off a lot of branches, is sagging under the weight of this years crop. I am doing my best to pick off the ones that are too small or to close to one another but the tree is far too high for me to get up there so I will have to see what happens to the old tree and do some more surgery later on. Lawn mowing is also on the list once again; one of the reasons  why I am gradually reducing the area that needs mowing.

I am feeling just wonderful right now, and eager to get on with things. I promise I will pace myself in case anyone gets too concerned.

I'm slow tonight. Apparently what I had written timed out so did not post. that has never happened to me before.

Will write again tomorrow.  xx

It seems as though everyone is Canada is away on holiday? Or maybe just having a rest and admiring their gardens.

I have enjoyed spending some time just sitting in the shade and enjoying  my surroundings, especially watching the two bird baths that I keep topped up twice a day and seeing the birds take advantage of them, drinking and splashing the water over themselves.  The swallows have finally finished raising their babies and are now out in the wide world.  I will miss them but look forward to seeing them next spring. They have been our guests in the two bird boxes since we moved here after the great snow the winter of 1996/7. A lovely reminder of my husband who built the boxes that first year.

I have a bit of paperwork to catch up on then I can do something in the garden now that the weather is cooler.  In a while I will go out and check to see if the radish seeds I planted a few day ago are showing. I know they will need watering. Then to start catching on my list of things-to-do. 

As an aside, I had a doctor's appointment yesterday and have been give a clean bill of health.  Having it confirmed makes me feel even better. That episode has taught  me to take my medication on a regular basis. 

Congrats Kelejan on getting a clean bill of health.

Together, my wife and I have medical appointments every day this week. I'm still suffering from vertigo. My wife is wearing a heart monitor for 48 hours. I feel like we are rusting out.

On the upside the SFG has been doing well and two of our wonderful grandchildren are visiting with us tomorrow.