lotsa fishing!

jambaloney here!

i can't believe it has been a month - time flies...esp when you are constantly tormented by flies - kymber and i and everyone here is suffering immensely....  all waiting for at LEAST the blackfliesto end - right now is the worst - hordes of blackflies and hordes of deerflies .it is on onslaught from sun-up to sundown.. bendryll and deet help - but sometimes 5 mins outside and another 15-20 bites.. it will make you sick.

so we have had a few sick days and been busy busy - soooo... it has been a month.. june is tip-top fishing so i have some pics!! lots for both pp and sandy and scifi so play nice and share!!!

june 21 -  this was a cool semi-cloudy morning

 water was calm..

up the creek mouth i went. canoes are pretty awesome ;-)

on the way back - the sun and clouds were doing some pretty amazing stuff on the surface of the river!

really amazing

more..

 a real treat!

and 3 nice trout - YUM!!!!!

june 22 - you have seen pics of strachan's brook many times on our blog - in the evening i often spot trout surfacing - so i decided to give it a shot!

on with the hip-waders and down the driveway!

across the road and over the embankment - what fun..

uh, yeah ;-))

we have noticed that over the years, the brook has been  slowly flooding the land right across form us - the bridge on the road has one culvert with steady flow... i think it is cutting a bigger furrow - the trees are slowly dying/drowning..

 then again - this critter might be contributing too - i often see he/she swimming about..

 okay - i am up to my lower chest and getting BIT TO F*** by blackflies!!!!!

 it IS pretty!!

 40 mins - 5 nice trout - once a month i will visit so as not to over-fish the stillwater out! k and i are feasting on trout at this point!!

2 days later, june 24 - 5:45 AM

 just past the solstice and the sun is already up in the sky..

dew abound - the air is pretty cool...

yeah, i know - more spiderwebs - heck - i think they look pretty nifty!!

down near the river - carnivorous plants - this  is a sundew....

and a pitcher plant..

this is the flower of a pitcher plant..

nice sunrise.. you can see the mist on the water... 

the air is cool but the sun bright - it is hot and cold at the same time!!

more mist..

back up the brook ..

okay - after 4 years, i don't know how many times i have paddled over this - the butt of a gun, no steel left - LOL!

and a great catch!!

 

awesome sunset the other night..(just over strachen's brook)

awesome!

hope you are all having a great summer so far!!
cheers!

oh man! somedays it just feels like you are fighting a losing battle eh?

the aphids have really done a number on our gorgeous pepper plants....it's a tiny bit of a downer!

we keep spraying them with soapy water and they really do keep trying to bounce back. they are so hard to control. we are thinking of buying a box of ladybugs and lace wings but it might just be too late for this year.

what a lot of people don't know is that one year you have thriving squash. the next year - zilch. another year you get a glut of tomatoes. the following year - you get three! gardening is not throwing some seeds on the ground! we keep trying to impress that on people. every year is different as you battle with different weather patterns, different diseases and different pests.

some of the peppers who are hurting the most are still producing fruit. check out this little hurting cayenne pepper - he is seriously hurting but still producing.  poor little guy.

it's been windy and hazy for a few days - better than muggy and foggy eh?

this post feels like a downer so i will cheer you all up with some beautiful chamomile flowers!

and my rose bush is blooming! teehee. want to know a secret? i am collecting rose petals and rose buds to put in jars of epsom salts for my 2 sisters, e and c. they don't read the blog so they have no idea what i am up to. i'm sneaky that way!

i'll end with i hope you all are doing well. if i haven't hit up your blog - send me an email or leave a comment. PP, brother, i'm on my way over right now.

muggy, hot, humid, black flies...and a tropical storm moving in!

wow! it's been unnaturally hot, humid and muggy for the past several days. not to mention grey and foggy. have a look!



it was oppressive and bearing down on us and the humidity was through the roof! we kept asking ourselves "where did the ocean go"? it is never usually this hot and muggy at this time of year. we were also suffering from 10 million black fly bites. oh how i hate those little things. but there is no i am putting on a pile of deet (the only thing that works on them) when it is that muggy outside.

i know that for some of you in the states, and some of the areas of the maritimes got belted by Hurricane Arthur. and i am very sorry. but what is now called Tropical Storm Arthur saved the day. it swept up the west side of the island and sucked all that humidity and mugginess out. today was windy as crap but that heavy weight of muggy fog was finally lifted. this evening, we should get some heavy winds and rain - but nothing like some places are getting belted with.



for the past few days when we couldn't bear the mugginess or the black flies, we came in and made some fermented food which we always like to have on hand. here's some of my awesome new kimchi (recipe on our recipe blog), some yummy dill-pickles and some yummy turnip and carrot kimchi.



as you can see, we made the pickles a few days ago and have been eating them non-stop - they are the best instant dill pickles ever! the next day we made the fabulous kimchi with cabbage and had been taking bites of that to try and kickstart us out of the mugginess and bug bites. today we made the turnip and carrot kimchi, we will let it ferment for a day or two.

now for anyone like my friend Dani, or any others of you who have cholesterol problems - skip this next pic! this is lobster and bacon spaghetti made with a very light cream sauce. oh it was to die for! we made quite a large pot of it, each had 2 servings and then wished we had made more - bahahahahah! but we're bad like that.

to try to make up for our cravings for more of our supper, i made lobster rolls with the remaining lobster and that seemed to help. man, it's awesome to live in a lobster and crab-fishing village! and our next-door neighbour e cooked those lobsters to absolute perfection which is a rare skill.

her husband gets lobster for us regularly! he is also the guy who made me my beautiful Christmas wreath last year. i put it at our front door and said that i would not take it down until every pine needle fell off. well, not a single pine needle has fallen off and it went from green, to brownish, to brown - and now it's orange!!!!! have a look!

i loooooooove that wreath!

anyway, our dearest brother and sister were down for a few days this past week, and jamie got to see them for a few mins on a couple of days - i didn't get the chance to see them at all because i thought they were staying longer and that we could go see them "tomorrow". but they decided to leave early and i missed getting to see them. now i won't see them until the middle of august. dang!

jam was doing some yard work and a pile of weeding today because the mugginess had broken, the wind was whipping around meaning no black flies, and he accidentally weeded this little rose guy.

i am hoping to try and save him. if i can get him to root, i will put him in a pot and keep him in the house until next year.

hey kids - how about my first radish harvest of the year - woohoo - happy dancing!!! we'll be eating these babies raw with a little salt, adding them to salads over the next day or two and then they'll be gone! we love radishes!

but hopefully soon i will get a glut of them and then it's pickled radishes people - yummeh!

since i somehow missed both Canada Day and Independence Day - to all of our canadian readers, i hope that you had a wonderful Canada Day! and to all our american readers, i hope that you had a wonderful Independence Day! and to everyone everywhere - i hope you have had a wonderful week!

comfrey salve, cats, medals and boot camp! crap - this should have been 3 posts - bahahahaah!

it all starts with the cats - they are pics for my good buddy W who is always asking for updates and for our Favourite Marine!

first up is Frankie-Blue-Eyes....sleeping sideways one way and sideways the other. with his little fangs showing.



next up is Noodle, noodie-nu on the back of HIS chair: (no one else is allowed on it!)



next up is Moebie-Moe -



yes. all of my cats are fat and none of them sleep in a normal position!

this next bit is for my friend Harry - he mentioned in one of his comments on his blog that he would like to see a pic of me while serving. Harry, you ask for it - you get it! this pic was posted by a friend on facebook a few years back and i saved it.

this was in basic training in july 89. we were out playing wargames in the middle of the forest being eaten alive by every kind of bug known to man. that is my full squad - MCpl standing on the left. i am second from the right kneeling down. yes, those are FNC1's that we were trained on - i hated those gawd-awful weapons!a funny story from that week of wargames - it was instructors against the recruits. first off, we got a radio call from the head shack where the instructors were staying (we were staying in "hoochies", otherwise known as tarps strung over a rope). the call came in that they needed 12 people to come and help clean at the ranges. our commanding officer, who was appointed because he scored highly in a bunch of written tests, but couldn't fire a weapon to save his life, nominated 12 of us girls to go and clean the ranges. everyone argued with this stupid decision but he sent us off, guarded, to make sure we would go. we get there and the instructors laugh at us for being so stupid. arghghghghgh! they made us hand over our web gear, our weapons and our boots and put them in a pile. i told my friend wiggly and my other friend jenny to sneak our weapons, web gear and boots out to the garbage huts which we did as we were cleaning. when we got all of the stuff out there, we then snuck a boot or a weapon, when no instructor was looking, out to the edge of the woods. when all of our gear was in the woods, we made a dash for it. got our gear on and started running back to the bivouac. it was about a half mile away in the woods and somehow we found it. we fired our commanding officer, appointed a different guy and that's when the instructors started the games. they started tossing canisters of gas into our bivouac area and we were running around like mad. the games weren't supposed to start until the following morning - we should have known better! anyway, some of the guys captured my MCpl and were tieing him to a tree. he was yelling "punker, punker at least get me a gas mask" - that was my nickname and he knew how softhearted i was. i tried to get him a gas mask but the others wouldn't let me and as the instructors were tossing canister after canister - he just kept barfing and barfing and calling out to me. it was awful and fun all at the same time.

so here is some beautiful, home-made comfrey salve that i am making for a friend. this stuff is super good for cuts, scrapes, burns, rashes, etc.

 here's a little red-spotted newt. cute eh?

 

 here is my favourite service medal. it's my Alert Medal and it is for special service in the canadian forces.

here is my cap badge for my beret. it's called a "jimmy". it's actually Hermes/Mercury who was the messenger to the gods.

here are my dog tags, blacked out, of course.

here are my jimmy dog collars, a jimmy button off of my dress wear and a signals badge that was sewn on the shoulder of our dress wear.

i have a ton of photos of alert and during my service but unfortunately they are not digital - remember - i got out in 99. we have no idea where our box of photo albums are right now - bahahahahah! but when i find them, Harry i will scan them and put up some more pics. but there will be no obligatory graduating basic training photo - it's just too frightening to share - bahahahahah!

i hope you all have been having a good couple of days. i'll hit up your blogs shortly!