rainy, foggy and grey couple of days....

we call those kinds of days "down days". meaning we down tools, don't stress, do lots of hottubbing, stuff around the house and prepare ourselves for the next onslaught of bugs as now the mosquitoes are out, too!

there's still lots of walks around the property looking at beautiful things growing. like this self-planted tiny rose bush.

there's nothing more beautiful than potatoe flowers!

except my hot and sour soup made with bone broth, home-canned tomatoe juice, mint, coriander and lemon balm from the garden, shrimp, garlic, ginger, coconut nut milk, mushrooms, chives - and the piece de resistance? rose petals from our big rose bush!!!

jambaloney has been on a chicken thigh kick - he pretty much wants chicken thighs every day. i season them and then he bbq's them and we make 3 sauces out of goat yoghurt - one with chives, garlic and dill, one with cumin, cayenne, turmeric and garlic, and one made with mixing my homemade hotsauce with the yogurt and adding fresh chopped coriander - yummeh! you can use these dips as salad dressings or spreads on sandwiches or for veggies.

this was served with deliciously-butter-browned scallops and a quinoa salad with olives and tons of parsley.

the year old carrots that we saved from last year and replanted this year are gone to flower and soon will be seed.

that means never buying carrot seeds again - woohoo!

how about our first 2, tiny baby tomatoes - that's another woohoo!

our "test" amaranth growing in pots is also going to seed. you can eat amaranth flowers, seeds and leaves. so next year, we will dedicate a whole bed to amaranth. the seeds can be ground into flour and since wheat doesn't do so well here - amaranth it is for a grid-down sustainable food.

these volunteer tomatoes pop up every year from our compost. jambaloney transplants every one he finds.

which means we have 20 additional tomatoe plants that will be harvestable at end of september by keeping them in the greenhouse.

here's a bunch of hungarian hot wax peppers - lots of pickled hot peppers and hot sauce for jambaloney this year!

the garlic is as tall as the bed cover it is in!

the stalks are huge and they are finally developing scapes.

soon we'll have scapes fried in butter and garlic and i'll be able to eat them because i get my teeth on july 19 - OMG - i can't wait!

and our slanty little apple tree is putting out apples - woohoo!

last night's supper was delicious bulgogi, jambaloney's famous sticky rice, some sauteed spinach in butter and half a mango - it was a lovely meal!

jambaloney is working on his contract and may be going in to work tomorrow. i've got plans for a dinner of baked potatoes with goat feta and chives with a carrot/turnip mash with butter and mint. should be tasty!

sending love to you all!

another beautiful day...but a quiet one

after several days of kicking butt in the garden and jambaloney pushing out report after report for his contract....we took a bit of  a break today...beautiful day to do it too!

jambaloney took the trailer and atv down the road to the river and got us a pile of rocks to line our strawberry bed...we'll do that the day after tomorrow as tomorrow he has to go on-site to work.

we've pretty much got the summer garden nailed - whatever isn't already in the ground won't be going into the ground until we plant our fall garden at the end of august.

we decided that after 3 full months of getting the garden ready - it was a day to pull a "mobie-moe"



only The Lord knows how that cat managed to fit himself into that basket...nuclear physics sure can't explain it!

last night's supper - jambaloney had steak with 3 different home-made sauces with a yummy quinoa salad, lobster salad, cherries and olives. and a delicious pineapple chia fresca that we shared. i had lamb.



dinner on our relaxing, but still work-filled day, was steak fajitas with homemade salsa, homemade guacamole, fried peppers and onions and steak.

as the evening sets in we look forward to a good sleep.

shouldn't be too hard after a supper of quinoa salad, watermelon and scallops....oh how i love butter-fried scallops!



we hope you all had a great day!

and have a great evening! we've got a pink/red sunset - that's good for the crab and lobsterfishermen for tomorrow.

heaven

i find myself singing this song a lot lately, a song that i have always loved:

Heaven, is the whole of our hearts
And Heaven don't tear you apart
Yeah, Heaven, is the whole of our hearts
And Heaven don't tear you apart

There's too many kings
Wanna hold you down
And a world at the window
Gone underground

There's a hole in the sky
Where the sun don't shine
And a clock on the wall
And it counts my time

And Heaven, is the whole of our hearts
And Heaven don't tear you apart
Yeah, Heaven is the whole of our hearts
And Heaven don't tear you apart

There's a song on the air
With a 'love you' line
And a face in a glass
And it looks like mine

And I'm standing on ice when I say
That I don't hear planes
And I scream at the fools
Wanna jump my train

And Heaven is the whole of our hearts
And Heaven don't tear you apart
Yeah, Heaven is the whole of ours hearts
And Heaven don't tear you apart

Yeah, Heaven
Ah, Heaven
Yeah, Heaven

Songwriters
Moreland, Peter Lord / Smith, Vernon Jeffrey / Williams, Frederick B

and the video:

it is not easy to walk around the Manor, looking up at the skies and not think of heaven.

it is so beautiful!

sometimes i am carrying something other than my camera...and i trip and i fall.

just a reminder of mortality, i guess. lots of scratches and bruises.

we hilled all 40 potatoe tires in the past few days.

that always leaves us feeling accomplished.

we're tired. growing your own food is hard work.

but growing your own food and looking to heaven....there just aren't any words.

heaven and everything it contains feels so close here you feel that you can reach out and touch it. thinking of SciFi and Uncle Gerald today. not sure why. just am. i think it's because we are both really tired from getting those potatoes done. SciFi and Uncle Gerald would be proud of us today.

go back and play the song again. it's beautiful. and i think it very especially fitting for all of my american friends celebrating their independence day today!

i hope you all can take a moment today to look at the sky and see and feel and touch heaven.

our camera history

my first camera. jambaloney got me this camera in 2007. jambaloney was scanning all kinds of old photos and said i needed a digital cameral. i scoffed at first - but after a week - this baby was glued to my hand.



it was with that little camera that i took pics of our old house and yard back in the city. we had a beautiful house and yard and i took millions of pics with that camera - like this one:

and jambaloney took a pic of me snow-blowing our 30 ft driveway (i am wearing a 20yr old snowsuit that i still have and use - so now it's 26 yrs old!!!!). funny thing - we didn't even have a car but always kept our driveway cleared - bahahahah!

i took this photo of jambaloney's gorgeous torque tattoo that he got in october 2000 with that camera (he thought about filling it in but i said "NO WAY!):

i made my avatar with that little camera:

with that camera, i took this pic of my gorgeous man: (holy crap - he is gorgeous! and if you can believe it - even more gorgeous now!):

that night we went out and of course, i wore my bunny ears (i wore my bunny ears everywhere!):

that's The Man standing beside a 13ft snowbank that he snow-blowed through one of the worst winters in ottawa!

prior to leaving for Framboise Manor - our step-dad and his grandson made this beautiful bird house for us:

of course that old little camera caught the pics:

and then we landed in Framboise....the first 6 months were a blur and not many pics were taken with that camera - a camera that had served us so well! jambaloney's mom and step-dad came to visit us the first june we were here and we used that camera to take the following pics:



jambaloney's mom and step-dad are as goofy as jambaloney and me - we love that!

and then we drove them up to Framboise Manor....in my excitement, i jumped out of the truck to show them where to park, dropped my precious camera....and then jambaloney drove our truck over loved camera #1!

enter camera #2:

 i loved that camera!!!! it has taken 5yrs of pics - like this one where jambaloney's mom unburied our apple trees - she'll never know how much we appreciated hers, and ted's work here that first june!

that camera took pics of our first pizzas:

it took pics of our yard long before we were able to do much with it:

it took pics of our delicious trout that we have enjoyed eating since we got here:

it took a pic of me in my mermaid tail down at the river:

it took a pic of the beginning of "blue-cup" season:

it took many pics of our beautiful river:

but sadly...after 5 long years of taking pics - it died. i am sooo sad.

and now i am stuck with this ugly thing!

it will take great pics. sure. but it is blue. and probably my least favourite colour in the world! but it was on sale...and we used money from our emergency fund to buy it....because i love taking pictures! in the next few posts...garden updates and whatnot...the pics were taken using jambaloney's nokia windows phone - it was driving me near mad!

first world problems - i know. but nothing gives me greater pleasure than taking hundreds of pics a day of our beautiful land. and then, in the middle of the night when i can't sleep - i can look back through all of the pics. those pics provide me with peace when my mind is rattling...but they also give me a chance to be thankful and grateful for everything that we have here.

i hope that you enjoyed our camera history.

Happy Canada Day 2016!

our Canada Day has been celebrated with much work in the garden, a quick dip in the river, some awesome chicken thighs...we're saving the lobster for later - bahahahah!

the new season of Marco Polo is out on netflix....so we'll binge watch until we can't keep our eyes open.

it's "blue cap" season starting today - i'll explain more in tomorrow's post. and just because i love this song - please enjoy - it's kooky, hysterically funny and very canadian!

again - Happy Canada Day to all of our friends - whether you be Canadian, American, Australian, South African, British, or European! sending much love to you all!