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Winter 13-14

Andrea January 7, 2014 January 7, 2014Andrea, Our Home

Winter of 2013-14

We were all looking forward to a relaxing Christmas this year. Bob had a very long autumn sitting at Queen’s Park, with more than the usual amount of travel and committee work. Bob’s big personal thrill of the year came when he was not only the starting goaltender in a hockey game against the Toronto Maple Leaf Old-Timers, but also delivered the Province’s greetings at the same time. Then came the big ice storm of December 2013. A major weather system carried a huge mass of wet air up from the Gulf of Mexico through the heart of North America before colliding with a mass of cold air coming down from the arctic, and Toronto was frozen solid.

Happy Thanksgiving

Andrea October 12, 2013 October 12, 2013Our Home

Farewell fair weather

There is a distinct chill in the air as daylight settles into darkness a few minutes earlier each day. The pussycats come in at dusk earlier and earlier. And in September, Bebe came eyeball to eyeball with one of the young raccoons that lives in the neighbourhood.

Kitchen Garden 2013

Andrea July 22, 2013 July 22, 2013Our Home

New theme and kitchen garden

This summer, as with most years in our home, our dinner guests will dine on ingredients grown steps from the dinner table, and often harvested and prepared just for that one meal. Today, I harvested my first lot of garlic, shown in the picture opposite. I will have to let them dry out a bit, and then we are ready to cook with our very own garlic. This is a species of locally-grown and harvested garlic. It will take a few weeks for the garlic to cure, however.

Our July storm bubble

Andrea July 9, 2013 July 9, 2013Our Home

A rain storm for the ages Anyone following the news reports from the Greater Toronto Area knows about the torrential rain and flooding that happened all across southern Ontario, as slow-moving thunderstorm fronts emptied more rain in two hours on the Toronto area than normally falls in a month. However, just as nearly everyone else was getting rained on in biblical quantity, our neighbourhood seemed to be in a dry bubble. We were outside trying…

Christmas 2012

Andrea December 1, 2012 November 20, 2025Our Home

Up go the 2012 Christmas decorations! As we begin to drag the boxes of Christmas decorations, ornaments and paraphernalia out of the basement, we remember the full-day task of getting them down way back in January. It always brings out the child in everyone to start decorating the house for Christmas time. Now that everything outside has been packed away and made ready for winter, we can turn our attention to the festive time of…

Good things grow

Andrea August 6, 2012 August 6, 2012Our Home

Our 2012 Ontario garden

With our assiduous watering, the garden has both blossomed in flowers, and borne us a bountiful crop of veggies this summer. Aside from being part of the cucumber salad, we can incorporate and garnish dishes and drinks with fresh mint from our garden. This is mint julep time, and mojito season. We have plenty of mint leaves. We have always grown our share of fresh herbs, including chives for our baked potatoes and fish dishes; lots of lemon balm, which makes a nice tea when infused. The chopped leaves are good in salads too.

Guyana-style heat

Andrea July 17, 2012 July 17, 2012Our Home

mississauga-tropical-heat

Of all the things I miss least about the land of my birth, the extended, humidity-laden, blast-furnace Guyana summer heat ranks pretty high on that list. Yet that is what the Mississauga summer has been from the outset. Day after rainless day of high humidity and relentless sun. It’s hard to stay outside during our all-too-short Mississauga Ontario summer with the heat and humidity sapping your energy all too quickly.

Category: Our Home