Gardening in the north!

This year, I was determined to have a beautiful backyard!

This is a hardy rose, called Prairie Joy or Prairie dawn. It was  spectacular this year and is still in bloom, Sept 29th.


My little garden that was planted in late April , was late in germinating  as we had rainy weather not only in June but also most of July.  All my vegetables did sprout but the yield was low.. August was a very hot month and things like my parsley ( grew into an immerse plants with tons of blooms).


My multicoloured swiss chard went quickly into seed as did my spinach!


The sunflowers which are usually a wonderful fall display of colour, grew to over 7 feet, flowered but to my amazement  the squirrels lopped of the sunflower heads!   Only 2 sunflower heads are left standing!



The scarlet runner were thick and tall and did produce many beans.  I did dill pickle one 2 quart size jar  using
this bean!

My first attempt on growing garlic! Not too sure what to expect!

These lovely royal blue Delphinium grow quickly in the spring and have a wonderful show of  spikes of summer flowers in blue.  However, the plant is prone to rust on the leaves and looks shabby into late summer.. cutting down the spikes results in more new growth and smaller flowery spikes!  This whole area , I have dug out for other plants only to have the delphiniums come back in full force! 

 I was not successful growing poppies until eight years ago mainly because I used to weed out the plant, thinking it was part of the thistle family.  The year my mom passed away, to my surprise, I had one of these poppies  bloom.. I had been too busy with her to focus on gardening.  Now these beautiful blooms in the middle of summer are a wonderful remembrance of my Mom

Yes, more pictures on my lemon tree in splendour..

A begonia that is still full of bloom in Oct!

Lemon Tree

lemon tree 

June 15th, my little potted lemon tree was in bloom.  It had produced one very large fruit last Aug which I used to prepare a lemon filling for a white cake.  The plant had about 16 leaves, yet produce one large fruit although it took a year for the fruit to grow to this large size and turn yellow!  This year, the plant has about four to 6 branches and a lot more leaves.  From June to Aug , it produced flowers on three other branches.

July 19, to my delight there were more blooms. The tree had been moved out to my patio in June.

JUly 31st 

More blooms Aug 4th

Impact of technology today!

Yesterday, I spent a day with  technology!  My second grandchild was born and I was notified an hour and half after the birth by telephone.. then the morning  quickly disappeared pleasantly on telephone, face book , email and text messages as each of these systems hummed with the joy of this birth!  What a different world since the other grandchild that just turned 2 last month.

Here is a picture that was taken and sent  by a cell phone. The baby boy is not 2 hours old here.  Interesting enough, a photographer no longer comes to the hospital nursery to take pictures of all the newborns from that day at night.. To have a picture of the newborn with the eyes open, the bassinet was hit so that the baby wakes up for the hospital picture..  resulting in eyes open but in the startle reflex or Moro reflex with arms extended and back arched!

This is a picture of a very peaceful baby

Here is another picture sent a few minutes later to his grandfather's cell

Lamb burgers loaded with flavor, fresh mint, spinach, garlic with feta cheese

Lamb burgers loaded with flavor, fresh mint, spinach, garlic with feta cheese

The lamb burgers I made before were difficult to BBQ as I had crumbled the feta cheese into the mix.  To prevent the cheese from melting all over the BBQ, the burgers had to be grilled on a sheet of tin foil. This time I placed a slice of cheese in the middle of the burger. 

Christmas Stollen in July

Pane e Formaggio is an artisan bread and specialty cheese company located in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. 

Does it bother aneone else, that this bread was still okay to be eaten in July.. According to their website, this loaf was probably baked the July before!!! What does that mean??

My Summer Garden

Hutschenreuther china,

Hutschenreuther [HUTHUT1315]

In 1814, Hutschenreuther the name of the family in Northern Bavaria established a porcelain industry and gained reputation in the European market. The Hutschenreuther "Mark of the Lion" continues to this day, although since 2000 is a trademark of Rosenthal.

Pattern: HUT1315 by Hutschenreuther [HUTHUT1315]Description: Cobalt Blue Bands,Gold Encrusted Laurel

 This pattern is discontinued but one can find pieces through Replacement Limited. 

While living in Winnipeg, I went to an estate auction and the only thing I could afford were these china dishes. I loved the elegance in the pattern but the number pieces did not lend it self to be used often.  In the set there are 3 bread and butter plates, 8 luncheon plates and 3 dinner plates.  

I think that my daughter may make good use of this china as she plans to mix different patterns of china together.. Although finding china to do this may be a problem as  usually one sells all of their china pieces together.