Big fun in a little leaf pile

Our neighbours were raking their leaves yesterday and my kids got in on the action.
I think this is a major downfall of living in a new development, we seriously lack an abundance of leaves in the fall!

Here goes Zanz:









Ray's go at it:

Miranda part 2

After a lot of re-scheduling due to bad weather, a crashed computer needing to be replaced, and a crazy, busy summer, I have finally finished the last of Miranda's pictures. Too tired to write captions so I'll just say that obviously some were taken at a farmer's field with his out buildings and some were taken in a canola field. Enjoy!

These are just some of my favourites.

Miranda

This wonderful, beautiful girl, our neighbour, our babysitter for the last 6 years, just graduated from high school last month and we couldn't be more happy for her. As a gift I told her I would take some graduation pictures of her to surprise her parents with. This is very common in the USA, they call them senior portraits down there, but it's not very common here.
Anyway, today we did our first session with her boyfriend out at the Clifford E. Lee Nature Sanctuary. According to there map, we walked about 5.6 Kms around the sanctuary to different locations. I took 226 shots, whittled them down to 25 to edit and here are just a few of my favourites.

Gutter Garden and what's popping up

Gutter Garden!
Someone posted a link to this idea on Facebook a couple weeks back and I thought it was the perfect solution to our tiny yard. Buy 10 foot lengths of gutter, caps and clips. Attach a 10 foot length of board to your fence, attach gutter to the boards. Drill drainage holds in the bottom of the gutters, fill with dirt and plant shallow-rooted vegetables.

2 gutters on the right side of the yard:



And two on the left. I planted the right side ones almost 2 weeks ago. On Sunday I will plant the left side so that we have veggies growing at different times and to prolong the harvest. EDIT! I decided to plant this side today!




Week 1! Here comes the... ummmm... now what did I plant there??? I think those are onions! NOPE! They are radishes!



Onions!


Week 2! There is lettuce, radishes and onions in the top one:



Spinach, lettuce and beets in the bottom one.
I think.
I can't remember where I planted everything but those are the veggies I planted!

When they say to plant the seeds 2.5 cm apart, they weren't kidding. I have zero patience for something like that and just sprinkled seeds in there and covered them up. Now they are coming up in bunches. I'm going to have to get some tweezers and start thinning them out!



I can't believe how everything is coming! I planted everything less than 2 weeks ago. I'll post more pictures as the weeks go by so you can see how big they will get in the gutters. The key is to use shallow-rooted vegetables (google "shallow root vegetables" to find out what to plant), they need very little room to grow.


Just some other things growing around the yard:

Peas in the flower garden. I've been trying to grown a cedar in this spot for the last 5 years and every year it dies. I gave up this year and planted peas there instead. So far, so good!



Just some purple I-don't-know-what!
I know what now! It's Lobelia erinus! Thanks you!!


Gorgeous rose:


Lavender:


"Fibre Optic" ornamental grass:


Daisies:

Devon Minor Baseball - Rookie #1 team

Just a few pictures from my little guy's baseball game earlier this week. I was playing around with special effects in photoshop to give them a lot of contrast and saturation. I kinda like the effect in sports shots.

Here is is catching for the very first time. He did great!





Can you see the ball? He hit it out of the park!



okay, not out of the part but....



He got a triple!