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During mom's trip to Britain in May, the tour bus stopped at this place in Scotland. She just sent the brochure in the mail and you could have knocked me over with a green feather when I saw it. Who would have thought...
Last weekend was the great surprise party for my son-in-law. His mom arrived from Toronto and forty guests showed up at Gwen's house to help the family celebrate. We had a window of two hours to transform the place while Sean was out on the pretense of helping Robb and Vi move the sofa into their new home. The car went off down the street and we went into action. A tent was put up on the front lawn, complete with a neighbour's wicker furniture and lanterns and everything got rearranged in the kitchen and living room. Wine, cheese, crackers, fruit, dip, bread, plates, napkins, glasses and birthday cakes came out of hiding and onto white tablecloths. Guests arrived in droves and we were ready and waiting. The look on Sean's face when he walked through the door, was priceless. He thought we were having a family barbecue and had stopped to pick up some corn on the way home, so the surprise was a surprise after all. The rooms were full of laughter, good music, remember whens and heaps of fun until well after midnight. Even the pouring rain couldn't dampen the spirit of the day. The next morning called for a little quiet time, but out on the back step, the music continued as nephew and uncle sang a Beatles song...Mother Nature's Son...
After having a foster child here for respite for the past week, I'm getting ready yet again to head to Vancouver for the weekend. There's going to be a rather large surprise birthday party for my son-in-law at Gwen's. Sean's mom is arriving from Toronto tomorrow to take part in the festivities and all of the west coast family members will be there. Yippee...more grandson time with nanny!
I've been busy in the garden since I got home from Jayne's, despite several rainy days doing their best to put a damper on things. Regardless of the weather, Casper looks forward to his long beach walks twice a day and so do I. He looked like he'd been dragged through a hedge backwards yesterday, after swimming through seaweed, scouring the rocks for crabs and nosing about in a freshly edged muddy border of the garden searching for wood bugs. He's not fond of baths, but we didn't have a choice in the matter and once it's over, he loves to preen. Just look at my wispy dandelion of a dog, all clean and fluffy. Good dog, Casper...
This is completely off-topic, but after Sandra commented on a flickr photo of mine, showing some piled rocks and saying that it reminded her of the land art of Andy Goldsworthy, I decided to try my hand at doing something similar on the gravel patch in front of the fountain. Here's Andy's handiwork...
His stones are cracked to follow a continuous line around the spiral and even though another flickr member told me how to do this by hitting the rocks with another rock, I couldn't manage to come even close to breaking one. I gathered basalt from the beach and placed a heart-shaped stone in the center. I started scratching the stones to imitate the crack lines of Andy's and when it stops raining, I'll be able to work on the rest...
"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination." Mrs. Earle 1897
I received a surprise card in the mail, all the way from Sanday, one of the Orkney Islands. Beth found it at the little post office there, when she rode her bicycle to mail some letters. She knew that I would love it and it's easy to see why...
Beth and I met after leaving comments on each others flickr photos and I find her blog fascinating...she writes about living on a small and very remote island. Small, yes, but they have green wellies at the post office!
While searching for rocks for my spiral project, I found the driver end of a golf club and four golf balls...not your normal flotsam and jetsam and the joke is that they floated there on the Golf Stream...
So much to do, so much I want to do and not enough hours in the day...and that's a good thing!
The three days at Jayne's meant going flat-out from morning until night, jumping from one thing to another and cramming something into every second...that's how it always is when we get together. We charge each other up and the energy flows. We did the usual things...thrift stores and crafts until midnight, but the real fun came when we decided to make another natural filtering system for her pond. The spark for that idea came after she'd taken me to tour a magical garden space of a friend of hers...five ponds, water dripping everywhere, lush plant groupings, found objects put to good use and colourful blooms to the left and to the right of us.
We found a metal shelving unit and dismantled one of those tiered wire baskets used for hanging fruit. We cut the chains and hooked the baskets onto the bars of the shelf. Then we lined the baskets with netting, grabbed the dogs and headed down the road and into the woods to collect moss and baby ferns. Once these were set into the baskets, Jayne hiked up her skirt and waded into the pond to hook up the pump and plastic tubing. Water flows through the tube and works its way down through all three baskets, being filtered as it goes before dripping clean into the pond.
Before and a few hours after...
We first tried the rusted heavy metal koi fish as a topper, but it wouldn't sit right, so we settled on a piece of pond lily pottery that Jayne made. Eventually, the moss, ferns and other plants will grow down over the metal baskets. I was amazed at how clear the water was that dripped from the bottom. Altogether, a good recycling project with much fun and laughter added to the mix. Jayne isn't one to throw on old clothes for something like this. I wore a pair of capris, a thrift store Hawaiian shirt and my Holey Soles and my sister looked like this when we wandered the muddy trail through the woods in search of moss...
...new lime Converse runners, light gray skirt and sweet little white sweater. Even building pond filters can be a fashionable event for her and she does it with such ease. She did change into her bathing suit when we discovered a huge wheel of wood caught on the rocks down on her beach and it became an instant must-have. I'm not sure how we managed, but we used poles and feet to pry it from the side of the breakwater and into the water, waded with it to shore and upended it over and over until we got it above the tide line to dry. She figures it will make a fabulous circular bench. Getting it from the beach to her garden is going to be another story and I wish I could have stayed to watch it play out.
Yup...I'm off gallivanting again, as my grandmother used to say. I'm heading up to my sister's Sunday morning for three days and lord only knows what we'll get up to...lots of belly laughs and beach walks with the dogs, no matter what else happens. My niece has been in Vancouver for the week and I picked her up from the bus depot tonight, so she can make the rest of the journey with Casper and me. It will be great to have her company on the car and ferry ride, but seeing as how she's the world's biggest Harry Potter fan, I know what the topic of conversation will be.
This weekend also marks a year since my dad passed away, so it's good to be with family.
* Leslie...you should love the title!
Take one warm sunny day (when cloudy weather and showers were forecast), add a bunch of family members and a heap of friends, toss in one wonderful three-year old grandson with a half-dozen small children, mix five rescue dogs together, blend in good food, fun conversations, a birthday party and a bocce ball tournament, add a dash of wine and beer (juice for some), stir altogether vigorously and you have an incredible weekend...
Congratulations to Sean and Annie for their win (in the dark, by flashlight...the game went on and on), but we'd all better hone our skills...with techniques like this one, it won't be long before Aethan will be taking home the trophy...
