The Spoils

This year's Great Glebe Garage Sale did not disappoint. After a chaotic morning in which darling Rosie and I went for a walk but she took her sweet time, and it ended up taking 40 minutes, during which loving hubby was freaking out about not getting a parking spot downtown and 'words' were exchanged, we finally found a spot (albeit not close) and made our way into the heart of the Glebe. So, after a week of paying for every $1 purchase with $20 bills, we waddled off with our backpacks full of change and had a terrific day of deal-making and chit-chatting with strangers and old friends.


Behold, our 2008 purchases:

(the darned cat is in the way)

From left to right:

• electric lawnmower ($20)
• cabinet of metal drawers for my seeds etc. ($5 or $2 can't remember)
• lawn edging - never used ($1)
• kiddie tent, to be used for animals ($2)
• rawhides for puppy (free)
• frisbee for puppy, which she can't play with yet ($1)
• electric boat motor ($10)
• Buster cube toy for Rosie ($2)
• all episodes of Twin Peaks on VHS tapes (free)
• little box of ancient fishing flies ($5)
• cool handmade plate, maybe from Mexico or something ($2)
• hummingbird feeder ($0.25)
• large laminated map of Quebec (free)
• ceramic cat teapot for my cat collection ($1)
• shortie Iris ($2)
• cool euphorbia ($5)
• tomato seedling grown by a very sick little boy ($0.50)
• canoe 'foamies' ($2)
• ice cream maker ($3)
• two silver spoons (?)
• a crowbar ($1)
• Bill Mason canoe book - Path of the Paddle ($3)
• Easy to make Outdoor Furniture ($2)
• large yellow wooden crate in which to store our pet food ($10 - with a story)

The lawnmower works great, I have hung up the hummingbird feeder and hubby enjoyed fishing with his electric motor - all in one day. So we made off like bandits, all for about $70.

The crate was a terrific find: we both saw it from afar, but they were asking $30 because it came with a sump pump and 100 feet of hose. As the guy was calling his buddy to see if he could sell just the box to us for $20, a goth-y looking couple came up and expressed interest in the sump pump, so we made a deal - they got the pump for $20 and we got the crate for $10. They had to stuff the 100 feet of hose into a suitcase they'd bought earlier, but it worked out well and we both went on our merry way.

That evening, we took Rosie to her first city party. That dog had never been to the city before, and she did pretty well, all things considered. She jumped on people and knocked over beer bottles and had the runs and barked at the neighbor's pet squirrels and managed to score a hamburger bun, but all in all she was pretty good, and was excellent when I took her for walks down busy sidewalks. I was very proud and will do it again.

I worked outside on Sunday, which was beautiful, and again on Monday, which started out yucky but ended up pretty ok, and managed to get a few things done. I put out my annuals, built a garden gate, and therefore was able to plant my tomatoes. See?

Shots of the perennial garden thrown in for good measure, though it doesn't look nearly as colourful as it should.

That's it for GGGS 2008. We are already making our list for 2009.

Dog gardening.

This past Victoria Day weekend presented me with new challenges, as two areas of my life are now necessarily intersecting.

It was a long weekend, and I was determined to get some plants into the ground, dammit. Seems I've only been able to work in short, 20-minute bursts so far this season, and I was resolved to get some planting done. I went to the garden centre with my mom and spent $56 on annuals for pots, for the garden, marigolds for the veggie garden, clover seed for the lawn, and a couple of other seedy things.

On Sunday I went out in the rain and put in additional rows of lettuce, beets, spinach, and bok choi. Then, on Monday, I tied the dog to her new little stake, measuring the approximate distance so that she'd be able to enter the veggie garden, but only by about 2 feet or so.

Well.

That didn't go well. I had all my flats of marigolds sitting there and she loves the bright flowers and the crinkly plastic. There went my marigolds, across the lawn. I managed to rescue them by pointing her towards a pansy bloom that she could eat, but she ripped out the entire pansy and flung it around. Every time she saw me digging a new hole for a marigold, she would start digging too - no matter what had previously been planted. Finally I managed to distract her enough to plant the marigolds (some had to be planted near the entrance), and moved on to other things. All was well.

Then yesterday (Monday) I planted up the rest of the annuals, and another pot. Missy didn't like that very much - once she was bored of her rawhide, she started barking at me, and every time I walked past her - necessary - she bit me. Hung onto my clothing with her teeth. It was charming. Not to mention that some had to be planted near her, so as soon as she saw that little crinkly plastic flat, she'd select a plant and run off with it in her mouth. What a brat.

Later on, I made the mistake of letting her off the leash. Well. She ran right into the veggie garden and went up and down the paths like a tasmanian devil, stopping only to dig dig dig riiiight where my baby bok choi and beets were trying to come up. I think she busted a few onions, chewed on a few others, and tossed up a couple of marigolds before I caught her.

This is all aside from the other problem of her pooing in my shade garden, and running through my perennial garden to chew on the cat.

So I need a gate. It's slipped my mind (or my energy?) for the last little while but I do need a gate. A really strong one. Otherwise that $56 (and more!) will have gone down the turlet.

In good news: I don't seem to have allergies anymore. Huh. Just like that, I am breathing through my nose. You'd think adding another animal to the household (and to the bedroom) would make everything worse, but it only seems to have improved things. Rosie is magic.

The photo post

I finally took some pictures of the stuff I've been doing, remembered to bring in my camera, and bothered to re-size them all. And so now, for your viewing pleasure, may I present the photo post (wherein I stack all of the photos relating to all of the things I've written about in the last 10 entries or so).

First up! Our trip to BC.

Our first day there, we went to the Vancouver Aquarium. These were a real highlight of our visit (in my opinion):

Don't ask me what kinds of jellyfish these are.

On our way back home, after visiting Kelowna.......we hit an all-you-can-eat sushi place. It was like eating on a dare. It was stunt eating. We didn't know when we first got there that A) you can order any quantity of anything you want, as long as you eat it within 2 hours, and B) whatever you don't finish, you will be charged full menu price for. Makes sense, from a business perspective, but we filled the table with a totally hedonistic array of raw stuff before we realized that rule. Also I drank a huge beer. After about an hour of eating, and my guiltily spitting a half-chewed California roll into my napkin (I was full up my neck!), this is what we were left with:

Actually I think I have the chronology wrong on this. I think that's the doomed california roll in the foreground. Who knew it'd be filled with crab salad and about the size of my fist?

Luckily we weren't charged. Our dinners were still $17.95 each - a total steal.

Then we came home and I gardened more. This is what the perennial beds look like these days:

I know! Same photo as last year right? But here's something I know you will be really excited about:
That there is an artichoke. They are biennial, so I grew them from seed last spring, planted them into the perennial bed (3 of them), and when winter came, I covered them in buckets stuffed with dry leaves. Then we had like 8 feet of snow on them or something. When I uncovered the buckets, they had been pressed into the ground so much by the weight of the snow that the earth heaved up and made big hills when I pulled the buckets off. Inside, what was left of the artichokes was all black and slimy and dead. I wrote them off. I said "oh well that serves me right for trying to grow mediterranean vegetables in Quebec." Then I saw these little guys last night. Totally adorable - gives me hope for the future and all that.

This weekend, I took my Saturday (by myself, hubby was fishing) and said "today I am going to do frivolous pretty things and no backbreaking work." So I did. I built birdhouses. For the veggie garden, to go on top of the new fenceposts I put in, which are still crooked grrrr. Here's the overall effect: And now a close-up:

When my dad asked me "what kinds of birds do you think you will get living in there?" I said "umm, the decorative kind?"


Last night we went on a long walk with Rosie - down the hill, across the road, down the path, through the swamp (well, Rosie did - she went for a wee swim), up the trail, around the mountain, and down the road again. While up on the mountain, at the end of a freshly-blasted road, we found a spot of land that looks like it'd been cleared for a lot, but maybe 5 years ago. It had plants all over it, including this little beauty, which I promptly dug up with a stick and transplanted to my own garden:

I have no idea what it is - overall it's abotu 4" tall, the flowers are green (centre) and look a bit like little hellebores, except for the leaves, which almost have a ginkgo look to them. Here it had been freshly watered so it looks a bit worse for the wear, but I think it'll be fine. You see, the place where we got it from is owned by a bad bad man who likes dynamite too much, and builds ugly houses, and loves bulldozers. And he is a real jerk, and nobody in my neighborhood likes him. So I took his plant. He would never have known its beauty anyway. I am going up there again tonight to see what else I can take, I hate him that much.

ANYWAY! On to nicer things. Here's something I love more than I ever could have known:

And I have an update to yesterday's post, in which I showed off my new patio set. When I went onto the website to get the photo of the set, I discovered that it was ON SALE. I bought it Friday and it was on sale, 3 days later. So I promptly finished the post, and called them up, and got them to reimburse me the $250 difference. VICTORY! I felt like a million bucks, I tell you. There's nobody who likes a deal more than me. OK well maybe my grandmother.

So that was the photo post. Hopefully I'll be able to do this more often, post photos more regularly.

getting better all the time

6.6!

That's the number of hours I managed to sleep last night! That's really big news.

We've managed to find a new groove, me n' Rosie, where she actually wants to follow me up to bed each night.

Since we keep the stairs blocked off during the day, and she weighs almost 40 lbs, she has to have permission to come upstairs. On Friday night, I went to bed at 11 and she busted down the barricade, came upstairs and sniffed around beside my bed for a bit, then went into her crate. Hubby brought her out again, fearing that she wouldn't sleep through the night if allowed to go to bed early. On Saturday night, I had a bath late, and went upstairs to get dressed, and she once again forced her way up, thinking I was going to bed. I had to convince her to get out of her crate and follow me downstairs, where we snuggled on the couch instead.

Last night, I brought her to bed with me at the normal time. Only I had to clean up laundry before getting into bed, and she wanted to invade the bed and it was chaos, so I had to put her in the crate while sorting laundry and that wasn't a popular idea. She barked and barked and barked and then 'thunk' - passed out. And stayed passed out for six-point-six hours.

The real experiment will be to see if she does it again tonight. Since she's active all day long while we're home, she burns more energy and is more pooped at night. During the week, not so much. She's active in the morning, at noon, and at night. She sleeps through the rest of it.

This sleeping upstairs thing is working well for us. The cats are even able to sleep on the bed without being barked at, and their presence doesn't keep her from sleeping. She seems to relax immediately and completely up there. When she wakes up, I can hear her breathing and moving and scratching herself, and hear her tags jingling a bit, but she's very quiet and doesn't wake us up until she feels it's really necessary. When I open the crate door, it takes her awhile to get out - she has to stretch and do her morning yoga routine before she can get going. Then she sits at the top of the stairs and waits, because she's not totally confident on the stairs when she just wakes up.

The key really is to have her in a spot where she can see, hear and smell us all night long. She quickly tunes into our sleep patterns, and it doesn't hurt that the bedroom is really really dark thanks to my newish dark purple Ikea curtains. She has a seperate crate for daytime - a wire one, so it's very open and airy and her comfy dog bed is in it - but the sleeping crate is like a big plastic cave. She needs zero convincing to go in there. I can't say I blame her.

There are now only THREE major problems we have to deal with in terms of Rosie:

1) She pees when she meets people and gets really excited. She jumps up too.
2) She attacks the cat harder than ever. Sometimes she dribbles here too, from excitement.

3) She jumps up against counters and tables and will eat or lick or paw at anything that's within 8" of the edge.

Aside from that, everything's just normal puppy stuff. She's gotten mouthy and bitey again, but it seems to be a teething thing, and mostly playful or done for relief. I think the texture of my hand is perfect for sore gums, like a pliant rubber. She does snap at me once in a while but that's a phase. She's testing her limitations. She doesn't do it with my parents, but I have found it's even common in humans to treat your grandparents better than you treat your parents. Especially as a teenager. And why would she snap at them? When she's over there she's spoiled ROTTEN! I came home Friday after an event, picked her up at my parents', and she had enjoyed treats all afternoon long, including a simply enormous beef marrow bone that my mom had gotten from the butcher - special order no less. It's as long as her leg. It looks like a dinosaur bone and it's totally repulsive. The way to Rosie's heart is definitely through her stomach.

And on the plus side, I get a lot done when I wake up at 5 or 5:30 - the days seem very long and full and satisfying. I just don't have a lot of wiggle room in the evenings. If I go to bed at one a.m., that means 4.5 hours of sleep. No more Saturday Night Live for me. I am getting used to this new routine.

Tomorrow I'll post pictures of what I did with my weekend. In the meantime, here's a shot of the wee giftie I bought myself last week.....due to arrive in a week or so.

Fa la la la la

SO! 'Tis almost the season to be jolly, thrifty, spendy, and all that. If I were to rank holidays in terms of their importance and excitement level in my household, I would have to rank them accordingly:

- Christmas
- Great Glebe Garage Sale
- Halloween
- Victoria Day weekend
- Canada Day weekend
- August long weekend
- Labour day
- Easter
- Thanksgiving
- New Year's

.... and so on to all of the other holidays from other cultures that we do not celebrate in our home, which do not come with government holidays (i.e. St. Patrick's Day. ha ha ha).

The Great Glebe Garage sale happens the fourth Saturday of every May, and it is the most fabulous thing ever. When I was young, I would meet cool, hip, 'adults' who would tell me about the most interesting amazing things they managed to buy at the GGGS. I always wanted to go. But I was a country kid, and the GGGS happens in the city, so without wheels or adult supervision I was unable to see it, or to even fathom the giganticness and fabulosity of the event.

Basically, the Glebe is a neat area of Ottawa filled with residential homes that are a mix of upwardly mobile young families, students, and older people who have been living there for ages and are also therefore upwardly mobile. It's not cheap, let's say. People have nice gardens and there are a lot of individuals who seem to travel the world a lot. The houses are mostly old, and cool, and stately, and for the most part very well maintained. Bank street is a major artery that runs through the area, and the Glebe section of it has become completely gentrified with interesting little knicknack shops, pubs, knitting stores, bookstores, Starbucks, organic bakeries, restaurants, etc. You get the picture.

On this one Saturday of the year, all the residents empty out their basements and garages and put their stuff all out on the lawns to form one massive garage sale that spans about 60 city blocks. To put it into perspective, when we go each year, we are only able to see about 2o% of it in 6 hours of solid walking. Bank street businesses all have sidewalk sales, and the only way to travel around is by foot, it's all so busy. If you haven't gotten a parking spot on the street by 7:30 a.m., you won't, even though the official start time is 9:00.

It's like a big county fair, urban market, or bazaar. All of the streetmeat vendors are out, all of the buskers are around, there is a Dixieland jazz band made up of very talented old-timers that plays on a front porch every year, gathering huge crowds, and every kid who plays the violin or cello is out on the front lawn with an open case for donations. Little ones set up lemonade stands and sell their mom's overpriced cookies, and all of the local churches fill their parking lots and front yards with tables that out-of-neighborhooders can rent. People with gardens, who have necessarily done their spring perennial-dividing and tomato-starting, sell the plants and herbs that you can see flourishing in their yards. The ATMs are empty by 10 a.m. You have to wait in line for 30 minutes to get a Starbucks, if you are so inclined. On a sunny day, it feels like the most amazing place in the world.

If you are sitting there thinking "well Gennyland must just like to shop," consider this: it's my husband's favourite day of the year. He's mental for it. The day after the GGGS, he's already making a list of stuff to look for at the next year's sale.

Here is a partial list of things we have bought at the GGGS in past years:

- African straw basket that stores our kindling;
- Moroccan lantern/light fixture that I haven't yet installed anywhere, but which the dog likes to carry around in her mouth;
- Anton Pieck framed relief picture;
- Set of left-handed golf clubs for $10. I am right-handed. I re-sold them for $20;
- Brand-new camping cot;
- Book of retro cottage/cabin designs, which we consult more often than you might guess;
- My everyday set of '70s flowered pots and pans;
- Miscellaneous perennials which have now completely integrated into my garden. Includes silver ferns;
- An old turntable, which was free, because it doesn't work;
- Another black cat for my ceramic black cat collection;
- Many many old and new fishing lures (hubby's);
- Antique 'Urine Sample' bottle, which sits on the bathroom vanity;
- Roof racks that didn't come with their key, or even fit our car;
- set of 6 'wrought iron' sea creatures;
- antique galvanized tin bucket that I use as a planter in the summer;
- a 1980's video camera which takes VHS tapes. It's humungous, but hubby wanted to try making his own fishing show (sigh).

It's our annual opportunity to acquire eclectic objects for our home and garden. This year, however, I've gotten hard-ass about it. I've told hubby that if we want to go to town at the GGGS as we have in previous years, we have to first spend a day cleaning out the basement and throwing some of our current junk away. We have no more room to store camping cots, left-handed golf clubs, turntables that don't work and roof racks that are useless to us. We have yet to tackle this tossing of the junk, but I feel confident that we will have the chance sometime in the next 22 days. I'm thinking we could probably lose the plastic outdoor furniture that's been under the deck for 6 years, the headboard that we found in the garbage which doesn't fit any of our beds, the used-outdoors rug that's been mouldy and rolled up in the corner of the basement for 5 years, OR the 1950's fridge that occupies the middle section of my laundry area, which when we moved in contained only a rusted old pick-axe.

Just sayin'.

So, the GGGS kicks off the summer for us. It's the first chance to wear shorts in public and wear sunscreen for the day. I have to save up my coins and find myself a decent fannypack (when did I ever think I'd hear myself say/write that?) I'm off to make myself a list of things to look for.