Almost forgot, a few folks wanted to see Pickles so here he/she is.
Loves jewellery.
Going through a summer moult so not quite as smooth and slick as normal. About the size of a Cockatiel, but sort of heavier in the body.
I had to take the pictures with my cell phone. For some reason he’s terrified of the digital camera. Not that it looks a lot different from my phone but whatever. Pickles is a diva. 
Posted in birds
We noticed last night that the toilet all of sudden wasn’t flushing. As we only have the one toilet in our wee house this is not acceptable. Mr. B got up nice and early this morning and off to Home Depot he went to get an auger. $100.00, boom. Not even 8:00 a.m. and we’re at a hundred bucks. Gonna be a good day.
And he augered and he augered and no joy. Toilet still wouldn’t flush. Grrrrr. Okay, next step, remove the toilet and give it a full internal. Teehee.
Once the patient was resting comfortably in the bathtub, Mr. B could begin the scoping procedure.
Are you surprised that he has a tool for that? I’m not. It’s a tiny camera with a light on the end of a flexy arm. He uses it at work to check for blockages in machines without having to uninstall them. He’s a pretty smart guy. Hmmmm, what can be the problem…what can be the. Got it.
Yep, there it is. That mass on the left side of the screen? That is one of Stella’s racquetballs. It would appear that at some point last night when one of us flushed the toilet and turned to the sink she hit the bowl for a drink and had to drop her ball first.
See, she loves to watch the water go round and round and then have a drink. Simple pleasures. Unfortunately, this simple pleasure was a bit expensive today. We could not get the ball out of the toilet no matter what we tried. It was up around the bend and was not willing to come out.
We could not save this patient. A new toilet was our only option. Back to Home Depot and another $100.00. Pretty expensive morning so far, eh?
There she is. All shiny and new. An added bonus is that bowl, tank, and lid are all one colour. This is a big step up for our funny little house. The previous set up was a yellow bowl, bone tank, and white lid.
The man who used to own our house was beyond frugal and tended to salvage things and cobble them together. Not too sure what to do with the old toilet now. I’m thinking a nice red neck planter in the yard. Class, we haz it!
tomorrow it will finally happen!
I’m going to eat your babies!!!!!!!!
Heck, I’m a gonna grill your babies! Mmmmmmm. Coolest thing in the garden? Spaceship zucchini:
Also known as Patty Pan. I’m a gonna grill you up tomorrow!
I’d do it tonight but I have knitting group. But tomorrow! You shall be mine!
The sweet peas are also starting to bloom. Better late than never! They smell amazing.
they like a nice cool bath. This is Chomper the Wonderbird in all his bathing glory. Isn’t it nice that Pampered Chef stoneware has so many uses?
Chompie is a Dutch Blue Pied Lovebird. He (guessing here, I think he’s a boy but I’m not positive. We’ve never had an egg though.) is a really fun and cuddly little bird. The other bird you hear squawking in the background is Pickles, a Green Cheeked Conure. A much more verbose bird who was not amused that the bathing extravaganza was happening on top of his house. And I’ve just realized that I have no pictures of Pickles at flickr. How can that be?
Okay, I’m going to torture my bird with the camera now. Perhaps another bathing beauties video for tomorrow?
Posted in birds
Summer seems to have found our little corner of the world with a vengeance. It took awhile to get here but it’s roasty toasty now. I’m having to water the garden pretty much every day. Mind you, I’m harvesting something pretty much every day too. Tomorrow, baby yellow zucchinis will be on my grill. Nom, nom, nom. Last night? Oh, it was gorgeous! It was a root crop extravaganza!
7 small to medium beets
3 small turnips
1/2 teaspoon ginger powder
1/2 teaspoon cumin
juice of 1/2 a lemon
some splooshings of olive oil
sea salt
Put all this in a nice aluminum foil packet (make sure you put a couple holes in it, you want roasted, not steamed here), and bung on a medium grill for about 35 mins. I also did baked potatoes at the same time. Oh, and there were mushroom slices with butter (also with a couple holes in the foil) for on top of the following flank steak. What flank steak you say? This flank steak.
The meat player in the game was a lovely flank steak. See, told you there was flank steak. Just salt and pepper for seasoning. Grill 5 mins, spin (not turn! Spin for pretty grill marks), grill a further 5 mins. Turn, grill 5 mins and spin again. You want to lovely grill marks. Let the steak rest at least a couple of minutes and then slice across the grain in 1/8 th inch slices.
It was lovely. Hmmm? What’s that? Pictures? I did think about it. After we had devoured it and were sitting back on the couch and burping. 
The beets were this variety from West Coast Seeds. They are growing so well and really are quite lovely. I’ll try to get a proper picture next time I cook them. They are tasty enough to eat raw, straight out of the garden. Like candy. Sort of like Abbie and I did one day last week. She had red juice all down her beard and looked like a little vampire.
Husband and I also fluked out and found some really nice and really cheap glass mosaic tile for our kitchen backsplash today. I had really wanted glass but it was over $35.00/sq foot to order. NOT! This, $7.19/sq foot:
It looks a bit like an acid trip in the picture. The sunlight was playing with it. It sure is pretty though. All kinds of greens/browns/golds/beiges. Really, it’s the 70′s in glass.
Which translates into the fact the I’ve stopped ignoring the sad 1/2 done quilt.
Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. What? Dory isn’t your philosopher of choice? Meh.
Today started a bit weird though. When I opened the front door I found this rather large fellow hanging off my screen door.
This little fellow was over an inch long. It’s called a Ten Stripe June Bug. Now, I’ve lived in Surrey almost all my life and I have never seen anything like this guy. Without the legs he sort of reminds me of a humbug candy. Added bonus? When he’s scared/feeling threatened, he hisses. You can just hear the hissing at around 18 or 19 seconds of this wee badly shot video.
It was just a weird version of Bug’s Life at our house today.
He hung there for over four hours this morning. Just scaring the dog with the hissing and creeping me out with the antennae. Have I mentioned how little I love the world of bugs? I know, I know, the gardening does make that vaguely ironic.
This week’s reserved book sort of goes to show the level to which I’m getting obsessed with the veggie garden.
This was one of the books recommended in the back of The $64 Tomato. Looks very interesting. Coupling recipes with gardening in one book is pretty much guaranteed to get my undivided attention. I briefly scanned through it and saw something about shallot & garlic butter sauce. Mmmmmm.
I also started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo today on the way to work. I’m only about 50 pages in so I don’t have much of an opinion yet.
Happy Friday everyone.
Posted in books
gives you things like this:
Note: Those tomatoes have already been cooked up with a tonne of mushrooms and ladled over some tortellini. Mmmmmmmm. There truly is no comparing supermarket tomatoes and fresh garden tomatoes. Even the ugly ones are beyond tasty.
We also finally have some peppers. Jalapeno:
Super hot Szechuan:
These are so cute. Maybe a 1/2 inch long, like tiny hot pepper toes.
We also have some tiny little purple beans starting on the bush bean plants:
So cute. I will still eat them. Cute will not save them.
I am a bit concerned though. My leeks seem to be dying. They just sort of turn brown/yellow and wilt away. I have to do some research tonight and find out what’s going on.
Posted in garden
Today was yarnpiggy’s birthday. I won’t say which birthday. Mrs Quimby and I kidnapped her and took her out for a day of horse racing and, wait for it, WEINER DOG RACING!
There were cupcakes:
Sort of screwed up the direction for the question mark. Sigh.
And grab bags full of goodies from Daiso:
Pretty horses:
Above is Burj Dubai who was recently purchased for $1 million and has a $100,000 stud fee. Youch! Pretty horse. Came in second which helped me win my exactor on the 6th race. I almost sound like I know what I’m talking about there, don’t I?
Hello $29.10 windfall! Made my entire day free.
I tried so hard to get pictures of the weiner dog races but here’s the problem. Weiner dogs are very short. Humans standing on benches to be able to see said weiner dogs, pretty darn tall. I have a number of shots of these people’s backs and backsides:
I did manage to get a shot of this very good natured horse. They sort of dressed him up as a dachshund.
Such a good sport to wear those big floppy ears without a fuss.
And now, it’s Sunday night and I’m finishing up the laundry and trying to figure out what to wear tomorrow. I’m in Vancouver for three days for an ATIP course for work. Admit it, you’re jealous!
Posted in life
It seems so strange to have such good weather after the weird/cold/wet/windy spring that seemed to go on forever. All the plants are finally really starting to thrive. This is the beans/carrots/beets/cucumber bed:
The carrots are so amazingly sweet, I can’t even describe how good they are. I also thinned the beets a couple of days ago, didn’t want them getting overcrowded. Abbie and I sat in the garden just gnoshing on those excess tender little red globes.
The beans are also starting to flower. The bush beans we planted produce a variety of coloured beans. White, purple, mottled reds. It’s kind neat that the flowers seem to be the same colour as the beans they will become once pollinated.
Purple flowers – going to be purple beans. Cool, right?
Today I planted a second planting of carrots, Swiss chard, onions, and beets. I also swatted very aggressively at some cabbage moths. Evil wicked things were lusting after my Brussels sprouts. Grrrrr.
In non-gardening related news, I have managed to figure out how to have a favourites list on my new phone and set up Twitter. Still a little unclear how to make a call to people not on said favourites list. I hate it that my phone is so much smarter than I am.
