Thank you for all the concern about our trials over the past couple of days. As I said, in the long run, we are far luckier than many of our neighbours. With the exception of Dory, things are pretty much back to normal. Annoyingly, my headache turned into a weekend-long migraine, but on Saturday, there were no more generators running, and by Sunday, the cacophony of chainsaws and wood chippers was significantly lessened.

Dave has also started on rebuilding the side fence.

Orginally, the fence ran from the back corner of the house, at the line where the coneflowers on the right side are. He’s now got the posts (and framing, not pictured) in, and it’s much closer to the front of the house, in front of the maple tree. That brings all the space between the small garden and the tree into the backyard. It will become my shaded “woodland” garden.

Moving the fence was a project we planned to do in the fall. The storm just moved it up for us. Getting the rest of the materials will have to wait until we can get Dory back, because we can’t fit all the wood we need in Dave’s Buick.

While he was building the fence framing, I was doing my best to tidy up the gardens. I love getting on level with the plants. There’s an amazing world in there that we so often overlook.

This little guy is an Eight-Spotted Forester Moth. It’s a new one for my garden. I just love those fuzzy golden legs!

There are several backyard ponds around us, so dragonflies are a common sight. I still delight in seeing them.

And check out this master of disguise…

Can’t see him? How about now…

This little Katydid is almost perfectly invisible. I wouldn’t have seen him if he hadn’t moved! A perfect way to outwit predators.

And last… it seems Ms. Monarch did her job. The common milkweed were almost all completely knocked over in the storm, and when I was staking them back up, I noticed some holes in the leaves. It didn’t take long to discover why.

That’s a monarch caterpillar. And that’s my thumb! Such a wee little thing. And it wasn’t until I opened the pictures on my computer that I noticed the second, even smaller caterpillar. Can you see him by the hole?

I found this third, larger one on the pod on the swamp milkweed. With a little luck, we might get another monarch chrysalis or two.

You bet I’ll be keeping my eye out for these, and all the other little tiny miracles that call my garden home.

Welcome back.

As you read yesterday, we survived the storm (what local science-people are now saying was likely a downburst, not a tornado) relatively unscathed. The drama for us came afterwards.

With no power, and no prospect of it coming back on any time soon, we decided to head to town (Strathroy) to get some dinner and some yard waste bags for the next days expected clean-up.

We got to the store 10 minute before it closed, got our bags, got back in the truck…

And it wouldn’t start.

Help arrived about 40 minutes later.

His name was Benny. While Benny kept me company (and gave me kisses) Benny’s driver (Chris) and Dave mucked about under the hood for a while before finally determining I had broken the shift linkage. Though my shifter was in park, my transmission was still in drive.

I said goodbye to Benny, got in, put my foot on the brake, and they manually put the truck into park so I could start it. Once started, they manually put it into drive! Hooray.

Though of course, that’s only enough to get us home. The linkage is still broken, and we can’t kept doing the manual thing.

We drove it directly to the mechanic shop, which is only a few minutes from home. And being in the same town, they got hit by the same storm…

And they’ve got some clean-up to do before they’ll get to my truck. Yep… that’s a tree on top of the shop, and one of the classic cars they were in the midst of restoring…

So needless to say, my truck is a little lower down on their priority list.

We have Dave’s car still so that’s not the end of the world.

We left the truck in the tree-free part of their lot, walked home and promptly went to bed.

When Dave woke up the next morning, the power was still out so he decided we needed to get our generator on and hooked up to the fridge and freezer. And for some reason, that mean my grumpy butt had to get out of bed and go get gas with him.

That done, we got home, he started the generator, and I started on yard clean-up.

Normally, our neighbourhood is a symphony of birdsong, punctuated by the occasional dog bark interlude. But Friday afternoon – it was a heavy metal concert featuring multiple generators, chainsaws and woodchippers. Everyone was out doing their part to clean up.

I usually handle noise pretty well, but after a morning in the heat, it was really starting to get to me. Around 1 pm, we came in the house for a rest. A short while later, Dave realized our generator wasn’t running anymore.

He went back outside to much with it. A couple hours later, I told him it was time to admit defeat and off we went to buy another one. With the whole town without power, as you can imagine, generators were as little tough to come by at the local stores.

We managed to find one and headed back home. Dave got it set up and running, while I tackled some more of the yard. By the time I was done, my head was absolutely splitting from all the noise.

And then… 28 hours after it went out – those amazing hydro workers got our power restored! (As much as I’m complaining about my drama – I’m really glad I don’t have their job!)

We still have some clean-up to do

Mostly in the catio yard, and garden beds. There are leaves and small branches everywhere.

And despite our trials and drama of the weekend, we are still very lucky. But I’m ready for a little more normal.

Thursday started out like any normal day. I worked in my office, while Dave puttered about the house getting ready to teach (online), later that afternoon. About mid-afternoon, I checked the weather and noted to Dave that were were supposed to get rain later in the evening, and he said the news was saying it was probably going to be an intense storm. I told him I hoped I would have enough time after work to get my lawn cut before the storm hit.

We both went back to our respective offices to do our usual thing. 4:30 rolled around and I was just wrapping up my work, noting that the sky was getting dark. I could hear Dave in his studio, starting his lesson with his student. And then my phone buzzed.

Tornado warning.

Now this isn’t the kind of tornado warning you get in tornado alley… ie – take cover now. It’s a “There’s a storm coming you way – could spawn a tornado… if weather gets bad, take cover”

I went outside to get a better look… the sky was dark, but also glowing a little – a warm, but eerie glow. The air was dead calm. The birds were silent. I came back in the house and started battening down the hatches. I locked the catio door so it wouldn’t bang in the wind (it doesn’t latch). I made sure the cats were all inside, and locked up the cat flap. About five minutes later, the wind stirred up. It was a howler…

The wind roared and whistled around the house. The rain came in sheets so thick you could barely see more than a foot out the window. Thunder and lightning cracked. Then a couple trees up the street fell in the road… and the power went out.

That’s when Dave came out of his studio. We paced the first floor, transfixed, watching – moving from window to window to see what we could see… it was hard to describe the intensity of the wind… I’ve never seen anything like it. All the while it roared and whistled.

And then in about 10 minutes… the wind died, almost as if it had never been. The rain slowed. Thunder still rumbled but we took the chance to step out onto the front porch.

Two houses up from us – at the corner, several trees blocked the road. I could smell natural gas. Then came the fire truck. (Sorry Dee, I didn’t take a picture). We watched them do their thing, assessing the house with the fallen trees.

A little while later, they started to go door to door. One of the trees hit and broke a gas line. They asked us not to start are vehicles and just sit tight until the gas company could get there.

The rain had stopped, so we took a look around the house.

We lost the side fence, which was coming down this year and being rebuilt anyway. But other than that – we escaped damage. I had a lot of small branches and leaves to clean up, and the gardens got beat about a bit. But that was it.

When the thunder finally stopped and the sky cleared, I went for a little walk. We were definitely among the lucky ones.

Trees down everywhere. I’ve personally never witnessed anything like it. On my walk, I saw a few vehicles with minor damage, and amazingly, only a couple of houses with trees on them. Even as I was walking – no more than 30 minutes after the storm, homeowners were out everywhere with chainsaws, working away to get trees out of the road so emergency vehicles and hydro trucks could get through.

There’s more to our tale, and I’ll share it tomorrow. But we are all safe and well, and in awe of mother nature.

In the meantime you can read about the storm and the range of the damage here.

To be continued…

Shhhhh…..

Don’t wake the baby…

I’m happy to report some good news in the butterfly department…

In addition to these two regulars….

The monarchs have arrived! I’ve seen a couple now… possibly the same one a couple times. But I’m hoping this means that the butterfly hoards are just a little delayed due to the cold spring. And yes, that is the milkweed Ms. Monarch is hanging out on… perhaps we will have caterpillars soon!

And now that the rain has backed off a bit, we have more honey bee visitors

And lets not forget the bumblebees

While I didn’t catch the preying mantis’ hatching, I’ve been finding wee baby mantises all over the garden

And if you look closely, you’ll notice he has half a fly for a snack.

And this pretty little lady is about to chow down…

The False Sunflowers really attract aphids, so the Ladybugs are always a welcome visitor!

If you’ve had enough of creepy crawlies, how about a grumpy robin fledgling?

Or a bi-coloured squirrel

As soon as I finished making the blocks for the last Leader/Ender quilt, I started making blocks for a new one!

Nice big 16-patch blocks! Well… 4-patches that I’m sewing together into 16-patches. I’m not 100% decided on which quilt I’m making… but it will be one of these two.

The individual squares I’m using are all 3″ scraps, so each 16-patch finishes at 10″. Nice big blocks to make another wild, scrappy quilt!

Well… you all knew this was coming… so here it is!!!! The completed Butterfly and Thistle project!

I used to hate all the outlining when I did cross-stitch in my younger years, but I don’t really mind it at all now. And of course, I love the way it make a project look finished.

I do need to work on my French Knots… I’ve always had trouble with them . But these ones will suffice for this project.

It was definitely a challenging project. Not because of the size – it’s only about 7 inches tall. No… it was all the crazy colour changes and symbols in the chart. Some of the colours are very close together and this chart definitely could have benefitted from some simplification.

There are LOTS of mistakes in both the stitching and the outlining. At certain points I gave up on trying to follow the pattern and just winged it.

But unless you sit it beside the chart and compare stitch for stitch… well no one is ever going to know where!

This one will get framed eventually (I think it’s going to be a Christmas gift), but that can wait a bit. I’ve got my next project all lined up, and I promise… it’s a lot less complicated than this one. I’m definitely in the mood for something a little lighter!

I think part of the reason the gardens are doing so well is all the rain we’ve had. While the end of May, beginning of June were super dry, mid/late June brought the rain and it’s just kept coming. This past week, we’ve had some really heavy downpours (other places in the province had tornadoes!).

Saturday rained all day, on and off. So it seemed like a good time to just stay inside and sew (really, it doesn’t take much of a nudge to get me to do that!)

I got started a little later than planned (no reason, just a really lazy morning), so I decided instead of starting something new (which was the original plan), I’d put together a couple more blocks for my red/cream quilt.

I absolutely love these blocks! And apparently Burton does too! While everything is cut and ready to go, they still take a couple hours to put together a pair. And the results are so worth it!

Each block is 16 inches, and the 8 I have done so far already cover half the bed.

Of course, it will be a bit smaller when they are all sewn together, but it should still cover the top of the bed. Then I will add border to build it out to about Queen-sized.

No matter the size, it’s definitely going to be a stunner! (and yes… I still have to fix one of my blocks!!!)

After the expenses on the house the past couple of months (windows and basement work), not to mention a rather large Missouri Star Quilt order that just showed up (I needed a backing for my Hallowe’en quilt and apparently I have no self-control in the face of sale fabric)… I decided it would be a good idea to do a No-Buy July.

Now… past experience would tell you that I’m generally not good a spend-free months in general. But July??? Its a really bad time because it’s when ALLLLL the garden stuff goes on clearance.

I was doing pretty good – until last week. Dave wanted to go to Canadian Tire to get some weather stripping or some such for the doors. (We have the energy audit coming up for our rebate on the windows and basement and he wants to make the house as tight as possible). I did very good and bypassed allllll the clearance plants they had at the entrance.

But Canadian Tire didn’t have what he was looking for, so off we went to Peavey Mart (It’s a farm supply store mostly, but they have some general hardware and such). And all their garden stuff was on clearance. I was very good. I didn’t come home with any more plants… but I might have bought a small green house.

And when I say small… I mean it. It’s advertised as a “portable” greenhouse. It’s basically just a shelf with a plastic raincoat.

It was originally $120, and was marked down to $40. As soon as we got home, I started putting it together. And let me tell you – if I’d paid full price for it, I would have been one unhappy shopper. It’s so cheaply made, it’s barely worth the $40 I paid for it!

But… it should serve my purposes for a year or two.

As you know, I’ve experimented growing from seed with very mixed results. My lupins and daisies were all started from seed at the townhouse.

My success with growing sunflowers from seed has been about 50/50.

The last couple of years, most of the perrenials I started from seed didn’t make it past seedlings. And all the veg I started inside this year – total fail. I ended up re-planting everything out there directly.

I’m hoping this little greenhouse will give me a bit of a leg up. It should help with one of my major problems, which is the squirrels! As soon as I move my seedlings outside, the squirrels start digging and making a mess.

This tray, and another on the shelf below it, are all that remains of the seeds I started in May. And you can see from the uneven soil levels in the trays that the squirrels had quite a go at these ones. I’m amazed anything is growing at all! (These are Black-eyed Susans, Lupins, Chinese Lanterns, Delphinium and Columbine). The squirrels absolutely decimated the ALL the sunflowers I planted.

I will start some more sunflowers. I think there’s enough time to get some grown and blooming before fall. And I’m going to go through my seed collection and see what else I can get started.

Despite the squirrels, things are going well in Edible Alley. Dave’s gotten to snack on another bowl of peas, and a couple beans.

The second sowing of carrots is starting to sprout, as are the chives and catnip! Certainly took them long enough!

And I’ve got baby cucumbers!!!!

Aren’t they just the cutest things??? I just love wee-baby veg!

And as great as that is… something weird was happening in the tomatoes. You will recall that I planted two grape tomato plants.

They came from the same nursery pack, they are planted in the same raised box, side by side, growing in the exact same conditions…but…..

For some reason the one on the left has all curled up, while the one on the right is growing perfectly happily. I looked it up and didn’t get many good answers…. too much water, not enough water, too little magnesium… But again… they are side by side!!!!

I gave up trying to figure it out and just pulled the curly one. The tomatoes came in a pack of three, and I have the third one (which was kind of a runt) growing in a pot. I’m going to transplant it into the open space now.

Gardening… it can be a real roller-coaster ride sometimes!

As you can see, it’s full-on daylily time here. And that isn’t even all of them. There are several more to come. I think I said it before, but if I could only have one type of flower in my garden, it would be daylilies. Because the possibilities are just endless with them!

And check out this beautiful mutant. It’s on the Purple D’Oro plant. Not only is it a lighter shade… but it’s got too many petals! Apparently this happens time to time with day lilies, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it in my garden. It’s the only one on that plant too – all the rest have been normal.

Of course, I can have more than one flower in my garden so it’s not just daylilies. It’s also roses!

Quicksilver – the second of the climbing roses I bought for the arbour – has finally bloomed. At first, I wasn’t too impressed – the buds are a little on the raggedy side. But it slowly opened into a beautiful mauvey pink mass of petals.

It’s certainly going to be able to hold its own with Eden, it’s climbing mate on the other side of the arbour. She’s turned out to be a quite prolific bloomer, which I absolutely love!

The Honeysuckle on the catio has started to bloom. I was a little worried about this one. It got hit by a nasty aphid attack in spring, and all the buds it had in late May just died off. But this later batch seem to be doing much better. The yellow one I bought for dress form isn’t blooming, but it has started to put on some good new growth. I was getting worried about it too.

And I wanted to share how wel my little shade garden has come along.

Can you believe how much it’s grown in just a month?

And I’m normally not a big fan of Impatiens. I only planted them here to fill in a few of the empty spaces, and because I knew they’d do well in the shade. But boy do they ever pop!

And it’s a similar story with the front walkway garden, though it’s had a few more weeks to develop.

And if you want to go back even further…

Check out the catio at this time LAST year, and how it looks now.

It just shows you, it doesn’t really take long for a garden to get established.