Category Archives: Uncategorized

Menu for when it’s too hot to cook, and things I don’t understand.

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I’m not trying to make any political statements here, honestly, but there is something I really do not understand. In the past week, I have seen three separate writings about the horrors of cargo shorts and I have to ask my dear readers: why? Why are cargo shorts such reviled things? I’m asking honestly here, since I am not a person who likes shorts to begin with, and I fail to see much difference between regular shorts and cargo shorts. Shorts, in my humble opinion, are unflattering at the best of times but I recognize that occasionally practicality must prevail. Just like giant puffy coats in winter, sometimes shorts are a necessary evil to survival in the summer. Not, I hastily add, for me, but for others.

Well, I say this, but I actually have a pair of booty shorts that I will occasionally don when it is very hot and I don’t want to completely dehydrate while doing my cardio workout. I have not yet worn them off my own property yet, to be viewed by people not related or married to me, but I do wear them on occasion nonetheless. Again, reiterating, the need for practicality sometimes – SOMETIMES – surpasses the desire to be fashionable.

Back to cargo shorts. Why are they any different from regular shorts? Sure, they have huge pockets, but aren’t pockets a thing we enjoy in life? At least I enjoy being able to carry things with me, not unlike a turtle. My overstuffed purse is testament to this.

I guess I just don’t understand. I also don’t understand the hate for Nickleback, which probably says something about me. Hey, I understand not liking certain bands or musical genres – not everything floats everyone’s musical boats. I just don’t understand the vitriol towards them, or, seemingly relatedly, cargo shorts.

But I am open to (reasonable) debate on those topics.

I will tell you one thing that I don’t understand the seemingly universal love and infatuation with: the poop emoji. Last week when I was at the local amusement park with the kids, I noticed that the majority of the large prizes at the (rigged) games were stuffed poop emojis, replacing the Spongebobs and Pikachus of yesteryear. Why. WHY. Why is this a thing? Why do we want to have our children snuggle with cartoon versions of piles of defecation, or worse, wear those cartoon versions of piles of defecation ON THEIR HEADS.

A smiley face does not counteract the grossness.

A friend (HI JENNIFER) pointed out that there is – and I cannot believe that I am typing this – a “poop emoji cafe” that serves food in toilet shaped bowls, features toilets for chairs, and specializes in chocolate soft serve ice cream someone please stop the madness. I feel ill just thinking about it.

Unless a person is a medical professional specializing in intestinal issues, I do not want to discuss bowel movements. I will talk about facial hair, waxing, ladies’ holidays, and underwear, but this is a bridge too far. What happens in the toilet should stay in the toilet, so let’s pretend that the poop emoji was never invented and instead bring our focus onto the unicorns, diamond rings, coffee, wine, and heart emojis. MAYBE even the taco and/ or eggplant ones if we are feeling saucy and in the mood for sexting, middle-aged style.

Anyway. This is not what I meant to write about today. What I had been meaning to write about was a menu for when it’s too hot to cook. I swear to you that it has actually been – for a couple of days – too hot to cook in Calgary, and that is a thing that is uncommon and rare. My husband took the kids camping on the weekend and for my evening “off” I made a single-girl meal of pesto, guacamole, crackers, dried mangoes, and vodka. It was a thing of beauty. I have an indoor herb garden and the basil was ready to be harvested, and so I made a glorious pesto. I just wish there was more of it! However, I am not suggesting this as a meal plan for everyday.

Lately, when it’s been too hot to cook, I’ve been resorting to simple meals like Greek salad with pita and hummus – for those of you non-dairy types, you can find my recipe for almond feta here. Although, frankly, Greek salad with pita and hummus is on the regular rotation here – it’s a Friday night meal that the guys round out with some sauteed chicken breast.

Other great ideas for simple summer suppers: Lemony Lentil Salad, Sundried Tomato Pasta Salad, Avocado Pasta Salad, and pasta salad with homemade ranch dressing. I also have been making a Thai noodle salad using stir fry noodles, veggies, and a sauce made up of 3 tbsp each soy sauce and rice vinegar, 2 tbsp sesame oil, 1 tbsp each lime juice and brown sugar, with fresh grated ginger and minced garlic, with a spoonful of chili garlic sauce. Veggie wraps (the guys add chicken) are also popular, as are tacos and, of course, barbeque. I am a person who does not use a barbeque because I am terrified of blowing everything up/ burning my hair off, but my husband is quite the griller.

And there is no need to skimp on desserts just because you don’t want to use your oven! Here are some ideas: Avocado Key Lime Pie, Homemade Healthy Fudgsicles, Homemade Dole Whip, Chocolate Covered Strawberries (perfect for the season!), Chunky Monkey Bites, Strawberry Dreamsicles, and YES, I also cannot believe I’m saying this given the political/ emoji climate but HEALTHY CHOCOLATE SOFT-SERVE “NICE” CREAM.

So you see, we have come full circle.

Let’s do the time warp again.

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A long time ago, a gas station within walking distance to my house was demolished. That demolition represented many hours worth of entertainment for my children; we would walk over there and watch as the large machinery tore down the buildings and removed the pumps. Then we watched, along with the elderly men of the neighbourhood, as they dug up presumably-contaminated soil, adding in truckloads of fresh soil, and smoothing everything down. At the time we also had the entire collection of Mighty Machines on DVD, and the boys would watch them whenever I needed time to shower, or prepare dinner, or otherwise needed thirty minutes of downtime. We had one that featured “The Demolition Site,” and inspired by this and the actual demolition site in our neighbourhood, the boys would play that game for hours. They would pile all their toys into the middle of a room and then use their toy bulldozers to push various items around. This, along with the requisite clean-up, would take up whole afternoons.

It’s funny to think that when they were little it was all about slowly killing the day; thinking of things to do that would keep them occupied. The days were so long back then, and now they fly by and there’s never enough time.

All of which is to say that there are only a few days left of school, and in the case of my junior high student, each of those days is a half day only. In some ways I wish they would just compress them all and finish earlier, but no.

On the other hand, while the grade seven students are doing ridiculous, make-work projects just to kill the day – even these half days must seem long to the teaching staff – the grade six students are writing Provincial Achievement Tests this week. So my house has been a strange combination of inappropriate stress over these so-called “fun end-of-term projects” – Mom, I need 150 pieces of coloured paper to glue together for Humanities, and do we have any Styrofoam, bendable straws, and aluminum foil? – and appropriate stress over the tests that prove their competence over the last year of elementary school. I will be breathing a sigh of relief next week, I can tell you that much.

In between teaching, grocery shopping, and busily preparing end-of-year cookies and teacher gifts, I’ve been spending time in my garden. I noticed the very first rose blooming just a couple of days ago; now the entire fence is abloom. Is abloom a word? I hope so.

My columbines have been seeding everywhere, and I know that technically if a plant is growing where you did not plant it, that makes it a weed, but in my books it just makes it a floral miracle.

The gardening season in Calgary is short and intense, so I am trying my best to savour it all.

Have a beautiful weekend, everyone! xo

 

Red wine and cowboy boots

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Well, hello there, Friday. You beautiful thing, come give mama a kiss.

I desperately try not to wish my life away but I have been looking forward to today. It hasn’t been a long week, not really. If anything, I feel like time is rushing by like one of those super speed videos; I can hardly believe that June is past the halfway mark, 2017 is almost half over, and life is just going by quickly. All the same, I have been looking forward to cracking open a bottle of wine tonight.

Speaking of which, last night I was in Superstore, which is my wont on evenings that the kids are in karate. Usually at that time – which is non-negotiable for me – it is a disaster zone. Things are unstocked, empty cardboard half-boxes sitting on shelves which previously contained my much-desired items. But not last night, dear reader, NOT LAST NIGHT. Last night I got every last thing on my list, including a three-pack of Romaine hearts, which they NEVER have in stock when I shop. I got everything I wanted and in record time, so I thought I’d pop into the liquor store to grab a bottle of wine.

That’s when I saw it: Wayne Gretzky Cab/ Shiraz, on sale for $13.77 a bottle. The friendly man working there asked if he could help me, and I just said “I’d like a case, please.” In and out, and then tonight I will be able to enjoy that delicious wine and revel in my (relative) thriftiness.

It’s been a busy week though, and I had a dentist appointment, which I always dread. It’s the scaling that gets me, every time. That scraping noise just gives me the chills. I floss daily and brush my teeth several times a day, and scaling is still a torturous process for me. Maybe it’s the red wine.

Honestly, given the choice I’d take a Pap test over dental scaling, even with my ham-handed doctor searching for my elusive cervix. The last time I had a test I endured what felt like hours of poky cervical torture, and then a week later the office called to say that they’d made a mistake with the sample and I had to come back for another test. I nearly cried. But cervical health – like dental health – is no joke, and so off I went, only to find out that the doctor needed to use a totally different speculum, for my special-snowflake lady-parts. “Remember to ask for the LARGE speculum next time!” my doctor cheerfully said, which was a hit to my already-beaten-up feminine mystique.

I’d still take that over scaling. However, no one wants to end up with a mouth full of dental issues, and so I shall soldier on.

Today was the elementary school’s Stampede Breakfast, our last one. I got all kitted up in my annual cowgirl wear; I was responsible for manning the syrup station. It was literally the easiest volunteer hour I’ve ever spent. I kind of wished I’d volunteered for that every year.

If you’ve ever wanted to dress up for the Stampede, or if you are not in Calgary and you – for reasons unknown – need Western-style wear, I refer you to my post of yesteryear, entitled How To Dress For The Calgary Stampede Without Looking Like An Idiot. Since the writing of that, I have actually purchased cowboy boots; I bought them last year for the Zac Brown concert. They were breathtakingly expensive, and so I justified the cost by promising myself I would wear them often and incorporate them in a cute way into my wardrobe. They are, without a doubt, some of the most comfortable footwear I have ever had on my tootsies, and so I thought that would be easy.

I have worn them exactly zero times since then. Well, except for today. I guess today really brought down the average-wear cost. At this rate I will be wearing them in the nursing home, in fifty years or so, when it’s Country Western Theme Day, just to justify the cost of purchase. I’ll wear them with my old-lady beaded and fringed cowgirl dress, my lipstick bleeding into the lines around my mouth. It’s going to be great!

Some people think of nursing homes as sad places they never want to end up in, but in my opinion, it sounds kind of nice. I mean, in fifty years do I really want to be worrying about my hot water heater or who’s going to mow the lawn? No! I do not! I want to be concerned with making my macrame owls or whatever happens during craft time; I want to have someone else make my meals and wash the floors. Bloom where you’re planted is my motto; I want to be like that 98-year-old yoga teacher when I grow up. With red wine and comfortable cowboy boots.

Favourite Outfits of My Teen Years

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It’s no secret I love clothes and fashion, and I always have. Every day is an opportunity to play dress-up, in my opinion, or at least to wear something pretty. Some of you may remember when I Kondo’d my house (and life), I discovered something important about myself: clothing sparks joy for me. I love my entire wardrobe; I love every last one of my twenty-plus black sweaters, my dozens of black tops, my twelve black bikinis, and my two shelves full of tightly rolled up yoga clothing, in varying hues. My friend Lyndsey (HI LYNDSEY) is a professional organizer, and I’m pretty sure she would faint if she saw my stuffed-to-the-brim closet. BUT I LOVE AND WEAR THEM ALL, LYNDSEY.

I’m at the point in my life where I am very comfortable with my own sense of style. True, I do like to keep up with current fashions, but I don’t feel the need to adopt them unconditionally. For example, I’m not a person who is flattered by peasant blouses or white jeans, and I’m literally too cold to wear the cold shoulder look. I’ve already done my time in pleated shorts and cut-off jeans, and so I shall leave the youth fashion to the youth for whom it is intended.

And yet, it is very fun to look back at the fashion I adopted when I myself was a youth. Last week, my friend Swistle (HI SWISTLE) wrote about favourite outfits in high school, and I have been thinking about it almost non-stop since then. I’ve been riding a wave of nostalgia for the late 80s/ early 90s, and the accompanying terrible fashions. I was at my parents’ place on the weekend and I thumbed quickly through a few photo albums. HOO BOY. Those were the days, my friends.

My own personal style really changed a lot from junior high to senior high, and it also changed a lot from year to year. I feel that the summers were a time of renewal and reflection about our own personal fashion, and that September was a time of new beginnings, clothing-wise. It was the time where we all decided what we wanted our look to be, for better or worse.

Grade Seven, 1987-88

My very favourite outfit was one that I have photographic evidence of, since I wore it on the first day of school. It was a long, full skirt that was meant to look like denim but was actually cotton. I paired it with knockoff white Keds, a white tank top, and a blue-and-white striped blouse that I tied in front.

I also had a denim slouch bag! And, if you look closely, light-blue nylons. I wore a lot of skirts in the beginning of grade seven; notably a light-blue bubble skirt, a beige ruffled skirt that I paired with an enormous white t-shirt, tucked in, and a pale pink skirt that I wore with a pale pink sweater and pale pink ankle boots. I was a sight in pastel, apparently. I wore skirts until I figured out that junior high boys were terrible and that they always tried to look up skirts when walking up the stairs, or flip them up when you were innocently standing at your locker.

Grade Eight – 1988-89

Once I figured out the terrible truth, I lived in jeans and gigantic sweaters. I had a few cable-knit sweaters that I begged for – and received – at Christmas. They were ENORMOUS. I wore acid-wash and other light-wash jeans, Levi’s with the red tab, rolled up at the ankles. Nothing is so terribly unflattering as baggy, high-waist jeans rolled at the ankles with a gigantically baggy, tucked-in t-shirt. But such was the fashion back then. I found this gem at my parents’ house and it cracks me up uncontrollably.

Ah, nothing says excitement like being fourteen years old and getting your photo taken for the no-cavity club at the dentist. Just look at the size of the t-shirt, with polka dots, no less. Look at the knockoff Swatch watch. LOOK AT MY HAIR.

A store had just recently opened up, in the spring of 1989, a store that was, to me, life-changing. It was called Freedom, and it sold many items like jeans and t-shirts embellished with peace signs. Oh, how I loved that store.

Grade Nine – 1989-90

Grade Nine was my year of predominantly black sweaters – a trend I have kept for a lifetime since – a ton of jewelry – ditto – and ripped jeans or long, multicoloured broom skirts. I also embraced band t-shirts from long-since-unbanded-and-usually-dead musical acts, such as The Doors.

Another dentist photo! I guess I’ve always been good at brushing my teeth. It is very hard to tell in this photo, but I have – in addition to a LOT of necklaces and my dad’s old watch, a long fake-silk scarf used as a belt in my jeans. My jeans would have, of course, been Levi’s 501s, and they would have been frayed at the bottom and, rather than rolled, pinned tightly at the ankles.

Grade Ten – 1990-91

Grade Ten was the year I fully embraced the dichotomous look of either ripped jeans or dresses. There was no in-between. I loved babydoll dresses, particularly crushed velvet ones, worn with tights, army-style boots, and a trench coat. It was the look of the early nineties, along with long, permed hair. Sadly, I have no photographic evidence of this in my possession, but I do have this lovely one with a classic Sulky Teen look.

Long, silver chains with crosses were my jam, along with silver hoop earrings and a mood ring. My mood ring was stuck on black, however, because even then I had terrible circulation and my hands and feet were always freezing. In fact, I remember a boyfriend I had around age 16, who looked at my bare feet and asked, alarmed, how I bruised them so completely. They were just purple from my lack of circulation, and were totally normal for me.

Grade Eleven – 1991-92

My very favourite outfit I remember so well, but I cannot find a photo of it. I wore it on my first day at my new high school, and it was red plaid HOT PANTS paired with thick black tights, a black mock turtleneck, and a black blazer. I also wore black loafers. God, I loved that outfit. Jeans, loafers, and blazers were very stylish at my school at the time, and I wore them all the time. Jeans were, thankfully, no longer pinned or rolled, but they were high-waisted and straight-legged, and t-shirts were oversized and tucked in. I found this treasure from my high school Europe trip, in which I’m wearing one of my favourite outfits, complete with Revlon’s Love That Red lipstick.

Also from that trip: my beloved leather bomber jacket, which I bought in a Florence market, paired with pink striped shorts and gladiator sandals.

Vogueing was popular back then.

I also had this outfit, which I absolutely loved and I would still probably wear today, mutton dressed as lamb be damned. I bought it at Le Chateau, and it was a short black skirt embellished with fabric daisies, and a swingy matching top. Oh, how I loved it. Note also my exclusive use of Love That Red.

Grade Twelve – 1992-93

Sadly, I cannot find ANY of my casual photos from grade twelve. I’m sure there are some in existence, but I cannot locate them at this time. Suffice it to say that by Grade Twelve, I had gone full-on Princess in my clothing choices. Kilts and turtleneck sweaters were my signature look, with my long, hot-rollered hair and Love That Red lipstick. I also seemed to have a lot of coloured jeans – high waisted and belted, naturally – and silk blouses. SILK BLOUSES, PEOPLE. It goes without saying that those blouses were also ridiculously oversized, as was everything back then. Although I don’t have any photos of these terrific outfits, I do have one on my graduation day of my hot-rollered hair:

That took SOME effort, let me tell you.

So now it is your turn – what were your favourite outfits in your teen years? Were your favourite clothes a sign of the times?

Small side note: I just realized that the song, Sign of the Times, is by Harry Styles. Guys, I like something by Harry Styles! I’m a modern girl! Proof positive that my husband is WRONG when he says I’m stuck in the past, in terms of music. Although it is true that my favourite genres are Motown, 70s soft rock, and “Fat” Elvis. Is that a genre? I don’t really know, but Kentucky Rain is my jam. xoxo

A very long confessional post about bathroom cleansers.

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Something very momentous happened this week, an event that is quality-of-life altering for me.

Before I get to that, a little background information. Most of you who have known me for a while know that my go-to cleaning solution is white vinegar. I am, you might say, a white vinegar fiend. At any given time my house smells like an odd cross between a bakery and a pickling factory. There is, in my humble opinion, no better nor more cost-effective cleaner than white vinegar. Occasionally I will mix it up by using a hippie essential-oil based cleaner, but for the most part, it’s all white vinegar all the time.

Well, most of the time. There is an exception to this rule, and that is the bathroom sinks and toilets. When it comes to that, I go all out; I like the kind of cleaners that boast of killing off 99.9% of germs, the old-school, scrub-free disinfectants. When it comes to the bathroom sinks and toilets, the harsher the cleanser the better, in my opinion. I feel fine about this because, as I mentioned, I only use these cleansers for relatively small area, and so one bottle of cleanser can last…well, I don’t really know how long it can last. Months, I suppose.

So it was several months ago that I impulsively bought a different cleanser; it was on a price rollback, it promised to kill off 99.9% of germs – including staph bacteria, which is not something I had thought of before but sure am thinking of now – and it advertised a “spring-fresh scent.” Now, I am not the kind of person who actually sniffs cleansers in the Walmart cleaning solution aisle, because a) I don’t want to look like a weirdo, b) who sniffs cleansers anyway? Certainly not me, and c) it doesn’t seem like too big of a deal what your bathroom cleaning solution smells like.

Oh, the naivete. It turns out that it DOES matter, it matters a lot, because this cleaning solution was, while effective at its job, terrible in the scent department. It smelled like a chemical factory mixed with formaldehyde, which is not a scent I enjoy, nor is it one that I associate with “spring-fresh.”

And yet, I kept on.

I continued to use the abhorrent-smelling-but-effective cleanser, and every time I did – three times a week, because that is how often I clean my bathrooms – I would hate it. The bathroom would smell like a chemical factory with formaldehyde for hours afterwards, THREE TIMES A WEEK. So for a large part of the week, I basically hated my ill-scented bathroom and everything else around it.

Now, at this point, you might be saying, But Nicole, when you Kondo’d your life, you realized that saying goodbye to things that do not spark joy is the key to happiness and tidiness. Why did you not just get rid of the bathroom cleanser and buy another one, in a non-offensive scent?

Why indeed? Well, as it turns out, I can get rid of lipglosses that do not suit me after only one use, I can get rid of ill-fitting clothes that originally cost a tidy sum of money, I can donate an entire lifetime’s worth of compact discs because of Spotify, but I cannot get rid of any kind of household cleanser. I know! It was $2.99 worth of cleanser, that I used for MONTHS AND MONTHS, and yet I continued to use it until the bitter end.

Sure, I could have poured it down the sink, and although eventually that is where the cleanser all goes, for some reason I felt like that was environmentally unsound to do so all in one shot. Ultimately, though, it is probably to do with my Scottish ancestry. I also keep using hand soap until the soap itself is a centimetre long and a millimetre thick, and my long-suffering husband throws it out. I flatten toothpaste tubes until not another drop can be extracted, I keep shampoo and conditioner bottles upside down, probably using a ton more water in the shower as I violently shake out the last drops.

Once, I was watching a Shark Tank episode with my kids, who love that show. On it was a woman who had invented something called the Spaddy Daddy. It was a long, thin spatula that could be used to scrape out every last ounce of body wash, conditioner, or liquid soap out of a bottle, and all I could think was Brilliant. This woman is a goddamn genius. She is my people. I do no think the Spaddy Daddy is available in Canada, but it is clearly the greatest idea of our generation.

Side note: why has no one ever invented a nail polish in which the brush goes all the way to the bottom? It is impossible, not to mention eminently frustrating, to get any nail polish out of the bottle once it is less than 1/3 full. What a waste. Someone told me that this could be solved by putting nail polish remover in the bottle to get the last bit out, but that seems to me that it would compromise the integrity of the nail polish, and so I have never tried. Instead I throw the bottle in the trash, 1/3 full, a little harder than is necessary.

All of which is to say that I could not, and would not, throw out the gross-smelling bathroom cleanser, but this week, I FINISHED IT. I have started on a new, citrus-scented one, and my quality of life has improved immensely.

No One Here Gets Out Alive

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Today just seemed like an ordinary day, but apparently the apocalypse is upon us. How else to explain a lineup at Costco that looked like this, at 10:30 on a Wednesday morning?

There was really no other explanation. It couldn’t have been the garden centre; May long weekend is done, and in any case there were only a few carts in the long lineups snaking down the aisles that contained plants. Getting into the chilled produce section was like marrying into the mafia; there was no getting out, once you were in. Carts were jammed in the aisles with no sample tables to be blamed; it was too early for the single servings of crackers and pepperoni to be handed out. When I finally made it through the lineup, the parking lot was a whole other adventure. It was like a cross between Frogger and Grand Theft Auto, what with cart-pushing people dodging the road raging vehicles, while the rain started and the wind picked up, in accordance with the giant storm brewing.

Maybe it IS the apocalypse.

Costco shopping is the one time that I really, really wish I had a Fitbit. I would love to know if pushing a giant, heavy cart and then unloading it and climbing up and down the stairs dozens of times to put the groceries away counts as “active minutes” and if so, how many calories are burned? I’m guessing enough to enjoy a whole bottle of wine, so it’s a good thing I don’t drink on weekdays.

I recently read something about women taking on the “mental load” in the house when it comes to housework and child-care-related chores and I would say that this is true in my house. Health and Welfare is definitely my department, and I am the one who has mental lists about what kinds of things need to be done to keep the house running smoothly. This is not to say that my husband is a neanderthal-type person who does nothing; quite the opposite, really. I would say that he takes on the mental load for things that I don’t even think about and don’t care to, so I would say that domestic/ financial/ health-related/ child-related/ vehicle chores are pretty well divided. Within reason, of course, since I work part-time, and part of that part-time is from home, so naturally there are many more domestic things that fall on my plate – epic trips to Costco, for example – than on his.

One of these things is, god help me, packing for vacations. Now, this is something that is less “falls on my plate” and more “I grab the plate and run with it because I trust no one to make correct decisions.” I know! It’s terrible. It’s also terrible for me to complain that no one helps me with packing when I actively discourage people to help me with packing. What can I say, I have a system, and regrettably it is a system that I refuse to let anyone else into. I’m a dream to be married to, you better believe it.

Actually, I personally think that I AM a dream to be married to, but maybe not when it comes to being aggressively territorial with packing and then resentful about it.

Where was I going with this? We spent the weekend road-tripping to visit with my mother-in-law. The weather was beautiful, which was probably the first May long weekend in history in which that was the case. We also had a lovely dinner with friends and that, as Forrest Gump says, is all I have to say about that.

Coming to terms with the tulips.

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Today, my normally-vigorous morning yoga practice consisted of the following: four sun salutations, a few restorative poses, and a very long savasana in which I fell asleep. I don’t know what was going on with my body this morning but I listened to it, and that is what it said to do. Who am I to argue? I always feel great after my yoga practice and today was no exception, but I obviously felt more rested than normal.

My husband reminded me that I always feel a bit overwhelmed at this time of year, and he’s right. Part of it is my innate desire to DO EVERYTHING, but at this time of year I need to add to that my innate desire to DO ALL THE GARDENING. Alas, there are only so many hours in a day. I am itching to plant things today but there is snow in tomorrow’s forecast, alas, alas, and also I have actual work to do that does not involve the flower beds.

I currently have fifty – soon to be increased to sixty-six – annuals on my deck to be planted, and I suppose my husband was correct in saying that I used the spring plant fundraiser as an excuse to buy an excessive amount of flowers, but how could I resist? I’m giving the grass the side-eye, and in the meantime, this weekend my husband and I actually did dig up a bunch of tulips to make room for new daylilies.

The flowers awaiting planting, plus a bonus shot of my husband’s many barbeques.

The tulip thing is a real drag, and I am trying not to covet my neighbours’ bulbs, but a jaunt around the neighbourhood shows nothing but gorgeous, blooming, colourful tulips with healthy, uneaten foliage. Here are what some of the remaining tulips look like:

Missing from the photo are all the holes where the squirrels have dug up the rest of the bulbs. My friend (HI NICOLE) suggested cayenne pepper, but I have heard that squirrels can transfer the pepper from the paws to the eyes and end up clawing their own eyes out. Whether or not that is true, I don’t want to chance being responsible for a scurry of eyeless squirrels. I am pretty sure the sightless squirrels would haunt me, and I don’t want that kind of bad karma.

I also would worry about Barkley getting into the cayenne, and though you would think such a smart dog (Labradoodles being one of the brightest, most trainable dogs, and that is not just me saying that, it’s fact) would avoid cayenne pepper, as he begins to gracefully enter his senior years, he has been doing a few strange things. One of those things is eating the broadleaf weeds that poke through my neighbour’s fence and on the one hand, less weeds, but on the other, regurgitated weeds on the lawn. So I just don’t want to tempt fate and end up with a spicy pup.

But I am practicing non-attachment and will likely dig out the remainder of the tulips, and the next time I find myself in Costco tempted to purchase one hundred and thirty bulbs – which is how I found myself in this mess in the first place – will one of you remind me of the repeated catastrophe that is my yard and tulips? Please?

In the meantime everything else is coming along nicely – with the exception of my clematis, which is either late or dead, I’m not sure which. I’m HOPING it’s just late because last year it was a riot of purple, but we shall see.

So I will no longer fret over the tulips. I have bigger fish to fry! Like proving my husband wrong, in that there IS room for sixty-six more annuals in our perennial-heavy, kind of crowded flower beds.

Note to self: start digging out the lawn NOW.