Ann's Unfolding Life

Horses!

2012-01-11T13:17:00.000-04:00

About 10 minutes ago THIS happened outside. This has NEVER happened before. At least not since I've lived here! Not something you see every day in the suburbs of Dartmouth, and as the cop said to me, not usually when it's this cold out either! But I guess the horses must get their exercise no matter the weather, so dutifully the police bundle up and go!

Edit: Coincidence? The force is looking to disband the horse unit, along with some others (the horse and rider on the left are pictured on the CBC page too!) http://www.cbc.ca/ns/insidethenews/2012/01/horse-sense.html. Hope they get to stay around! Its a nice touch of tradition, and a great way to get kids involved with the police in a positive way.

Post Holiday Clean Up, Hoarders

2012-01-08T17:18:00.001-04:00

Having always had hoarding tendencies myself, I try hard to keep on top of the clutter level in my home. The biggest and easiest thing for me has always been to 'head it off at the pass' by carefully thinking about what I bring into the home in the first place - do I really need it, or will it just end up being garbage?

I love watching A&E's Hoarders, because I find it very inspiring to get up and do a little cleaning. :) Its' back for another season, premiering last Monday. You can watch the latest episodes online (yay!) - look under "top videos".

Matt Paxton, one of the cleaning specialists they have on the show, has a great set of tips for decluttering BEFORE it becomes an untenable situation, check 'em out! Now's a great time, post-holidays, to reassess your stuff and get some cleaning in, pre-Spring!

Happy 2012!

2012-01-01T12:07:00.003-04:00

Hope everyone had a fun New Year's eve! :) Thought I'd start the new year off here with a cute story from the BBC, how a woman in Sweden found her lost wedding ring 16 years later, in a most peculiar (and gardening-related) way!

Find out here! http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16374283

Happy New Year!

Old Christmas Trees & Just for Fun

2011-12-30T00:00:00.000-04:00

If you're not waiting, like me, for "Second Christmas" to roll around (Ukrainians and other ethnic groups still celebrate Christmas on January 7th), you can donate your old Christmas tree (tinsel-free, as always) to Hope for Wildlife. They will use them as habitats and cage buffers for their little and big creatures alike. If you don't live in the Halifax area, contact your local wildlife refuge and see if they could use this gift as well! Read more on the CBC.

And also from the CBC today, the top 10 list of ridiculous 9-1-1 calls received from the Chatham-Kent police department in southern Ontario. Warning: they're pretty ridiculous! Enjoy!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas, and that 2012 will be a great year for you all!

Hakodate Christmas Tree

2011-12-23T17:07:00.002-04:00

Every year, like to Boston, we send a tree to our sister city of Hakodate - SMZ was traveling in the area this year, and did a great blog post on it with lots of pics of our big tree! Check it out!

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Meanwhile, in Nova Scotia...

2011-11-23T15:13:00.001-04:00

Well, they said it might be "rain along the coast" but I guess we're not "coast" enough! :) Crazy weather out today, yesterday was bright and sunny and only a little cool, but today we have been hammered with the first big snowstorm of the season.

It was very fun to let the girls out for the first time into snow this year, telling them "you'll be so surprised!" and they just stand at the door, confused for a second, then take off into the puffy snow and have such a great time! (This snow is very wet, perfect for snowmen btw!)

Glad to be snuggling under the kotatsu right now, and really glad I didn't have to work today, wouldn't want to be on the roads right now!

Christmas Craft Fairs - 'Tis the Season!

2011-10-29T16:06:00.000-03:00

Well, almost! The biggest craft fair in our area, Christmas at the Forum, is next weekend already! This year has just flown by!!

I do sincerely hope one day to be able to sell my wares at one of these large fairs, but until that time, I eagerly read information about selling at craft fairs, so I can get a good idea in my mind of good display & selling tactics.

Here are some of the things I've noticed made a good booth display over the years:

Do not overstock in plain view: there was a booth I saw that sold small products (I won't mention what kind for anonymity) but they were in small packages that could be hung. Their display probably had 200 items all hung in neat rows and columns, but it was MASSIVELY overwhelming. I thought about going to look at the booth but it was literally such overload I just didn't want too.

One booth had all the booth attendants wearing fun Christmas themed t-shirts. That immediately put you in the festive spirit!

Lighting is really, really important. If you have anything that sparkles, be sure to bring extra lighting to show it off! I saw an herbal vinegar seller whose wares were all sorts of different colours, and they had spot lighting behind the bottles that made them all shine like jewels! Extremely appealing!!

If you have a URL, be sure to display it prominently! With the busy-ness of some of the fairs, some people may not even be able to get to your booth to grab a business card, etc. but still are interested in what you sell. If you display your URL prominently, people will be able to check it out later even if they couldn't look at your products as closely as they'd like this time around.

If you do an unusual craft (or even if you don't) photos of the process is always a great way to generate interest. Often people will become more enthusiastic about your product when they see details of how it is created.

The great people over at the Folksy Blog did a wonderful series on "Craft Fair Advice" - so head on over there to read some of their great ideas for selling at a craft fair: http://blog.folksy.com/category/seller-tips/craft-fair-advice.

If you're selling this year, best of luck! And if you're like me, have fun at all the fairs out there! :)

Ancient Paint Factory

2011-10-14T13:53:00.001-03:00

As an artist and a former student of anthropology, this story captures my interests on many levels! They've discovered a "factory" in this gorgeous looking cave in South Africa (check out the article for a picture - what a view!), where they believe ancient man created pigments using ochre, charcoal and oil from seal bones, mixed and ground together inside shell "containers'. Read more about this fascinating discovery, and why man doing this 100,000 years ago is so important for our understanding of when we became modern humans, here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15257259

Thanksgiving 2011

2011-10-11T16:42:00.001-03:00

I hope all my fellow Canadians had a nice Thanksgiving weekend! I didn't get my work schedule until Saturday, so unfortunately I was unable to set up plans to make Thanksgiving Dinner for my family this year (as it turned out, my folks went on Sunday to their favorite restaurant which had a set Thanksgiving turkey menu, and I was able to join them along with a dear family friend and a cousin - it was great turkey, and no dishes!)

But for Dave and I, dinner didn't happen until we were both off Monday afternoon. I had found a marinade online that I wanted to try, so we decided to have a Thanksgiving BBQ (Dave's not a huge fan of turkey, so no big loss for him).

There's a place locally that my family has gone to since I was little - it used to be right around the corner, but it moved several years ago, so we don't get there very often any more. It's called the Steak & Stein, and I have tons of fond memories of eating their delightful steak (and their great kids' birthday parties). Their signature steak is the Delmonico, Derby style. There's enough about my love for their steak and my wish for a replica of their amazing recipe to have at home to fill another blog post, but suffice it to say, I found a nice marinade online that is a great start towards that amazing flavour, and that's what I used for my Thanksgiving steak. I cut up a super-sale pot roast for this steak, and it turned out nice and tender after 48 hours (LOL) of marinating. (Here`s the original recipe I started with: http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Melt-in-Your-Mouth-Marinade/Detail.aspx).

Aside from that, we had roasted potatoes I had grown from sprouted store-bought potatoes over the winter, and some tomatoes I had picked and saved from my blight-ravaged tomato plants. Its a celebration of the harvest, even if that harvest was lean. We also had some lovely fried fresh mushrooms and onions - no steak is complete without them!

I tried another recipe too, using my mother`s garden garlic and some adorable fresh little italian eggplants I found in the supermarket. However, it turns out that (at least this kind of) eggplant gets very...slimy....when roasted, and we didn`t enjoy the sensation of that at all. The garlic roasted up really nice in them though!

All in all, although not as elaborate as I like, it was a nice Thanksgiving dinner, and it was great to have some homegrown produce to share at the table, to welcome the end of the growing season, and be thankful for all our blessings.

Photo Diary: Eastern Passage

2011-08-30T17:55:00.000-03:00

As promised, here's some more photos from my lovely trip to Eastern Passage the other day!

Here's a wildflower that had a small stand, but wasn't really widespread. Don't know what it was called, but it was lovely.

As I've mentioned before, these gorgeous roses grow wild all over the province, right up to the water's edge! The smell of the roses mixed with the sea air was heavenly!

There's a little shore bird in this pic, can you make him out? His camouflage is remarkable!

Here's a close up so you can find him better:

I believe he's a Spotted Sandpiper, but the beak is dark...don't know what to make of that, perhaps he's a juvenile? He was so cute, he flew down next to me, and we walked the shore together for a distance.

There were some sort of predatory birds in the area as well; I couldn't get a good look at their markings to identify them, but there is a nest of ospreys (our provincial bird) nearby, so that's likely what they are.

There are lots of signs of old wharfs in the area, but I have no idea how long ago they were abandoned. Posts here and there are all that's left. Nearby this one, is a high current area where land narrows and the ocean speeds up towards the harbour. No swimming is allowed, but people fish there all the time - and that day was the first day I saw someone actually catch something! When this gentleman reeled in another fish, one of his companions, a young boy, said disappointedly "...Again?". I don't think the little guy had the good spot that day.

This is a backwards looking shot towards downtown Halifax; so close and yet worlds away!

There was a very calm bit of water between the ocean and the shore, divided by a stand of sea grasses - and there was a HUGE school of tiny fish there! You can see where they broke the surface of the water looking for nibblies here and there. Every time I even took a single step close to them, they'd move farther out en masse, so it was hard to get a close shot of them! Safety first, little guys!

All in all, such a lovely day, so glad I was able to get out and enjoy one of our few sunny days this summer!

Eastern Passage....always beautiful

2011-08-24T00:22:00.000-03:00

Went to have lunch and a walk for the first time this summer out Eastern Passage way. Lovely day for it, just a few clouds in the sky, and the warmth of the sun offset perfectly by the refreshing ocean breezes. I really love that whole area, several local restaurants are right next to this delightful park, so you can walk off some of those extra calories. :) More pictures to come...

Summertime Wildlife Roundup

2011-08-19T15:03:00.000-03:00

This summer, with the majority of days being rainy or darkly cloudy, we had a different mix of wildlife in the backyard than we have had previous years. Bees, as I have mentioned several times, were non-existent the first half of the summer, and even now, I have not seen more than two bees in the lawn at any given time (the lack of bees and the bad weather is why I believe our backlawn has a mass of thistles and not clover as it has in previous years. Not that the thistles aren't lovely and purple too, but you really miss the lovely scent of the clover on the wind).

Our dragonfly population came out very early this year (in June), in time to take care of the blackflies and the early beginnings of the mosquito population, but were missing for much of the latter half of July, when mosquitoes were at their peak. Fortunately, they have returned now in the latter half of August, so I'm getting much needed relief out there. They are amazing bug predators - I love to see them flitting about the yard on 'guard duty', occasionally getting into aerial battles over bugs with fellow 'sentries'.

Its been said that a healthy frog population is a sign the local environment is healthy, and if that is the case (check out why under morphology on Wiki), then our local area is doing REALLY well! From about the end of June till last week, we had a minimum of one frog a day outside in our back lawn. We saw maybe 3 the whole year last year, but this year was crazy! At one point I had a frog in each hand, trying to move them to the cool of the forest (and in the direction of a lake), and out of the path of my dogs playing. All different sizes, too, it was quite extraordinary!

We had one little green grass snake this year, and that was the first one I've seen since we moved here three years ago.

So, aside from the lack of bees, we've been doing quite well in the backyard wildlife department! Its been fun observing them!

Summer....

2011-08-12T16:54:00.000-03:00

The weather was not what we were promised. They said it was going to be uncharacteristically hot this summer, but instead we were hit with one cloud bank after another after another. Aside from a brief period of sun in July, it's just been a sad continuation of the awful weather we had all spring.

Today, mercifully, was a beautifully sunny break from all that rain. Got some bedsheets out on the line, enjoyed the sun with my girls, and took a few snaps to boot.

We have seen a few more bees this last month, but it's been nothing like the amount we had last year. At least *some* flowers and plants are getting pollinated!

I'm still so deeply impressed/interested with the true Queen Anne's Lace, the wild carrot, daucus carota. They're just so lovely, and their seedheads provide even more interest come fall and winter! (More on that another time!) :)

Here's hoping for more sunshine, soon!

Fun Summer Cams in NS

2011-08-05T18:23:00.000-03:00

Found a link to this place via the CBC today...web cams featuring great views of Halifax and other locales across Nova Scotia. The most popular one is the Lobster Cam, a cam set up inside a lobster trap located in Halifax Harbour. (Don't be distressed, its for educational purposes only, the lobsters are released on a regular basis). Other sea life stops by occasionally as well, so that's pretty fun! My other fave is the Harbour Hopper - its an amphibious vehicle run by Murphy's On the Water (amazing fish and chips, btw) that gives a tour of Halifax/Dartmouth AND the harbour, going on land and sea - the webcam follows them along their journey, and gives the current locale across the top. Good times! :)

There are plenty of other cams to see with great views of our fair city and beyond (but most of them will likely only run during the summer season), be sure to check them out!

Bees? Any bees?

2011-07-04T16:43:00.000-03:00

It has been a terrible spring weather-wise here in Nova Scotia. From March - June, we had maybe 5 days of sun per month (and frankly, I think I'm being generous). Other than that, its' been cloud, rain, fog, or a combo of all. My tomatoes were hardened off for 3 weeks because nights were still getting so cold.

I noticed that even after the clover started blooming, I can count on one hand the number of bees I've seen so far this summer. I'd hoped it wasn't colony collapse or anything like that; it turns out that bees hate the bad weather more than we do! The constant rain means bees stay in their hives, getting cranky and eating stored honey instead of producing new.

The CBC has an article on the lack of honey this year so far:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/07/02/ns-honey-bee-production-down.html

I'm just hoping I get enough bees to pollinate my tomatoes! I might have to do it myself... :)

Census Time is here again!

2011-05-03T13:38:00.000-03:00

Time for the Census once again! Got my info-note in the mail this morning. Nice to see that they only give out a small note with a code, so you can fill out the census online or call to get the full paper one mailed to you should you require it. A great way to save all that paper (and I'm sure it makes it easier for them to process too!)

So, gather everyone together and fill it out! We have 10 days to do so. I've always been interested in the census (being a former anthropology student), but much more so once I was able to get information on my ancestors through it - it was fascinating to learn my great-grandmother was a house servant at 16 while living at home, but by the time of the next census was already out of the house and married! It was a lot of fun to see the changes in the family through this medium - aside from birth and death records, really the only ones my family has, for generations that far back. I am very glad to leave behind my own record for future generations to get a small glimpse at what life was like way back in 2011...

http://census2011.gc.ca/

Spring?

2011-03-24T15:46:00.000-03:00

Possibly, might, be here...

Yesterday, while in the back with the girls, the male ring-necked pheasant made an appearance, and I heard him "gobble gobble"-ing throughout the afternoon.

And today, just after I brought the girls in, I saw a crow in our backyard, picking around at the dead grass and weeds. Didn't know exactly what he was looking for, it was strange to see him hanging around there. Then another crow came, and showed the first one how it was done - they gathered large beakfulls of the longer straw-like remains of the grass - and you know why!! I was so excited! If crows are starting to build and pad-out nests, SPRING really might be here! Hurray!

That's why it's nice to leave a little bit of wilderness in your backyard if you can - a close-mowed all-grass lawn can't provide the variety of food and nesting materials that "weeds" like clover and long wheat-like grasses can.

Forgive the quality, it was taken through our triple-glazed window. :)

Buy Local and the Family Farm

2011-03-21T12:04:00.001-03:00

I've been training full time for a new job, haven't had time to write unfortunately!

Saw this nice article in the Herald this a.m. talking about one farm's journey from local provider of beef, to raising cattle to be finished and butchered far away, to coming back full circle and providing fresh anti-biotic free meat to the new local farmer's market. It's a good story, and one I hope will be repeated more and more as time goes by.

http://thechronicleherald.ca/NovaScotia/1234215.html

The Drama regarding Urban Homesteading

2011-02-18T16:55:00.001-04:00

It had to happen eventually, I suppose. Everyone wants to have copyright or trademark over *everything* these days. But a REALLY well-known family in the Urban Homesteading movement were the last people I thought would do this - read about the whole sad, unfolding drama at the LA Blogs and OC Weekly. Read the comments too, they are also very informative. It has a LOT of peoples' danders up, and affects the Urban Homesteading movement as a whole.

Got the story via Reddit, again (thanks Reddit for keeping us in the loop). :)

EDIT: An update, as of Feb 22.

Moonlight

2011-02-16T18:40:00.000-04:00

Driving snow yesterday, just blowing all day, sideways. Windchill in the -20s (Celsius) We have had a CRAZY amount of snow this season - it's been a little hard to take, some days. :)

But tonight, a beautiful moon and a little clear sky was a welcome sight.

During and After

2011-02-04T16:05:00.001-04:00

During the storm...

After the storm...

The sun was only spotty afterwards, but I was glad to see it!

Snowpocalypse

2011-02-02T15:58:00.000-04:00

I don't like to throw big snow storm terms like that around, because we do (or did) get a lot of snow in these parts in the winter. But this storm is over 3,200 km wide, which is crazy huge, so I think we can safely use that term. :)

It is NUTS out there! This morning, after the result of the mini-storm that hit us last night:

And now, taken about four hours after the first photo:

Casey LOVES the snow, this is totally her favorite season. But even she wanted to come in, when she couldn't see too far through the flakes anymore. :) She got covered in a matter of moments.

Oh well, time to sit tight and wait for this to blow over - and then the shoveling, oh the shoveling!

Poor Red Bridge Pond...

2011-01-29T10:51:00.002-04:00

And poor homeowners! This is a lovely pond, home to ducks and other waterfowl, a scenic little place very close to my home growing up. I used to go there all the time!

Some extremely thoughtless thieves stole $15 worth of copper from four homes (that's $15 TOTAL) - the lines that run from the homes' furnace oil tank. And because of this, there is MONTHS of work that needs to be done and untold thousands of $$ in cleanup. Furnace oil is in the pond, leeching into the soil, traveling to connecting waterways. It's a huge, huge mess. And I thought people stealing copper from churches was bad...

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/01/28/ns-oil-spill-causing-problems-for-homeowners.html

[EDIT: Oh, and it turns out they've hit local businesses too, same M.O. They HAVE to catch these guys! http://www.cbc.ca/canada/nova-scotia/story/2011/01/27/ns-dartmouth-oil-leaks.html]

Ice...

2011-01-24T13:24:00.000-04:00

I love the patterns that ice makes throughout winter, some are really amazing.

This one was the result of overflow of our gutter, followed by a slight thaw, then freezing. I've never seen crystals grow out like that before.

This was an area near our door - you can see the shattered remains of the ice that was there previously through the thin areas of the current ice sheet.

And this was Jack Frost on the windows this morning! The patterns are just so amazing, they remind me of the lovely vining designs of medieval manuscripts.

And closer...

Lovely, lovely stuff... it's -15 deg C out there right now, with a windchill of -26 deg C. More ice to come! :)

Natural Farming

2011-01-22T15:00:00.000-04:00

I've been coming across a lot of information on this style of farming lately. Today, via Reddit, I found this article on Natural Farming practices in Hawaii - and before that, I read up on Fukuoka's "One Straw Revolution" which he started back in the 1070s. (Also read Mother Earth News' article on Building Fertile Soil). These and others are advocating less human intrusion in the growing process, and allowing nature (and soil microbes/worms/etc) to do the majority of the work. There are only a few times in the growing cycle that humans need to be involved in, but they must be done at just the right time and the right way, for the crops to be successful. It's very specific to each region as well - the methods and cycle that work in one area is not really directly transferable to other areas - so you have to take the ideas and adapt them to your local area.

I really love the idea of stepping away from the process and allowing this underground network to do most of the "heavy lifting". And best of all, this is a "no-till" system! It's a rather radical change from the way we've been doing farming, but with comparable yields to modern farming and NO pesticides, it seems to be something really worth looking at! Check out those articles, they're great reads.

Great article on Eating At Home

2011-01-15T14:48:00.001-04:00

I read a great article today on the Huffington Post via Time magazine - How Eating at Home Can Save Your Life, by Mark Hyman, MD. Well worth a read, it talks about the changes to the American (and by extension Canadian) diet over the last one hundred years have led to problems for the environment, obesity, and the loss of valuable cooking skills to future generations. Two points that were shocking and sad to see:

1) "In 2010...one in five breakfasts [was] from McDonald's."
2) "In his series, 'Food Revolution,' Jamie Oliver showed us how we have raised a generation of Americans who can't recognize a single vegetable or fruit..."

Regarding 1), I love McDonalds as a special treat, but it's not a good idea to have that much deep-fried goodness so often!

Regarding 2), I enjoyed taking pictures of fruit and veggies in situ during Agrifest in 2006 as a way (hopefully) that kids could see what these things look like in the ground, as they often look different when they get to the grocery store, and different again when they reach the plate. But it's shocking to hear that kids wouldn't be able to identify them even in their grocery store form. That is really scary. A fruit cup puree is not a fruit. There's almost always added sugars and syrups. Worse than a fruit cup puree is (probably) no fruit at all.

It used to be that you'd run into the occasional person who couldn't cook, and it was a bit of a joke. But if NO ONE in your family cooks, that is a serious concern! (Heating microwave dinners doesn't count as cooking!) If no one can cook, you're either a) eating too much take out - which has a lot of foods that are purchased for their long shelf life (preservatives, TONS of excess salt/sodium), deep fried, or processed meats (as above, preservatives and salt), or b) buying convenience foods from the grocery store, which pretty much have the same drawbacks. If you don't have to chew your food very much, then it's probably too processed (and a crispy fried coating outside doesn't count!). :) Our bodies don't run their best on stuff they don't even have to work at to digest.

Annnywayyyyy, the article is very interesting, and definitely worth a read. There's lots of good tips in there!

Really bad news about the contest

2011-01-14T18:02:00.000-04:00

As I mentioned recently, Hope for Wildlife was up for a $100,000 grant to finish their Wildlife Hospital. Just got the horrible news that they have been disqualified - I'm heartbroken, I don't know how badly they must all be feeling.

What happened was, they offered for anyone who wanted to support Hope for Wildlife, but didn't want to spend the time it takes to vote everyday (I have to say, voting is a bit of a pain, you have to click "Vote for this idea", then login, then do a Turing test, THEN click on "vote for this idea" again. But I love these people, so I do it), :) that you could send HFW your user name and password, and once a day one of the volunteers would go in and do your vote for you. Not flooding with false votes, or more than one vote a day or anything, just trying to save people who wanted to help time out of their busy day. But apparently Pepsi considered that "proxy voting" and that is against the rules. So they were kicked out of this round, and have to try to get into an upcoming round.

They were doing so very well, and could have used that money so much for their new facility. I feel absolutely miserable. It's all just so unfortunate.

They do plan on running again, and when they do, I'll post the info here.

I'm going to go be bummed now.... :(

Vote for Hope For Wildlife!

2011-01-10T16:32:00.000-04:00

Hope for Wildlife is up for a $100,000 grant from Pepsi.ca, in hopes of using that money to complete Nova Scotia's first Wildlife Veterinary Hospital. I've talked with and gotten help from Hope several times over the years, she is an amazing person, and has created a wonderful place for hurt and distressed wild animals to get the care they need to be released back into the wild. But they need a little help to get the facility to the level they'd like it to be. Read more about their plans, and please, please, please vote (you can vote one time a day) at Pepsi Refresh Everything.

Here's some previous posts I've made regarding Hope For Wildlife as well:
http://annmorash.blogspot.com/2008/01/hope-for-wildlife-to-rescue-again.html
http://annmorash.blogspot.com/2007/11/save-time-this-christmas-and-make-real.html

They're on facebook, too! http://www.facebook.com/#!/hopeforwildlife

Food pics from last night

2011-01-07T14:17:00.001-04:00

Here's all the dishes I made for dinner last night:

From the top right, clockwise:
Baked Haddock fillets, McCain's Spicy Fries, salmon fish cakes, compote, fried mushrooms and onions with beer. Missing from photo: Greek salad, home-made pickle.

And the Cape Breton Post is running an article on Old Christmas featuring the parish of the Holy Ghost Ukrainian Catholic Church in Sydney (where my mom grew up and we still have family). Check it out here!

Have a great Christmas day!

Sviat Vechir dinner tonight

2011-01-06T14:35:00.003-04:00

Tonight is Ukrainian Christmas eve, aka Sviat Vechir. Traditionally, twelve meatless and dairyless dishes are served (in honour of the 12 apostles, or from pagan times, the 12 months of the year). But when you have a small family (just Dave and I, in this case), some of the traditional dishes are just too elaborate to warrant making. So, adapting is sometimes necessary, and in this case, I try to present a variety of small meatless dishes in lieu of the traditional twelve (and suited a bit more to our tastes). :)

My menu will consist of

- fried haddock
- a mushroom and onion stir fry - mushrooms usually feature prominently in the Christmas eve dinner
Chopped shiitake, button and crimini mushrooms with diced onions, cooked in canola oil with a little beer added in the last 5 minutes of cooking. Cook until liquid is evaporated.
- fish cakes
A small can of salmon, mashed with 2-3 mashed potatoes. Formed into patties, coated in flour, and fried in canola oil till crispy on the outside.
- Greek pasta salad, without added feta cheese
- compote
my own style, based on fruits we have around the house - a few raisins, dates and apples, simmered in water, with a touch of honey and spiced rum.
McCain's spicy potato wedges
- homemade relish pickle made in the summertime

There's tons of great recipes for the traditional 12 dishes served, here are a few links to get you started:

http://pages.prodigy.net/l.hodges/xmas.htm

http://www.ukrainianclassickitchen.ca/YaBB.pl?board=Ukrainian-Special

http://www.myerchin.org/RCP%20XmasEveHolySupper.html

Enjoy your Christmas eve dinner! And the lovely smoked-meat-fest that Christmas day will bring - I know we will! :D

[EDIT: Here's some great pics from around the world of people celebrating Christmas this night: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-12128728]

From all of us here....

2010-12-28T13:41:00.000-04:00

Casey...

Lila...

Baby Boy...

Peepers...

And Kuroi...

We hope you had a great Christmas holiday, and a wonderful 2011! Here's to a new year, with new hopes and new opportunities!

Veseys Catalogue Arrival: Awesome new stuff for the new season

2010-12-11T13:38:00.000-04:00

Like many people, money is tight with us these days. And since we rent, and our landlord has the house on the market, we never know if we're going to be here during an entire summer (hence last season's semi-portable bag garden). BUT, if we had a bit more $$ and guaranteed lawn, Vesey's has some AWESOME stuff in the catalogue this year (just in time for Christmas, folks!)

Just a note: I'm not affiliated with Veseys in any way, I really do just love their stuff! :)

Birdfeeders (always popular):

The Blue Moon feeder is made out of sparkling crackle glass, with built in protection to shelter the birds during storms, looks lovely! My second choice is the iron and aluminum Acorn Bird feeder, very elegant looking!

For assistance in gardening/seed starting, etc:
The Canadian designed Root Training Propagator looks way cool! It trains roots to be long and thin in a straight line. The product opens like a book, so you can inspect the roots, and there's minimal disruption to the plant during transplanting. COOL!

Having not done such a hot job of supporting my snap peas this past summer, this lovely contraption looks like it would be a big help! The Wire Cucumber Trellis folds flat for storage, but when in use provides a lovely diagonal growing surface for all your climbing veggies like peas, but more suited for heavier produce like cucumbers and squash. They even say you can grow lettuce underneath which will mature before your cukes get too big and block out the sun.

Connecticut dairy farmers developed these great plant pots leftover from cow manure after they've extracted the methane to use to power their farm. Cow Pots will dissolve a few weeks after insertion in the ground, providing fertilizer to boot! A great idea!

Perfect for people who are stiff and have trouble doing all the bending over required in gardening, it's a Stand Up Garden (and it's self-watering, too!). A garden on stilts basically, it lets you have the fun of gardening without bending - and you get to start your soil off right by buying it (and compost) in bags! ;)

Some cool new and new-to-me flowers and veg:
Chocolate Tomato - a gorgeous looking velvety chocolate/red colored tomato, an heirloom that they say has tremendous flavor.

Broom corn - grows like corn, but instead of a husk it grows these gorgeous seed heads. Great for crafting projects - and you can even make a broom from them, if you like!

If you love squash, you'll love their Wild Bunch combo of many varieties of strong vining squash. For eating and for crafts & fall displays, you'll get a little bit of everything!

Gorgeous flowers: the Zahara Starlight Zinnia (blooms the whole season!) and always a fave of mine, the Gerbera Daisy. And a funky green sunflower, would really stand out!

And a couple of books, to boot!
The Backyard Homestead - an "indespensible guide to self-sufficiency". Talks about everything from raising chickens to pickling the results from your veg garden! (*Ann dreams...*)
Four Season Harvest - a great guide to growing veggies and herbs year-round in colder climates like mine! Sounds a little challenging, but very rewarding!

So that's what's on my gardening wish list for this year! If you have any you'd like to add, mention it in the comments section! :)

The Mystery of the Red Bees

2010-11-30T23:53:00.000-04:00

Yup, you read right - bright red bees. Bright red hives. And really crappy honey.

Found this story from the NY Times, via Reddit. The disappointing truth that, like people, bees don't always eat what's best for them. Garbage in/garbage out. :) Fascinating story! It does point out some of the complications that can occur with urban farming.

Gorgeous Day

2010-10-14T16:48:00.000-03:00

Amazing weather, a perfect fall day. So many leaves were damaged and twisted around during Hurricane Earl, I thought autumn might not turn out so well this year. But, so far, so good! The colours usually peak around the 18th of October, but it still looks like there's a lot of green out there, so it might last a little longer this year.

Me and Eeyore down at the Fair

2010-10-07T18:03:00.000-03:00

I petted sheep and goats and little baby donkeys and some sort of highland cattle...it was awesome! Another fun trip down to the Maritime Fall Fair. A few more pics to come. :)

I wanna raise chickens SO BAD........

Cats will be Cats

2010-09-29T19:21:00.000-03:00

Kuroi (Pretty Kitty) has a fun game he plays every morning for about a half hour. He chases around a (imaginary or real) kibble that escaped the dogs' dish. Perhaps at one point, there actually was a kibble that ended up underneath the old drip tray we use to protect the floor from the water bowl. Now, who knows? But Kuroi is convinced it's there, and every morning, pokes randomly under the mat - it's quite hilarious. Today, Peepers watched in quiet awe while he did this, wondering what the heck he was doing. It's the first time one of the other cats has taken an interest in Kuroi's little hobby.

God, cats are such spazzes. :D

Cats in the Area

2010-09-22T12:44:00.000-03:00

There must be some new cats to the area - I saw an adorable marmalade cat sleeping on our anthill, enjoying the sunshine the other day (reminds me of my kitty when I was little). But this, or another cat, knows how to hunt, and hunt well.

We had a spate about 5 months ago of one shrew a night dead at the top of the hill, waiting for me and the girls when we went to play in the morning. Then mercifully it stopped. But last night must have been a banner night, for there were 3 dead shrews up there this morning. Well, parts of them, anyway. One was complete, but dead from a side puncture wound. But the other two...only their heads remained! *gack* The girls (Casey and Lila) managed to find them all (whenever they look intently at something, I come to look in case it's a little froggy who needs help getting out of our yard). I took the shrews and shrew bits and put them into the forest beyond the fence, with a little prayer for their little furry souls. Poor little guys, they do love our yard with all the tall grasses and such to hide under...but that makes it tempting hunting ground for the cats... :/

More disturbingly, I found a small cluster of male pheasant feathers - they're absolutely gorgeous, with a metallic sheen of blues and greens when you look at them moving in the light. But while I'm worried a cat made a go for him, I don't see any blood, and no body to be seen, so I'm sure one swipe is all the cat got in before the pheasant made a getaway.

So, we'll hope the pheasant keeps his eyes open, and hopefully the little shrews will keep safe - but I will keep burying them if they don't.

New Male Pheasant

2010-09-15T11:59:00.000-03:00

Only got to see him for a moment, while we were scaring the crap out of the poor guy. He was up on our hill feeding (getting spillover from the bird feeder) and me and the girls came tearing up the hill to play Frisbee. Poor guy, hr ran around and around while the girls chased him, I'm yelling at them to stop, trying to grab at them - finally he takes off to the sky and flies away. He was beautiful, from what I could see, but quite small, so I think he's young - probably one of the ones I saw earlier this year in the yard. Poor guy, hope he's not too traumatized, and will come back. A short time later, I heard a few little noises from the woods nearby, I think he had a companion that was wondering what was going on - I'm sure they'll meet up again soon.

He didn't get away too badly off, though - he picked apart one of only 2 chili peppers I managed to grow! At least he picked the unripened one. :) I've picked the other one, in case he comes back - it can finish ripening indoors.

I do hope he comes back - now that I know they're still in the area, I'll have to make sure I check outside before we go out!

Too Cool! Airshow Practice!

2010-09-10T14:06:00.000-03:00

Once again, after a long absence, the air show is at Shearwater, AND I'm in the city. When I was a kid, the airshow was always at Shearwater, which is not (flying wise) very far from my house - we used to get on the roof and watch the show at a distance, or stand on street and watch down the road. They had to move the airshow around to different locales when I was an adult, and I lived out on the outskirts of the HRM for a long time, so it's been a while since I've seen it. But now, they're back, and I'm back, and they're doing some practicing for the air show this weekend. And they're practicing over our house! Very cool, nothing like a jet fighter trainer flying low and fast, rattling your windows! They turned a couple of times directly over the house (COOL!), but mostly they've been going by, practicing doing that straight up climb, then straight down maneuver, turning, and a little spinning, too.

When I lived out on the Eastern shore, my parents still enjoyed watching the air show, and chose one year to go to the cliff behind our house to watch it. Our Canadian aerial acrobatic team, the Snowbirds, come annually to the air show, and do an awesome performance. When I was a kid, and still today, some of the Snowbirds perform their turn-arounds (to get back to Shearwater to do some more formations), right over our house. You can imagine how cool that was, and is! So my folks were in a great position to watch the occasional Snowbird fly by very low, as in you-can-look-in-the-cockpit low. Mom, being the silly goofball that she is (a trait she has passed on to me, I might add), would wave every time they went by. And on the last flyby, he flew extra low and waggled his wings back at her! It happened to be her birthday too, and let me tell you, she was thrilled! Something she'll always remember, and still talks about. (So, whoever you are out there, Mr. Pilot, you made Mom's day!).

All the performers will be showing up sometime today, likely, so we'll be hearing a lot of airplanes in the air as they fly by en route to Shearwater. Don't know if I'll make it to the show, but I definitely will watch down the road, to see what I can see, at a distance. :)

You're sure its local? An interesting way to be sure...

2010-09-08T11:33:00.000-03:00

In Japan, convenience stores don't just sell pop and chips, as the often do here - they sell vegetables, and/or fresh food products. In response to customers' requests for safety and quality, as well as avoid price fluxuations from suppliers, they've started their own farms. By growing all their own veg, they can have start-to-finish quality control over locally produced vegetables. You can read more about it on Mainichi today: (http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/business/news/20100908p2a00m0na014000c.html)

So, that would be like Sobeys or Superstore/Loblaws actually owning and running local farms all over the country to sell exclusively to their own stores. It's an interesting idea...I mean, certainly you could be sure of the "local"ness of your product. It might be a way of saving a lot of small struggling farms - but I'd be worried that they'd turn into a vegetable version of those giant conglomerations that run meat processing, where animals are mistreated before slaughter. Not that I think the veggies would be mistreated :) but the land might be, by large-production methods (read: heavy pesticide use), etc. But if people didn't want those methods used, they could directly hit the chain's bottom line by not buying from them.

Oh well, it's certainly an interesting thing they're trying out, and an idea worth at least playing with here in North America...

Surprise!

2010-09-07T12:05:00.000-03:00

Went out with the girls for their playtime a few minutes ago, and saw this in my Miracle-Gro bag garden (well, what's left of it...the peas are all finished for the year, so they're gone. I put an extra potato I had from my crop that needed a few more weeks, in, and there's my two pepper plants, which didn't do so well in the "generic soil", so I moved them over to see if Miracle Gro would help). ;)

So....where did these guys come from?? Mushrooms are strange critters....I flipped up the edge of one of them to see what the gills were like, now I gotta go figure out what kind of mushrooms they are.... :)

We were lucky!

2010-09-04T15:17:00.000-03:00

A *lot* of people lost power - even my parents, who live only a few streets away! We were very lucky.

Right now my parents and their neighbour are moving a tree from the property line that fell right on my parent's vegetable garden - right on the tomatoes! Oh no! It damaged the yard fence, the garden fence, and tore the clothesline right off the post! Yikes. We didn't lose any trees, ourselves, we're lucky.

Dave's mom also lost power, but since she lost virtually all her trees to Juan a few years back, there probably won't be too much damage.

So, Earl did give us a pretty good punch! But they hope to have the power back within a couple days, so it won't be another Juan, for sure. *phew*

Hurricane Earl

2010-09-04T12:46:00.001-03:00

Well, not sure if it's a tropical storm or a hurricane, but Earl has definitely hit. I took a short video in our backyard a few moments ago:

It's crazy!! The wind is so strong, but the gusts are just nuts! The trees are whipping around, and the rain feels so cold, especially since we've had temperatures in the 30s all week, ugh. Sorry for the quality of the video, my camera is rather old, but it gets the point across. :)

We have power for now, which I am grateful for. They say it should finish blowing through by late this afternoon. Glad all my plants are indoors!

Pre- and Post-Hurricane/Power Outage Survival Advice

2010-09-02T16:05:00.000-03:00

Hurricane Juan was several years ago, but for anyone who lived through it, it was the worst storm in memory. It tore a swath through our province, and changed a lot of people's attitudes towards hurricanes. With all the climate change occurring, storms are not burning out on our cold waters as they used to - the water is warmer, and storms are hitting us harder. We've had a terrible heat spell just in advance of Earl, our upcoming hurricane, which will not help matters. So in honour of Earl, I thought I'd share some survival tips I learned from Juan, where our household went without water and power for 4 or 5 or 7 or more days (mercifully, I've forgotten which - it may not sound like a long time, but going through it, things deteriorated rapidly. We weren't adequately prepared). These aren't simple things like "bring your pets indoors" or "buy a gas generator", these are some of the things that we either did, or wish we had done, to make things easier.

Get canned foods to eat, like Chef Boyardee spaghetti in cans (NOT the microwavables!). These you can heat up in the cans (take the lid off first, the can will be too hot to take it off after). During Juan, we were able to heat these using just 3-5 tealights, and a few hours (see more below). If you have a better heat source, all the faster. Other foods to consider:

Cup Noodles (the kind that come in a cup you fill with boiling water)
Mr. Noodle (the kind that you have to boil for a few minutes)
instant coffee
instant rice
canned sandwich meat/fish, to make sandwiches; mustard and butter don't usually need refrigeration, so at least you'll have something to put on them.
bread
Peanut butter (unless you're allergic), a good source of protein
Canned beans in sauce (pork'n'beans, beans in molasses, etc.) - again, a good source of protein
instant oatmeal

After a couple of days, you don't feel like cooking or eating anything. It's very important to have these easy-to-make things on hand to keep your strength up.

Clean and fill the bathtub with water. Essential if you have a well (as we did), as you will need it for your water supply until power is restored. Good to have even if you do have city water, just in case. It costs nothing but a few minutes of your time, but when you've got a family stuck with a toilet that doesn't flush because there's no power for your water supply, you will be SO GLAD you filled that bathtub. Toilets will automatically flush once the liquid level inside reaches a certain amount, so use a bucket and pour in water, and bingo, you've got a flushed toilet. Before Juan, Dave at the last minute thought to half-fill the tub, and that lasted us a few days. We eventually ran out of toilet flushing water, but were lucky enough there was a runoff ditch nearby where we could get some. Nasty business overall.

Bottled water, or at least containers large enough to hold several days worth of drinking & cooking water. Essential if you have a well, good idea even if you don't.

Before the storm, make sure your cell phone, music players, laptops and rechargeable batteries are fully charged. If the power's out for a few days, you will be cursing left and right when you realize your laptop only has an hour of power left on it. And you WILL want your laptop. I don't have one myself, but my music player was SUPER important to my sanity by day three.

Most power companies have a toll free line where they have a recording of power restoration updates, program it in your phone ahead of time, so you won't have to dig around for it in the phone book with a flashlight later.

Make sure you have some cash handy. By day four, if some local fast food places have power, you are going to want their food like you never have before. And there's a possibility that they might have intermittent issues with their debit and credit machines, so have some cash around for stuff like that. My parents had power long before we did, and God love them, they brought us some takeout on day four, and we ate that like we had never eaten food before. Four full days of a limited diet, where the can of Chef Boyardee split between two people was your big meal of the day, you get pretty hungry.

Get out your flashlights (at least one per level of your house), batteries for the flashlights, candles, oil lamps with oil, etc. before the storm. You don't want to have to be fumbling around in the dark looking for this stuff after. I keep supplies like that all in a rubbermaid box in the basement, so I know where everything is (and check it yearly to make sure batteries are still good, etc.) And remember, when its dark, it's DARK. There's no lights on the streets or anywhere nearby, it is blacker than you might expect. You should leave one flashlight in the bathroom, you'll need one there even during the day, unless you have a window.

Make sure you have your medicines, prescriptions, etc. with at least a weeks' worth, just in case.

First aid kits, with painkillers and such, should be handy.

Be sure you have enough pet food on hand to last at least a week. Cats and dogs especially react badly stomach-wise to an abrupt change in diet, and the last thing you want is your animals getting diarrhea during this time.

If you have an outdoor barbeque, be sure stock up on charcoal, matches/lighters and/or propane. You will be able to use this to cook food that will spoil otherwise in the rapidly defrosting fridge, or using it at its most basic, to boil water. You will need this for coffee, tea, and cup noodles. REMEMBER TO NOT USE CHARCOAL INDOORS! Every year people die of carbon monoxide asphyxiation because they think they can use charcoal indoors. You can't. Its not worth the risk, even if it's well ventilated.

Break out the board games! For the first couple of nights, this is a fun way to pass the time with family. After a couple of days, well...humor is pretty much lost, and you are just trying not to stab everyone to death, much less play board games with them. Do TRY and keep your humor though, its a rough situation for everyone involved, especially the kiddies.

Radios are excellent sources of info, and support. You can hear the latest on the cleanup, and feel a little better about your own situation when you hear the dj hasn't had a shower in three days either.

Baby Wipes. Invaluable if you don't get water for several days, just to give yourself a little freshness pick-me-up. You *will* feel dirty and skanky, these can help.

Just say no to joyriding and sight seeing. Yes, after a hurricane there will likely be a lot of cool-looking damage, but the last thing power and emergency crews need is people out and about clogging up the roads for no reason at all other than they're *bored*. Man up, put society's needs ahead of your own, and unless you have an emergency, don't leave the house until the crews have had a chance to do their work. It goes faster for everyone this way.

There will be frustration and DEFINITE resentment when you see power coming on near your home, but not on your street. This is normal, but try to keep in under control. The power company has its own way of doing things, certain grids need to get attention before others, and rest assured, in due time you will get your power back. Driving over and bitching at them while they work will do nothing to better your situation. They're not going to suddenly change their mind and go running over to fix your power. It will not happen. Leave them to their work.

Make sure you have a fire extinguisher handy - safety first! You might have candles for lighting, be using them for cooking (see below), etc, and you should make sure you have it handy at all times.

Don't knock tea lights! They're more powerful than you think! We used them to power our indoor cooking system, and they worked great. Our indoor cooking system consisted of a design I gleaned from my Girl Guiding days - an old metal coffee can, turned upside down, with vents poked in the top. In Guides, we had a heat source of, I believe, cardboard rolled inside an old tuna can, filled with hardened wax, then lit. We didn't have any wax, but we did have tealights, so we filled a tray with tealights (5 or more work great, if you can fit them in) put the can on top, and waited. We were able to boil water in a pot and heat our pasta dinners on this. Remember, the can is HOT! Patience is key - it is makeshift, but it does get the job done, and in the end, that's all you really need.

But, as an addition to the above - don't use scented candles!! The scent will wear out its welcome very quickly, and you will come to associate the smell with bad times.

Well, I've made all the preparations I can (it's 40 deg. Celcius right now, with the humidex, so I'm really limited in the running around I can do). I hope this helps and gives you some ideas for preparations you can make for yourself should you ever find yourself in this situation. Good luck! And if you have any other hints or suggestions, post them in the comments field below.

Downtime on my webserver ?

2010-08-31T11:24:00.000-03:00

Just to let people know, it looks like Powweb, my website provider for my email, learnpsyanky.com and shop.learnpysanky.com, as well as the hoster of many of the images on this blog, appears to be down for now. Don't know how long it will last, hopefully it'll be cleared up soon. Thanks for your patience and I apologize for any inconvenience.

Flying Ant Day

2010-08-27T14:26:00.000-03:00

Apparently, it's not just me that calls it that, according to Wikipedia, it's actually the informal name given to what I witnessed today - the day that the queen ants emerge and take to the skies, with some male counterparts, to mate with members from other colonies, and found a new one.

I saw many of them resting in the sparse grasses above their colony in our backyard, trying to figure out how to use these wing-thingies on their backs. Many crawled on the ground occasionally taking off for short hops in the sky, only to fall back down, or fluttering their wings, shaking them out without taking off. Some hovered in small swarms over nearby treetops. It's very interesting to watch.

No less interesting was the larger-than-normal number of our friends in the sky, dragonflies. Always glad to see them as they eat mosquitoes and the like, but today they were doing amazing aerial acrobatics as they attempted to feast on the new flying snacks that had appeared. I had two flying side by side, heading right for my face, and like some sort of air show, they both diverged at the last second in a sweeping arc, over and up. Beautiful, really!

I'm no big fan of ants, but still, I gotta give them a salute and a "good luck" in their crazy journey - imagine, a being that lives almost exclusively underground, growing wings and taking to the skies to find a new place to live!

So, I didn't go...

2010-08-21T12:00:00.002-03:00

Once I got up in the morning on Saturday, I realized that the long walk to Marginal Road just wasn't worth it to check out the new location of the old Halifax Farmers' Market, when we have a much easier-to-access market right here in Dartmouth that I hadn't been to before. I mean, I like the idea of the new market in Halifax, but honestly, it's just too far out of the way - and no buses! FRED (the free rides everywhere downtown bus) does go by, but only operates for 2 months in the summer, on a 40 minute loop, so I'd have to catch it near the beginning of the loop, after an already 40 minute long trip to get to the downtown. Or have a 15+ minute hike from my nearest bus stop. Or wait, transfer and *still* have to walk a distance. Loaded down with produce? I don't think so. It's really unfortunate, I wonder how many elderly and encumbered people won't be able to get to the new market - the eco-friendly building is great, but if you need a car to get there, what's the point? AND, after looking at their new website, I noticed something. It says "Free parking the month of August". That implies you'll have to *pay* for parking afterwards. What?! This new location looks like it has a *lot* of "getting there" issues...at least from my perspective.

And I think I made the right choice, looking at the photos of opening day from The Coast - it looked as packed as the old market was! :) Not my cup of tea, so glad I didn't go. :)

Instead, I took a short walk down my street, caught a bus that took me right to the (admittedly much smaller) Dartmouth Market, located in Alderney Landing (a Dartmouth side ferry terminal). At least 2 farms had large displays, two or three others were much smaller with limited produce. But really, that's more than enough variety, they had just about everything you could want there - if one place had beans, the other had cabbages. There were several baked goods stalls, and one I'm definitely going to try next time is the German Baker (oddly enough, run by an actual German). :) Their breads looked wonderful. There were a large number of crafters there, too.

See? Not too packed - busy, but not crazy.

Once I was done, I had some time to kill before the bus came back (it only runs once an hour) - so I walked over to the boardwalk (the Market is right next to it) and had a lovely sit looking at the harbour - beat the heck out of fighting with crowds and walking all over creation loaded down with veggies!

I looked at Halifax...

I looked at boats tied up on the docks...

...at George's Island in the distance...

...at the adorable Theodore Tugboat...SO funny to see him darting around the harbour...

...at the Angus L. MacDonald bridge...

...at boats under the bridge...

...and the ferry as it went past (it docks right next to the Market).

It was a gorgeous day, not too hot, not too cold. Soon enough, the bus came, and I arrived home with all my goodies. As usual, the animals FREAK when I bring home stuff fresh from a farm. Groceries are "interesting" but they go hog-wild over farm fresh stuff, must be lots of interesting smells in there. Here, Baby Boy tries to fend off the other cats from getting a sniff, but Peepers manages to get in there.

This time around, I went looking for borscht ingredients. Everything's in season for borscht, and I got some gorgeous produce from Noggins Corner Farm (in operation since 1760!). The meat (antibiotic-free!) I got from Meadowbrook Meat Market, a local farm that sells daily at Alderney Landing. They had a great deal on back bacon this week, so I got some of that. I got the free-range eggs from another farmer there, but unfortunately I missed the name.

All in all, time well spent! Glad I went, and will definitely return. :)

Now that it's been a while, I wonder how things are going over at the Halifax Market...? Hmmmm...

Fascinating Glimpse underneath the Harbour

2010-08-15T11:55:00.000-03:00

REALLY interesting article on what lies beneath the waves of our Halifax Harbour. Included were WWII tanks, and a shipment of 1960s Volvos. Who the heck knew that? Great article, and apparently the gentleman the reporter interviewed has a book out:

Read the article from the Herald here. It's really cool!

Almost Opening Day!

2010-08-06T18:26:00.000-03:00

Tomorrow's the big day for the new Farmers' Market in Halifax. I wish there were more info available that you could be sure was accurate. First, it was going to be open 7 days a week, then six, now I hear it's three, which is really far more reasonable for farmers who travel to come here. If its true. *sigh* As I said previously, I've found it very difficult to find accurate and current info on the new opening.

According to Metro (http://www.metronews.ca/halifax/local/article/596351--crews-hard-at-work-as-market-s-big-day-nears) they're still on schedule to open tomorrow, so I'll make the hike there, plot it out on Google Maps (thank you Google!) and check out this new venue!

(It's supposed to be next to the Pier 21 museum, so I'll get directions from there...)

Halifax Farmers' Market is over....or is it?

2010-08-02T11:51:00.004-03:00

Soooo...the Farmers' Market here in Halifax, has moved. Or has it? It depends on who you ask, I guess. There's a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly new building that will house *most* of the vendors from the Farmers' Market. This new market will be called the Seaport Market. But not everyone is leaving the old venue. Apparently, there were some personality conflicts between leaders of the different "factions", so some people decided not to move when the time came. So now there'll be two markets.

The "Old" Farmers' Market

• Centrally/conveniently located.
• Building has amazing character, lots of nooks and crannies and all the other charms that come with 1800s architecture.
• Victim of its own success - so popular that the crowds were almost nightmarish, you just couldn't even move around
• Only available from 7am - 1 pm on Saturdays

The New Market

• great new eco-friendly building
• (almost) all of the vendors you know and love
• room to move! and shop!
• wheelchair accessible (a lot of the old building wasn't)
• Open 7 days a week - more convenient for shoppers
• Open 7 days a week - hard for many farmers to maintain a presence there 7 days a week (apparently they were given the option of "Saturdays only" or "7 days/week" in renting space - might have been better if they had a "2 days/week" option)
• Location is completely horrible. (It's called "Marginal Road". Does that say anything to you?) The middle of nowhere on the waterfront, and NO BUSES.

So there it is in a nutshell, there's good and bad for the old and the new. But the move has been made, apparently - this past Saturday was it's last official day in the old space. If it wasn't for the newspaper doing a story on the rift, I'd have had NO IDEA when the changeover was happening. Google searches and official websites have an appalling lack of information - I understand the new market opens next week, but no idea when, or what its hours of operation will be. It's been frustrating for sure, if they want people to go, they've gotta get the word out!

I'll update my farmers' market listing at the top of this page, once I find out the Seaport Market's hours and such.

There's been some good articles on the move as of late: the Chronicle-Herald did a good one on the rift, and a great opinion piece on the benefits of the move in the Coast.

So, I'm not sure in sum total how I feel about the move, but I do look forward to checking out the new location! We'll see how it goes for everyone involved - time will tell!

Night Visitor

2010-07-28T22:13:00.000-03:00

Just stepped out to empty our kitchen compost bin...in the dark, I thought I saw a small dark shape near me on the step. Though it was very dark, something just told me, "that's a frog". Don't know why, just felt it. So I reached indoors and turned on the outdoor light...

And gave a little squeal because I was right, somehow...

He's a big feller, too, as big as my hand, sans fingers. Not like the little guys we've had around here the rest of the summer. Guess the girls will have to wait for their final trip outdoors for the night, he looks pretty comfy where he is....

Ouch - Nova Scotians actually buying less locally....

2010-07-28T10:43:00.000-03:00

A report in the Chronicle Herald states that Nova Scotians are spending only $0.13 of every food dollar buying locally, down 17% from 1997. In fact, it states on average our food was traveling over 4,000 kilometers (not miles, km) from farm to our plates.

This is not good! As a side note, I was at the grocery store the other night, wanting to pick up some potatoes. In Canada, there's only ONE place you need to get your potatoes from, and that's the bright red soil of PEI. PEI equals potatoes here in Canada. 'Nuff said. But EVERY type of potato sold at the store, BUT ONE, was from the US!? Seriously? Like, I'm talking 10 different bags/styles of potatoes, and they all were from the US. We grow enough potatoes locally and next door in PEI, why are we wasting gas shipping them all the way in from another country?

As it says in the report, as if in answer to my question: "Several factors have contributed to the decline, including larger supermarket chains that can buy and sell cheaper by volume."

If you'll notice, I've added a link in my "home/about" bar at the top of this blog, highlighting some of our local farmers' markets. If you know of other links for farmers' markets in other areas, add them in the comments area of this post! Support local farmers!! :)

Read the full article on the report here: http://thechronicleherald.ca/Front/1194001.html

Hair Decorations: the next Level

2010-07-17T22:58:00.000-03:00

Dazzling photo gallery on Mainichi: tsumami kanzashi, or traditional women's hair ornaments made of tiny folded silk pieces. Absolutely amazing craftsmanship. And some of the ideas he's come up with are just astonishing - cut open watermelon, a shrimp, fir boughs with acorns - just abounding in creativity.

Be sure to check it out! They have photos of the finished product, as well as some images of the process, and a short interview with the craftsman. link

Rainy Day Fun

2010-07-14T13:16:00.001-03:00

What a downpour we've been having this morning. The girls still wanted to go out....

We went to the top of the hill, I came prepared with a blanket to sit on, and an umbrella. Lila decided early on to come sit with me under the umbrella, and Casey sat nearby playing goofily with her rock. Of course, both girls decided that it was best to shake off while standing next to me, and since my blanket soaked through the bottom, I wasn't that dry anyway... :)

When it was getting close to finishing time, I saw a movement in the grass near my feet, and a little brown frog struggled into view. I said to him "surely you're not looking to sit under the umbrella, too?" but he just stared back at me. I think he considered it for a minute though...

Rather than have him noticed by the girls, I thought it best we go in, and leave the little guy to his adventure in the woods beyond our yard. :)

Guess what Casey, you're staying in the basement for a while, you big muddy girl.

BeanDreams: Fruition

2010-07-13T22:50:00.003-03:00

A little earlier than I expected, but certainly not unwelcome! I've tasted some already, snacking as I string some supports between bamboo poles, and they are wonderfully crisp and sweet. I hope I have enough to cook with, but that's all up to my restraint, I think! :)

Mic Mac Bar and Grill

2010-07-08T19:59:00.002-03:00

MicMac Bar and Grill a.k.a. Mic Mac Tavern
217 Waverley Road, Dartmouth

I haven't gone to the Micmac Bar and Grill for probably 10 years at least. I lived outside of town, and didn't come in very often. And after a time, even though my parents used to come there before they were married in 1970 (happy 40 years guys!), and long after, it kinda fell by the wayside of our family vision. Then once I moved back into the city, and coworkers would mention with a glow in their eyes that their treat for the night was going to the Micmac for a steak dinner, and friends of my parents mentioned it to them again, we ended up going there yesterday for supper.

My God, you must go. :)

It was 30+°C yesterday, and just miserable outside, but inside was beautifully cool. The decor is not elaborate, it's very simple and homey. Big wooden chairs, lots of windows, and two levels, with lots of seating (and lots of parking). Not a place where you get dressed up to go eat, just come casual. Not a fancy-dan looking place, but that's because they put their money where it counts: hiring super-friendly and helpful staff, and in the quality of the food.

Our waitress was the granddaughter of the original owners, whose black and white pictures were on the walls. This place is ESTABLISHED, and a family-run business, and looks to continue to be so for generations to come. Her mother and stepfather own the place, and her father cuts/butchers all the steaks and makes the ground beef himself. (We weren't served by just her, though - while she was the main waitress, we had at least 3 different people attending to our needs over the course of the dinner--you never felt ignored.)

Butchering the steaks themselves must be the reason they can keep their prices so low. We had 10-oz filet mignon (bacon wrapped), with fries for $13.99. $13.99!!!. They also have a secret spice medley that only the waitress's dad knows (I hope he has that info backed up somewhere!) that is just incredible. No steak sauce needed! And so tender, just melts in your mouth, a truly amazing piece of beef. I might just go for the 7oz next time, because the 10oz was so big, I had to bring some home (not that that was a bad thing!) One side of mushroom and onions are enough for 2 people, as recommended by our waitress, and she was dead on. Lovely fresh mushrooms too, no canned crap here! Hand cut french fries come in LARGE portions, and if you think you might be cheated by getting baked potato as a side instead, you'd be sorely mistaken. They are enormous! Gravy is true beef gravy, definitely not pre-packaged because it tastes deeply beefy and not too salty.

Did I mention the steaks were incredible? :) I'm sure the other things on the menu are equally well prepared, but for certain, when you ask people about this place, the steaks are what get raved about. Truly a special treat. But inexpensive enough that it doesn't have to be saved for special occasions.

Go early, because when we left at 4.30 pm it looked like it was going to be a packed house.

Directions can be found on Google Maps.

The street view is not quite on, it's actually the blue-gray building next to the one that shows up when you zoom in.

New Photo Cards at the Gift Shop!

2010-06-29T16:52:00.006-03:00

New photographic greeting cards at my gift shop (Ann's Photography) featuring the best photos from this blog!

Poor Lila, Celebrations don't become her

2010-06-29T09:54:00.005-03:00

In case you didn't know, the Queen is visiting our shores, in time to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the Canadian Navy. So even from home, when the wind is right, you can clearly hear ships blaring their horns, etc. in celebration. At the end of our playtime today, there was a 21 gun salute, I assume for Her Majesty. Poor Lila, though, thought it was thunder, and even though I counted for her and told her when it was all over and tried to make it fun, she would have none of it and ran down the hill to go inside. Silly, poor dear. Oh well, the people are enjoying it more than she did, I'm sure. :)

(The Queen also arrived in time to mark the 400th anniversary of Grand Chief Henri Membertou’s (of the Mi’kmaq, our indigenous people) baptism into the Catholic Church/peace with the French in 1610.)

July 1st is just around the corner...I hope Lila braces herself for all the fireworks!

Mom & Baby Pheasants - In the City??!!

2010-06-22T18:11:00.006-03:00

SOOO exciting!!! I've NEVER seen a pheasant in the city proper before (I've heard the males in the woods since we moved here, off and on, but never at all when I was growing up a short distance from here). For a mommy to bring her 3 or 4 little babies to our yard to peck around amongst the clover is just truly a thrill. The babies were well-hidden, we only got a look at them when they got to the trodden-down path in the middle of the lawn. She kept a watchful eye on everyone while keeping herself well-hidden too! The babies were less than 1/4 her size, so they're very young still.

I'm still squealing with glee, and it happened an hour ago! :D

Moments Ago....

2010-06-20T10:56:00.003-03:00

Exciting developments in our clover-covered backyard!! We usually get small white butterflies (the little white butterflies that frequent fields), and when I was growing up near here, we would get the occasional sighting of an Admiral. But this is the first time I've seen a swallowtail butterfly in the city proper, ever! And as I was heading in, I saw we had TWO! So the clover has already been a great feeding ground for local bees, but now we've started to attract bonus wildlife! Huzzah! Very exciting! I didn't get too close to him, I didn't want to bug him and discourage him from his clover feast.

And, our backyard bush, after watching the buds get bigger and bigger, finally burst forth in bloom today! It's covered in these dainty flowers - not a great scent though, but they're lovely to look at. :)

Oh yeah, it's summer...

2010-06-11T10:47:00.005-03:00

Well, almost! :) It's going to be a gorgeous day here, the sun is already really hot. Earlier this morning, I caught a bee doing his bee-business while the weather was a little cooler...

This'll be good growing weather for my little garden...

heh heh heh...sorry, distracted by Kuroi (Pretty Kitty)...he's trying out the new water bowl that was outside (the girls just don't drink that much outside, but they're going through lots indoors, so now we have two indoors), and his ears are revolving in a most peculiar way - not twitching, but actually revolving slowly, as he pauses after his first drink - you can see the wheels turning in his mind "is this water good?". He's gone back for more, so I think he's approving...he's a dear little man.

Anyway...the sun will be good for my garden, and all the plants out there - it's been rainy or cloudy for a long time now, and they need the S-U-N! And for the record, if you can at all manage it, having a backyard with a ton of clover in it is AWESOME. I can't tell you how amazing the scent is out there...nothing overpowering, but a lovely delicate perfume on the air. Just magnificent. And good for the bees. :)

Country Farms Meet City Cooking

2010-06-07T15:00:00.007-03:00

Great picture! © 2009 CNN GO

Interesting read on CNN GO today, on how a restaurant in Tokyo is making eating regional cuisine a well-rounded experience - city chefs are paired with a regional farm and create delicious seasonal dishes, and diners get to experience a multi-media presentation as they dine, about the farm and growing methods used to get the food to their table.

Read more on CNNGO: http://www.cnngo.com/tokyo/eat/tokyo-local-restaurant-275938

BeanDreams: the Peas Continue!

2010-06-04T14:00:00.007-03:00

Even though we're going through a bit of a cloudy/rainy spell, weather-wise, the peas are really enjoying the cold temperatures!

This was May 29:

And this was today, June 4:

I think I'm gonna need MUCH taller stakes for them to hang on to than the short little border ones I have there now... :D

My scallions have sprouted, but aren't doing much so far, not really photo worthy yet. And the poor tomatoes all but died when I transplanted them. The outdoors was too harsh for them after a cosy-ish winter indoors. They might still make a comeback...maybe? Only time will tell!

I'm still waiting to plant the peppers, it's just been so rainy it's hard to get a chance to get out there. But the weather should warm up and sunny-up soon, and I'll have a chance to transplant them and they can spread their roots and thrive.

Rainy Day Clover

2010-06-01T10:37:00.004-03:00

My goodness, the clover smells divine...even on a rainy day like this. :)

BeanDreams: Sprouting Success! And Evolving Spring

2010-05-25T15:56:00.005-03:00

The peas have sprouted! We are officially on our way! :D

The maple trees have burst forth, and only a few weeks after popping their buds, they've set their seeds.

And the purple varieties of clover have started blooming here, with lovely shades of magenta and dark pink...

It's late spring, and definitely on the way to a lovely summer!

BeanDreams: "The Plan"

2010-05-18T14:00:00.011-03:00

It's just too gorgeous outside today NOT to plant something! Even though it's traditional to start plants here during the May long weekend (this weekend, Victoria Day), I'll be working during the whole thing, as its very busy at work. So, I'll start a little early with my cold-loving plants.

I went this year with a combination of bag gardening and container gardening. The bag garden idea is perfectly laid out in this month's issue of Mother Earth News, which I got for my birthday: http://bit.ly/bKYUuu

They make it sound pretty easy! And if we have to move this summer (which it looks like we will), it should be a relatively movable garden, as well. (Of course, I hardly planted anything last year because we thought we'd have to move, and we're still here...so I'm not letting that stop me this year). I'm using Miracle Grow Premium Garden Soil Plus (0.15-0.05-0.10) Organic Based (nice to see the organic base in there).

I'll be growing sugar snap peas (the kind with the edible pod), bunching onions (also called green onions or scallions), both from McKenzie's seeds, available pretty much everywhere in Canada (http://www.mckenzieseeds.com). I purchased eight starter plants of "Long Red" Cayenne, that are supposed to be good for drying. Looking forward to that! I'm also repotting the sad remains of my "Sweet Million" tomato plants that I bought last year. The weather was so poor I got a total of 2 tiny tomatoes from eight plants. I did, however, manage to keep some of them alive over winter, and they've flowered several times during that period, so I'm hopeful if the weather holds, these two guys will be good producers.

Our "last frost date", always approximate, is May 6, here in the Halifax region.This coming week has good temperatures, no lower than 6 deg. C at night. Should be just right to get the peas started. The peppers I won't transplant until they're nice and hardened off, sometime in early June.

I'll keep posting updates, hoping for an early sprouting! :)

BeanDreams 2010: The Return

2010-05-13T18:03:00.002-03:00

Regular readers will have noted that I didn't have a BeanDreams last year. That was due to a few factors, the least of which was that we thought we might have to move during the summer. However, summer came and went, and so did winter, and we are still here (although our house is up for sale by our landlord, so we will have to move at some point). But I'm not going to let that stop me this year. I've got a portable garden plan, one that can come with us should we have to leave in the middle of the growing season.

Check out previous year's BeanDreams in the sidebar nav, and watch for updates soon, when I'll share my scaled-down plans with you all!

Spring is here....I think

2010-05-03T16:24:00.005-03:00

Well, here's hoping, anyway. Mother Nature seems to think it is, plant-wise, so fingers crossed the weather will follow suit.

The bluets are out, one of the earliest wildflowers to bloom here in Nova Scotia (after the coltsfoot and dandelions, of course. The bluets are just as big as a pinky fingernail, delicate little flowers, but so pretty.

And, a herald of things to come, the wild strawberries have started blooming! After winter, it's so nice to be reminded of the good things to come...

A Tribute to Molly Cat

2010-02-21T09:00:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, we had to put down our eldest little cat, Molly. Named after Paul Molitor (whose nickname was Molly), one of our favorite all-time Blue Jays baseball players.

She was sweet, but still Queen of her Domain. She put Casey in her place ever since Casey was a puppy, and still years later, if Casey got over-excited about something, Molly would strut right over to her, meow loudly and smack her in the face, as if to tell her "you're being hysterical, calm yourself!". Then Casey would cry, which would confirm that she indeed, was hysterical, and would need another smack - which she received. Queen of her Domain. :)

If I was crying, however, she would come over and meow at me concernedly and quietly. She LOVED lap time -- whenever a lap was available, she'd be on it. She was a very quiet purr-er. She hung out with Baby Boy and Mr. Black as kittens, and Mr. Black followed her around lovesick till the end of his days. She loved to look out the window and watch the birdies, and make that cackling noise cats make when they REALLY want something.

But she never really got over losing her best friends Jessica Ferret and Misty Dog in short succession when she was only a few years old. She slept curled up with Misty at night, and play-stalked and attacked and was stalked and attacked in turn by Jessica - they had such good times together. And as a result of living with a ferret as a kitten, she learned what none of the other cats ever picked up - that burrowing under and sleeping under blankets is warm and comfy. But once Misty and Jessie were gone, she was a little more distant with other animals that came into our lives - it really affected her deeply.

But she's with the girls now, and they can all frolic together again. We'll miss you so much Molly - you were part of our lives for most of our time together as a couple, and we were so glad to have known you. A little barn cat, the only survivor of her litter, went on to live 16 years - a good, long life.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-10-11T15:39:00.004-03:00

Although technically, it's tomorrow, but we always had our dinner on the Sunday growing up. :) Gorgeous day outside, sunny but windy. Definitely getting fallish out there, it's downright freezing in the mornings!

My kitchen is filled with the wonderful scent of fresh herbs from the pork roast I'm making. Just a small dinner for me and Dave. Of course, I'm probably going to go overboard as I always do and make too much food for 2 people.

Roast pork with sea salt, pepper, fresh sage and rosemary, and dried parsley from my parent's garden.

Candied sweet potatoes.

Mashed potatoes with roasted garlic (again, grown by my parents).

Possibly mushrooms.

And possibly this amazing glaze recipe that would go equally well with chicken or pork. If not, then good ol' pork gravy.

Again, too much food for 2 people, but we'll enjoy the leftovers!

And we are thankful. :)

Eastern Passage Get-Away

2009-08-17T18:54:00.006-03:00

My parents, Dave and I, decided to beat the heat out Eastern Passage way (its been hitting over 30 deg. C the last several days). Nothing like a stroll down by the Passage to Halifax Harbour with the beautiful wind coming off the water to cool you down nicely. Ah, the sea air!

A lovely little fishing community, a LOT of fishing boats, lobster traps, fresh lobster for sale...

What's beautiful about Nova Scotia is that the roses that grow wild here even grow up to the edge of the ocean! A hearty plant indeed, and so lovely.

From one part of the boardwalk, you can look down the Passage and see downtown Halifax, with the Purdy's Wharf office towers to the left of the picture, and the Angus L. MacDonald bridge in the center.

The BEST fish and chips I've had in a very long time, super fresh haddock, beer battered with crispy chunky batter, just amazing! A great little place to go if you're in the area, called Wharf Wraps (funnily enough, the dish that Dave and I ordered is on the poster I've linked too). So fresh!!! So tasty! Dave's so used to the crappy minced super-processed fillets that you get in the grocery store frozen food section, he was shocked that fish could taste this good!

There are a LOT of people out walking with their dogs, and I thought it was very considerate of Wharf Wraps to put out a dish for passing puppies.

As we were walking back to the car, we saw a large, obviously young seagull attempt to get fed from a passing adult. He was making loud baby-ish cries too. Pretty funny. The adult was having none of it! :)

All in all, we had a fun time, it was a great way to cool down on a hot summer day...

Sunny "Picnic"

2009-07-29T16:22:00.003-03:00

Well, sort of a picnic, without the food. :) We spread out a blanket and enjoyed the shade and strong breeze on the top of our hill, during one of the only sunny days we've had here this summer. (Its really been a miserable summer here, nothing but cloud and rain for weeks at a time).

Lila had a nice time...

Casey, not so much. She always hides in bushes when she's overheated, but I think it would have been cooler for her if she had just sat in the open with us...

Dave read a book, and I worked on some artwork. A ladybug landed on Dave's knee, Lila rolled around in the grass. Flowers were blowing in the wind...

It was really peaceful and lovely, so nice to do something different and fun. I spend too much time on the computer when I'm home... :)

Biomass my a$$

2009-07-25T09:09:00.008-03:00

This is the most disgraceful thing I've heard regarding the environment in quite some time. They claim to do it in the name of reducing carbon emissions and eliminating their use of oil and fossil fuels. Sounds good, right? Except that to do this, they use debris "left over" from cutting down trees. What they mean by that is using machines to scrape up the entire forest floor and leave nothing but a wasteland behind - literally.

This was in the Chronicle-Herald this morning - it is a very disturbing read, but its important to know about these things, so we can hopefully do something about them.

==============================================================================
Green power at high cost
Clearcutting for biomass leaves nothing behind
By HEATHER AMOS

(hamos@herald.ca)
With Jeffrey Simpson, staff reporter
Sat. Jul 25 - 4:46 AM

Little forest debris is left on the ground in the Caribou Gold Mines area near Upper Musquodoboit. The debris is burned to produce electricity. (Photo by KATHY DIDKOWSKY)

Stumps and vegetation left after wood is harvested for lumber and pulp and paper only. (Photo by KATHY DIDKOWSKY)

Kathy Didkowsky grew up discovering streams, lakes and wildlife in the forest behind her house.

Now when she walks through the same wilderness in Upper Musquodoboit that she’s trying to save, Ms. Didkowsky sees more and more bare land.

The forest is being clearcut and for the first time Ms. Didkowsky noticed it’s not just the logs being taken.

"Now with biomass they take everything," said Ms. Didkowsky. "They work with a machine that literally just ripped at the trees, it didn’t cut."

When trees are harvested for pulp and paper, stumps, branches and leaves are left on the ground to decompose and give nutrients back to the soil. When wood is harvested for biomass, a renewable energy source, everything is taken.

"I cried…. It was devastating to me," said Ms. Didkowsky.

Northern Pulp manages about 280,000 hectares across the province, including land near where Ms. Didkowsky grew up.

Bob Bagdon, vice-president of human resources for Northern Pulp, says the company’s been collecting wood waste to use as fuel for years.

"We burn it in our power boiler, which generates electricity that we consume to run the mill," said Mr. Bagdon.

The debris produces enough electricity that the mill in Abercrombie Point near New Glasgow is self-sufficient and doesn’t need to use heavy oil for energy.

Biomass has been at the centre of a hot debate. The Utility and Review Board was asked to approve Nova Scotia Power’s plan to buy electricity generated through burning wood waste from NewPage Port Hawkesbury Ltd. and Strait Bio-Gen.

The untendered $60-million deal would have generated $1-billion worth of electricity over 25 years at the Port Hawkesbury paper mill.

On Wednesday, the Utility and Review Board said it lacked the authority to approve the plan in advance.

Nova Scotia Power doesn’t require board approval to purchase renewable power. It plans to review the board’s 40-page decision before deciding what to do next.

Under the Environmental Goals and Sustainable Prosperity Act, the province is supposed to get 18.5 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy by 2013.

"I have real issues. To turn the province into a moonscape to say that we’ve reduced our carbon emission doesn’t appeal to me," said Natural Resources Minister John MacDonell, who pointed out that in opposition the NDP had introduced legislation against clearcutting.

Raymond Plourde, wilderness co-ordinator with the Ecology Action Centre, said his organization supports renewable energy but would like more emphasis on sources like wind, solar and tidal.

"This province has overcut the forest already," said Mr. Plourde. "How can we add on top of that more hundreds of tonnes of the forest being cut and burned for energy production?"

On Thursday, Premier Darrell Dexter said he thought biomass would be part of a renewable energy solution. Mr. Plourde said his organization isn’t against using biomass and some wood for energy, but does not agree with Nova Scotia Power’s plan.

If it goes through, NewPage Port Hawkesbury will need 400,000 tonnes of biomass cut from the forest every year. Mr. Plourde explained that this would be like having an extra pulp and paper mill in the province, or doubling NewPage’s current wood consumption.

"This is a whole new level — and not a small level, but a massive level — of increased pressure on the forest to produce ever more amounts of fibre."

Mr. Plourde worries that this type of pressure would be devastating to wildlife, especially birds, which are already in steep decline.

"The vast majority of (endangered species) need healthy mature forests and we’re losing them."

Trees are considered renewable energy because they grow back, but Mr. Plourde said the soil has to have nutrients in it for this to happen.

"If you scrape off everything that’s left over after a clearcut, then there’s nothing left … to rot and to help nourish the soil and feed the next generation of trees," he said.

Ms. Didkowsky has seen the area she grew up in change before her eyes — there’s less wildlife, waterways are damaged, the ground has been disturbed by heavy machines, and the land where trees have been removed has been baked dry.

"I would like to see that there was a forest management plan in place and stricter legislation to say that there’s diversity in the species left in the forest, and there’s age diversity."

Mr. Plourde said he doesn’t know of any regulations about clearcutting for biomass. He thinks the government needs to do more for the province’s forests.

"So far, the province has done nothing to actually study the ecological implications of this kind of harvesting," said Mr. Plourde.

==============================================================================

Close Encounters of the Bee Kind

2009-07-20T14:50:00.003-03:00

Holy crap! I just came tearing down the hill and into the house after a 3+ minute ordeal with a bee who mistook me for a flower. I was sitting on the top of our hill in the backyard when I heard bee wings. I said, "Oh, is that a bee?" and looked around. Didn't see anything. Then I looked down and saw he had landed ON MY ELBOW. He was probing me with his cool tongue (or whatever you call it that bees use to get the nectar out). I got a very good look at this while I "remained calm" and tried not to do anything to annoy him. He wandered around on my arm for a few minutes, trying again and again to get any nectar at all from my elbow, but it wasn't happening. His tongue felt very cool and soft. It would have kind of tickled if I wasn't so scared. Then, he started to take off, only to re-land once again on my arm after a microsecond! He was convinced this was the spot he heard there was nectar, and wasn't leaving until he got some! So, I knew the next time he took flight, I'd have to run. And when it happened, I ran like a bat out of hell. Nearly fell down the hill, it's quite steep, and the dogs thought it was great fun and ran with me. The bee looked a little stunned for a second as he tried to re-land, but that was the last I saw of him. Hopefully he found the flowers that were behind me a few feet, that were a kind of peachy white color like my skin, which I'm assuming he was looking for. ???

An abrupt end to our sit outside! At least I didn't get stung, and the poor mistaken bee got to live another day to gather nectar and didn't lose his life after stinging, as most do.

Home made sushi - a first!

2009-07-09T20:20:00.003-03:00

Is it perfect? No. I could have rolled it tighter, added less cucumber, and so forth. But I'm still super-proud of my first attempt at making sushi at home!

I first considered making it myself after getting a veggie one from the local grocery store. Since it didn't have any raw fish product in it, I got to thinking I could make it myself at home. But, I was still pretty nervous about trying it. Then I found this video:

http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-make-Sushi-5290

And while many may complain about his technique, he did make it look simple enough that I thought I really could try to do it myself. Now, there is sushi, and then there is SUSHI. Mine is very much "small letters" sushi, nothing spectacular, but it's good enough for me to have as a snack now and then at home, for a lot less than it would cost at the store.

For my first maki sushi, I used cold cooked shrimp, green onions (only the tops), and cucumber, deseeded. I already had plenty of nori here, which I use on rice, and rice balls (onigiri) sometimes. I also had fun making the sushi rice myself, fanning it and cutting in the rice vinegar (see a good explanatory video: http://www.5min.com/Video/How-to-Make-Sushi-Rice-1498)

All in all, a fun experience I'll be happy to replicate in the future!

GreenFeet

2009-07-08T16:16:00.003-03:00

You know the song:
GreenFeet was all my joy...
GreenFeet was my delight...
GreenFeet was my heart of gold -
And who but my Lady GreenFeet?*

This is what happens when goofy puppies play on freshly-mowed lawns...

*with apologies to Medieval balladeers...

Happy Canada Day!

2009-07-01T18:43:00.002-03:00

Urban Chickens: NB

2009-06-29T09:25:00.006-03:00

Well, even though our city council disappointingly decided against the tiniest of chicken coops in Halifax city limits, it looks like New Brunswick, our provincial neighbour, is taking a step forward. Good for them! Moncton, NB, is having a pilot project with 4 chickens in a coop in city limits.

Buy local - how much more local can you get than your own backyard! A great learning experience too, the "farm" will give tours to the public to see how it's run. They're hoping to learn from other urban farms in the country, and will make a full report when the project ends next year, adding to the information available out there on what works and what doesn't.

And then MAYBE Halifax city council will EVENTUALLY change their mind...when they see what a positive experience it can be! One day... I know I'd LOVE to have a chicken coup!

Read more on the CBC: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/new-brunswick/story/2009/06/29/nb-urban-farm-554.html

Pig Business

2009-06-26T07:55:00.004-03:00

Thanks to Stephen Fry for tweeting this! I might not have heard of it otherwise!

It is HARD to watch, but it is IMPORTANT to watch. Pig Business is a new documentary film about the devastating effects of modern "farming" methods of raising pigs - which really is applying industrial production methods to animals. I love pigs, and bacon is probably my most favorite food in the world, so being face to face with how these animals are treated in the larger corporate farms is really hard to see. It is a great kick in the butt, though, for me to continue to track down and support small local farmers who treat their livestock with respect. These are living creatures after all, not cars!

I don't know when we'll be able to see the film in North America, but the UK has showings listed on the website, and also has a trailer for the film.

So check it out - it's tough, but it's so very important to know the consequences of how we're raising animals these days. http://www.pigbusiness.co.uk/

Photo Journal: Springtime in the City

2009-06-03T16:11:00.003-03:00

Our first city spring in several years. Took a long time getting here, as there were steady snowstorms throughout winter. But the trees are finally in leaf, and the early blossoms of forsythia and crocus have all faded away. Finally, spring is really here!

We had a couple of lovely flowering trees in our yard, near the woods:

Chickadees are still enjoying our tiny birdfeeder:

The leaves on the maple trees are out, but not fully extended yet:

Casey's having to take time out during her play, in the shade of the bushes. Her black fur makes her overheat very quickly, and as soon as it got a little warm, she started having to take breaks. :)

And, on a not-really-related note, I bought a very cute little turnip at the grocery store, and decided to take pics of it. I had the knife in the shot for scale. Bahy Boy thought perhaps it was food time, and gently reminded me that he was there, and totally available for feeding. What a goofy cat. :)

So, that's been spring...bring on the sunny skies and sandal-wearing weather!

New Gift Shop!

2009-05-25T09:09:00.004-03:00

I've added a second gift shop on Zazzle, called Ann's Ukrainian Gifts Too! It'll feature even more unique Ukrainian designs, on some of Zazzle's more interesting product lines.

Just in time for Father's Day, I've released a line of Ukrainian Neck Ties! Perfect for Dad on his special day, these ties feature Ukrainian folk embroidery inspired designs he's sure to love.

For American customers, the url is http://www.zazzle.com/annsukrainiangifts2*

But if you're in Canada, you can shop Zazzle's local url @ http://www.zazzle.ca/annsukrainiangifts2*

They have local urls for Australia and Great Britain, too, just click on the appropriate flag at the bottom of the page.

Finally, a trip to Hamachi!

2009-05-08T08:06:00.000-03:00

Finally, after a whole year of dashed plans, my family and I got to go to Hamachi. There are 4 Hamachi restaurants with different themes in the Halifax area - we went to the one on Portland Street, Hamachi Grill & Sushi House.

The atmosphere was really nice in there. The staff were super friendly. The decor was very nice - very traditional, formal Japanese, not plastered with tons of stuff on the walls, but just a few well-chosen art pieces. There was a lovely Japanese water fountain, and a very cute sushi bar surrounded by a moat, where your sushi is delivered to you via "boat" (have to try that next time)!

But on to the food! I told my parents it wouldn't be a proper Japanese meal unless they had miso soup, so we all had some. It was really lovely, and my parents were pleasantly surprised by the taste (they heard the words "seaweed" and "tofu" and weren't expecting much good to come of it). But there's so much more to a good miso soup, of course, and all the wonderful flavors came together perfectly.

Pork Gyoza. The pork gyoza was spectacular. MAN, that stuff is good! I heard James Barber once say that every culture has a dumpling, it's basically only a slight change in dough, and whatever the culture chooses to stuff it with. Ukrainians and Poles are best known for perogies, of course, but Japan has its gyoza (delicious recipe @ About.com). Lovely with Hamachi's delicate vinegary/soya dip-in sauce.

Shrimp Tempura. Their tempura was above reproach. As I've often heard, proper tempura is really an art form, made in small batches with freezing cold water, leaving a few lumps of flour in so that upon frying, the batter puffs up light with extra crispy bits. We had shrimp, and it was lovely. Beautiful coloring, deliciously crispy.

Unagi Kabayaki. I had wanted to try eel for several years now. There's a day (the traditional "hottest day of the year" in Japan) that everyone eats eel on, as it's oiliness is believed to help you "beat the heat". So I finally ordered it. And wow, what an unexpected flavor! (But unfortunately, not in a good way, this time). I thought it would be rather chewy, but the inside really rather melted away, which was nice. Now, this is freshwater eel, mind - but it tasted like the sea! I can think of nothing that has ever elicited such a strong memory connection with the sea other than actually being there, breathing in sea air. It was astonishing! It tasted like ocean, it's the only way I can describe it. Not unpleasant like drinking sea water or anything like that, but as if you were actually able to eat ocean, and all the minerally, saltiness of it in a physical form. Dave had promised to eat whatever I ate, and so dutifully had some. Even my dad tried some. My dad and I also tried it in honour of our German ancestors, who came to Nova Scotia a few hundred years ago, and had to spend many a winter eating eel, as it was in abundance in the Lunenburg area. I applaud them for their courage. Or their desperation. I tried to like it. I really, really did. But it was such an extreme flavor, and it just didn't "chime" with me. Or my dad, or Dave. So we had to leave this beautifully prepared (I mean, it was gorgeous, and lovingly done, you could tell) food alone. We took it home to share with our furry family.

Beef Sashimi. The true treat of the night was the beef sashimi. Sashimi usually refers to raw fish, served with a dipping sauce, so I assumed (correctly) that this would be beef seared on the outside, but completely rare (or blue, as the server called it) on the inside. It was served super-thinly sliced, in a ponzu sauce. What an amazing experience. Holy moley! I put it in my mouth, and as I was experiencing this incredible taste sensation for the first time, I looked over at Dave and could see the range of emotions he was going through as he was hit with it. My parents were asking us eagerly how it tasted, but we both couldn't talk - I could tell he loved it as much as I did though! When we finally could speak, we both just oohed and ahhed, we couldn't even really put it into words. It was so delicate and tender, the meat just melted in your mouth, it was truly amazing, amazing. WOW. SO GOOD! The sauce complimented it wonderfully, and the whole thing together was the most incredible taste sensation. WOW.

My parents had sesame seed salmon, with a very unJapanese portion size. It was HUGE! BIG salmon, lots of sake grilled veggies and fried rice (traditional Japanese meals usually have MUCH smaller portions, but we're used to bigger here in the West, so I guess that's what they serve).

Dave and I had a couple different kinds of sushi, all impeccably prepared, of course! As I've said before, I don't think sushi will ever be my all-time favorite, but it is nice to have a little on a special occasion.

So, all in all, we had a lovely time, and will definitely go back again. My parents were nervous about trying a totally new cuisine, but I think they were pleasantly surprised. And there's tons more on the menu, so we'll have lots to try next time, too! So if you're ever in Dartmouth, be sure to check out the Hamachi Grill and Sushi House - you'll be glad you did!

Kotatsu time is quickly coming to a close...

2009-04-18T22:16:00.001-03:00

I don't know who'll miss the kotatsu more, the animals or us! Now that it's springtime, it'll soon be time to put away winter things.

Baby Boy was the biggest fan amongst the cats, enjoying sleeping on it while the sun was up, and staying under it the entire evening before bed. Whether it was on or off, Baby would be there, secure in the hope that at some point it would get turned on, and would get toasty warm. Lila was the biggest fan amongst the dogs, but didn't realize it could be turned on even when a person wasn't sitting at it. When we were sitting at it, she'd come in from the cold outdoors and dive right under, but if no one was, we'd tell her to go under, and even put her under, but she'd come right back out again, looking at us wonderingly, "Why aren't you going to sit down? I'm cold!". She always falls asleep under there, and you eventually either hear her snoring contentedly, or panting because she got too warm, but doesn't want to leave. Pretty cute.

We put the kotatsu together ourselves, using our old coffee table as the base. We bought a kotatsu heater off of eBay (from shop owner gyatei), and a stepup/stepdown power converter (from export depot). We used a large bedspread/duvet, but never did get around to getting a proper table top made for over it. We plan on getting a piece of MDF and painting and varnishing it for next winter. Hopefully it'll get done! Otherwise the duvet gets pretty dirty from us eating over it all the time. :) The heater was very easy to install, a few screws were all that was needed. It provided us with a great place to all sit down together as a family, bundled up and warm and toasty to watch tv, eat, or do hobbies. Good way to save on oil heating too! ;)

Want to make your own kotatsu from scratch? mantilo: a miscellany has a great post on his own adventures in kotatsu-ing.

Savings (with a little decluttering thrown in)

2009-04-15T09:06:00.004-03:00

I love reading Maki's informative and entertaining blog Just Hungry. This month, she's doing some posts about financial frugality, and she did a nice little review of the Japanese educational manga Savings Techniques for Women Who Can't Save. She mentions something I've heard many times before, that reducing the physical clutter in your life can help reduce the mental clutter, and helps you financially, too. Check it out!

Pysanky Final

2009-04-11T19:53:00.004-03:00

And here's the finished product! There are some things I'd change about it, like varying the line widths a bit more - but considering I was able to dig out only two sizes of kistky to use, I think it turned out pretty okay! Happy Easter Everyone!

Finally, Pysanky!

2009-04-09T21:11:00.005-03:00

The sad thing is, I don't have as much time as I'd like to devote to pysanky these days - this is the first one I made all Lent! Spent a couple hours doing the white tonight, hope to finish it before Easter! :)

As per usual with the ones I make at the end of Lent, I didn't follow a set design, I prefer to make it up as I go along. Hopefully, it'll turn out pretty!

Change of Direction

2009-03-21T21:42:00.002-03:00

For the last several years, this blog has been focused specifically on my ruralish life - nature photography, bird watching at our bird feeder, walks in the woods, and so on.

Moving to the city (and winter) has changed those aspects of my life. I still cherish many of the same things I did before, I just don't get to explore them much these days. And if I keep the blog as it is and only talk about those things, it'll be months between postings. So I think I'm going to move the focus to include a few of the other things that interest me, too:

Japanese television - they have some amazingly creative storytelling on Japanese TV, that you just don't see much of anymore on North American tv. I'll also discuss good foreign (well, foreign to North America) :) films I come across.

Organization - I'm trying to focus on reorganizing my space, and my time, to fit everything that I have to do, in! Somehow! BIG fan of Peter Walsh.

I'll still give regular updates on my gift shop, my art, and any ruralish behaviour I get up to! Hope you will enjoy the journey with me!

Its a brave new world

2009-03-21T08:48:00.003-03:00

This is so awesome. I've been a fan of Obama's ever since I saw him give that amazing speech at the DNC back in '04. And he and his wife have taken it up yet another notch by planting a White House organic kitchen garden. Their main aim is to start dialogue regarding the fast-food/obesity issues many Western countries face, but it also sends a great message about consuming locally grown/seasonal produce and good-for-the-earth organic farming methods. All around, a great addition to the White House property, and a wonderful example for others to follow!

Read more.

Sardines, watch out!

2009-03-15T08:16:00.003-03:00

This is truly amazing video. A school of sardines is attacked by dolphins, sharks and birds, ALL AT ONCE! It's freakin' crazy!!

I don't usually watch "hunting" videos (I feel too bad for the hunted - I know it happens in the wild, I just don't want to see it), but since (1) the fish are teeny-tiny (2) there's tons of them and (3) there's no blood, I made an exception in this case. So glad I did, it is really must-see video.

It's like "Wild Kingdom" on steroids. To watch the school twist and turn in unison to evade, the birds turning into missiles diving into the water, the sharks NOT eating the birds, it's just...wow.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7921119.stm

Local Restaurants & Farmers Meet

2009-03-13T10:46:00.003-03:00

A good idea, I hope more places can come up with programs like this. It's a meeting where farmers, Nova Scotia chefs, government marketing representatives and a group representing restaurant owners all got together, with the aim of getting local restaurants to use more locally-grown produce. Getting everyone to meet face to face like that is great, everyone gets to meet and know each other, opening up new networks of local supply that everyone can trust and feel comfortable with.

Read about it on the Chronicle-Herald.

I can't resist good design!

2009-03-11T17:01:00.007-03:00

I saw this at work today, and HAD to get one myself and give it my own tiny financial support.

It's called a "Wishbone" soap dish, and I wasn't surprised to see on the packaging that this design was the winner of the Umbra-Pratt Design Competition. It is a fantastic looking design, and if I guess right, it'll be wonderfully functional, too. Instead of like many soapdishes, this one won't have a sloppy mess underneath, because the air will be able to dry most of the bottom of the soap, through the "ribs" of the fish. Very cool!

www.umbra.com

Moonlight through trees

2009-03-09T23:05:00.001-03:00

Spooky-looking night out there tonight...

The Future is Now: Tracking Songbirds

2009-02-15T09:37:00.002-04:00

It's pretty amazing how small we can make trackers for wildlife these days. All the miniaturization in technology is enabling researchers to get new insight into the travel patterns of many animals, including tiny songbirds.

The more we learn, the more we can see how environmental changes, airplane traffic patterns and more are affecting the wildlife around us.

Learn more on the BBC!

Site Down for a time

2009-02-12T18:50:00.002-04:00

As I discovered while I was trying to update my shop today, my hosting provider is having some hardware/network issues which has caused my site to slow down, and now stop loading completely. I think it was out long enough it might have lost its DNS entry, so it might take some time after they get the servers up and running again for everyone's computers to be able to see my sites again. This affects shop.learnpysanky.com and www.learnpysanky.com, as well as some of the images on this blog.

I'm very sorry for any inconvenience this may cause!

Stoats 'n' Stuff

2009-02-09T14:07:00.003-04:00

Dave had a ferret several years ago. Her name was Jessica, and she was the sweetest little thing. If you want an entertaining pet, get a ferret. Unlike kittens, who keep their playfulness while young, but often grow lackadaisical when older (like Baby Boy, who prefers to just roll over and get a belly rub rather than chase a string), ferrets stay just as active and crazy when they're in old age as they were when they were young.

I remember seeing a video of wild cousins of the ferrets sitting together out in the wild, then one of them darting over and giving a young bear (minding his own business eating berries in a field) a bite on the butt! Then the ferrets ran off, chortling and bouncing away like it had been the best joke in the world. That's a ferret mentality for you: fun first, think of the consequences later. The bear was annoyed, but didn't chase them for long. :)

Stoats are also wild cousins of the ferret, and this really cute video shows him gamboling about in a garden in the UK. It's pretty hilarious!

Chickens in Halifax, update

2009-02-06T11:58:00.003-04:00

I got an update the other day from the Facebook group set up for people in favor of being able to raise chickens in Halifax. The study done by the city is nearly complete, and they say the study looks like they're going to continue to ban raising chickens locally, which is really unfortunate. Read about the slowly ongoing saga:

chickens-in-city.html
chickens-in-city-update.html
chickens-in-halifax-update.html

If you happen to live in a place that does allow chickens, why not consider raising some? You get a great source of fresh eggs, that have been produced by chickens you raised and feed yourself - talk about quality control! And often, you'll have enough extra eggs to offer to neighbours - building community relations!

Mother Earth News has an article on raising chickens for first timers, check it out for more information. I think it'd be a lot of fun - I would if I could!

Shipping Less Water Around the Globe

2009-02-04T08:24:00.003-04:00

A very interesting article on the BBC today about the ripple effect of removing a lot of the extra water from products like clothing detergent - the containers are smaller, which means less plastics to be recycled, shipping costs (and fuel use) are less, and on it goes.

I learned that it's not just me, modern detergents actually do make less foam. But it's on purpose (not a lack of quality, which I was thinking) - it's a water-saving measure, so you don't have to use as much water when rinsing out your clothes.

So, have a read, it's quite interesting!

Sunny Afternoons

2009-01-29T11:08:00.003-04:00

Everybody loves the bright afternoon sun we get here in our new place. There's always a jockeying for position on the coffee table, couch...

...even the bookshelf, which is popular enough we've added a little piece of carpet to one of the shelves for kitty comfort.

Lila puppy (our possibly-permanent houseguest) looks up expectantly, hoping we'll move the sun around to the couch so she can get comfy. All in due time, puppy, all in due time. :)

Happy Cows, more milk?

2009-01-29T09:02:00.002-04:00

It makes sense, really. A cow that doesn't feel like "just a number", produces significantly more milk in it's lifetime than a cow that's shoved in a stall and basically ignored.

So cows, like people, like to feel noticed and appreciated. :) It leads to more productivity, which is good for both businesses AND people (and cows!). Good stuff all around!

Read a little more about it on CNN.

Merry Ukrainian Christmas

2009-01-07T08:32:00.006-04:00

Things still haven't gotten to what one would call a steady, regular pace here in our new home - I hope to reorganize in the new year and get back to regular blogging updates! Sorry it's been so long!

Had a lovely haddock dinner for Ukrainian Christmas eve - haddock encrusted with parsley, served with roasted garlic on the side. Yummy!

Krystos Razdayetsia everyone!