Tag: flowers

she likes it hot hot hot…

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How do you like this glorious tropical colour?!

Fitting, given that it was so hot today that the thermometer on our balcony cracked!

(This is what you get for buying delicate instruments at the Dollar Store, I guess.)

However, JJ has been busily tending his newly laid balcony garden, and the results are starting to show well:

Don’t ask me what these are. I can tell you, though, that these are little baby marigolds…

… and that this is what they look like when they grow up.

The purple ones in the front are pretty too, no?

I particularly like this one:

Come to think of it, the only plant that is not looking so… ahem, hot… is the one that is in my charge:

It’s a cactus. My colleague L kindly gave me a cutting of it and told me it was impossible to kill. However, she didn’t know that she was consigning a piece of her plant to Kristina the Ripper. The door above the entry to my apartment should read “Abandon hope all ye greenery who enter here”, really.

Also, that lazy@$$ Mr. J “Ah’m rrrretired nou and ah don’t need tae do much of anythin’!” J has completely forgotten to plant my herbs which I put into his capable hands…

So, apparently it’s a very very guid thing that I decided, despite the fact that it was 5 million degrees C/7 million degrees F (10 million degrees C with the humidex), to stop at the shops on the way home and get some more stuff to preserve – otherwise we’d starve this winter, no doubt.

Stay tuned. Knitting progress photos, alas, will have to wait until next week. Despite the fact that I steamed up the apartment all last evening with boiling vats full of jars, I’ve decided that it is simply too hot to knit

Did I ever mention that I detest eggs, by the way?!?

A very, very happy, healthy and humidex-free Thursday to you all!

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hot town, summer in the city

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Well, we’re into the dog days of August here and it’s not even August yet!  Sigh.

However, there is one thing that keeps my spirits up when everyone is frazzled, grumbling, pushing and shoving in the downtown streets trying to get as soon as possible into their air conditioned office.

Yup, you guessed it – flowers!

As you can see, here in Toronto they grow them to match the fire hydrants!  Well, sometimes they do, anyway.  Other times, no – but they’re still pretty, eh?

This, I think, is my favourite colour ever.  Hot coral flowers!!

But then I see more of this lovely buttercup yellow…

…but then I see loveliness like this and I start getting very, very confused.

It’s sensory overload, really…

I can’t decide which pink I like better, the one above, or this one:

… and then there is the glorious red of these (poisonous, I think, though) berries!

And I would be remiss if I didn’t show you some of my favourites – the humble sunflowers!

I also loved this little carpet of flowers here…

…which look like this closer up!

Now, you know I love vibrant colours, but even white looks good at this time of year…

And I guess that we have the blasted heat to thank for all of this fabulous bounty.  So, I’ll just have to suck it up and get used to it.

And anyway, at least it still gets cooler in the evenings…

This tree, by the way, was at least six feet away from the lamppost last year.  I find it fascinating how the leaves gravitate toward the light.  In this weather, I must confess that I prefer the dark.  Oh well.  Good thing I live next to a forest and all!

A very happy and colourful Tuesday to you!

a lovely spring afternoon…

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…part of the loveliness courtesy of Michaels Craft Superstore!

We scored lots of goodies there yesterday.  For example, since I didn’t already nearly have enough beads for knitting…

… I needed to pick up some more.  Approximately 12,000 more by my calculation:

And what am I going to do with all these beads, you ask, shaking your head?  Well, a girl can never have too many chartreuse beads, can she?

These ones are intended to replace the gold beads I bought for the Moroccan Days shawl kit:

…which calls for 5,000 or so.  However, I poached some of the gold beads for the Sherwood I’m working on now:

(which I’ve decided, by the way, will be my mother’s belated present for Mother’s Day.  Hi, Mom!)

And these ones?

Well, I think they’ll go quite well with this Handmaiden Sea Silk in the Ocean colourway:

This, by the way, is the Ocean that I just had to have last August.  Yes, it’s still in the stash.  I’ve earmarked it for a “stealth project” (as Soo would say).  Stay tuned.

In keeping with the oceanic theme, I also picked up some sea glass:

It looks like pastel ice!

But don’t worry, JJ didn’t come home emptyhanded.  The reason for the trip in the first place so that he could pick up some stuff for the seasonal door decoration.  Here it is:

Isn’t it lovely?  Almost as lovely as this stuff…

Happy Sunday – and a happy Mother’s Day to those brave souls out there who have earned that title.

castles, Toronto and Spring – oh my!

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After all my moaning about Snow Madness this past winter, I am happy to report that spring seems finally to have arrived in Toronto!

Of course, the weeds were the first greenery to make themselves known, even pushing through concrete:

And until very recently, the cold finger of Winter was still more evident in the forest than the lovely leaves of Spring…

…but finally the spring greenery is emerging more clearly!

Now, because this is a part of Canada in which spring takes a while to appear, some flowers are slower to emerge than others.
But these budding tulips make me happy – they make me think of dancing arabesque ladies of the mystical East.
And funnily enough, just down the street there are fully-fledged tulips!
In fact, the road to the Castle is strewn with flowers.
There are also lots of other lovely spring colours there:
… as well as another sign that Winter is ever so slowly giving way to Spring:
The colours are overwhelming at this time of year after all that grey bleakness.

But don’t get me wrong, I’m not complaining! (for once in my life, anyway).

I don’t even care that it is grey and damp outside when I see lovely blooms all around!


And even lovely cherry trees!

So, today I’m very happy. To top it off, it is that all-hallowed of holidays, PayDay. So, doubtless there will be more photos of Nature’s lovely colours as depicted through yarn on display here tomorrow.

Happy Wednesday!

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