Maple tapping. Priceless.

This morning, I watched a discussion on one of my favourite (knitting) podcasts about the cost-effectiveness of growing your own vegetables. This inspired me to financially evaluate my first foray into maple tree tapping this winter.
Step 1: Autumn. Incredibly enthusiastic about the process. Crocheted maple leaves to tie around our two trees while they still had leaves, as once those drop I won’t have a clue which is which and run the risk of birch-syrup or somesuch. Cost: negligible. Scraps of red acrylic yarn from deep deep stash.

Step 2. Wait. This past winter was relatively short for Quebec, however 5-6 months between stages of a project does rather put a dampener on the enthusiasm!
Forget about project. On drive to town in late March, notice buckets on trees. Passion for project is reignited. Go on epic-hobbit-style-quest round Ottawa’s hardware stores to find the last remaining sap spiles and buckets in the city. Notice there are now displays of BBQ equipment and sunloungers in the stores. Yup. Left this a little late!
Cost: 2 x buckets, lids and spiles = $24. Gas cost: I dread to think! Damage to pride at screwing this up: negligible, pride went missing way back in the late 90s. I’m happier without it.

Step 3 Drill hole in tree (with Mason drill bit because you forgot to buy wood-bits in the many hardware stores you visited, and you aren’t going back.) Tap in spile, hang bucket. Wait.

Step 4 After a week we collected 16oz of sap. The next stage is to boil it down, the ratio of sap to syrup is 40:1. Not enough to share with friends, but hopefully a pancakes worth. Boil sap down, after half an hour bladder becomes unignorable, nip to bathroom. The unwatched pot boils. Syrup stage bypassed and we have maple toffee. 1 teaspoon of maple toffee.
Cost: One tub of local artisan vanilla ice-cream to serve with toffee = $9.

1 teaspoon of maple toffee = $33.
Today’s market price for gold? 1 gram = $52.

Best maple toffee I ever tasted!
Hours of entertainment from that $33 investment - countless! Same again next year!

(This post started as a forum post responding to the aforementioned conversation. I copied and pasted it here as I haven't felt the urge to write in so long, I thought I would preserve my ramblings. )

hummm......

Last month I felt so sorry for the hummingbirds sat in the rain, and wanted to make little hummingbird sized umbrellas to keep their tiny feathery noggins dry.

Yesterday one pooped on my eyebrow.

Cardigans and Canoes...

We moved house this week, and I have lots of news and reports, but for now the sun is shining and the breeze is in the trees so I'll save the rambling for a stormy evening.

This is the view from this mornings coffee spot....suffice to say that all is well!

Star struck.

Today I met the star of one of my favourite books. He was crossing the bike path. I'm not usually an autograph hunter, but excitement got the best of me and he very kindly posed for some pictures with me before continuing on his way....

But not before he kindly allowed me to recreate a page from the text, although I had to adlib a little on the fruit selection.

Internet research leads me to believe this fine fellow is a Polyphemus Moth caterpillar, and will grow up into a 6 inch beauty if he avoids ending up as a blackbird's breakfast. 

And if there was any doubt as to his credentials as The Very Hungry Caterpillar? This lumpy fellow can eat up to 86,000 times his own body weight in his 2 month life - impressive stuff!

Procrastinating...

I should be packing, but instead I spent the morning sewing giraffe buttons onto my new blouse, and then attempting to take a half decent self portrait.

The buttons were a success. The portraits less so.


Sadly I only noticed that the button band was slightly off centre when I had complete the blouse....but then I feel slightly off-centre most of the time, so it works on some level.







Our evening stroll was post rain-storm last night, which enabled some rainbow spotting.....I tried in earnest to take a shot resembling a famous album cover, anyone get it?

Feats of engineering.

Sunday mornings as a child often involved curling up on the sofa watching TV. Of course, for the most part this consisted of cartoons, but despite never been much of a regular sports fan, I remember loving Transworld Sport. This show somehow held my interest with its mix of weird and wacky events and brief clips of sporting madness. And today's event definitely fit that bill. After work I nipped over the river to watch the first few flights of the Redbull Ottawa Flugtag 2013. Of those I witnessed, the Gameboy was definitely the most successful flier - although it also nearly blew off the staging area when a sneaky gust of wind caught it side on. 

As usual at these events, for me it was the efforts put into the costumes and the aesthetics of the machines which were the most impressive. I was particularly fond of the Yoshi and Sock-monkey models, and despite a slightly menacing cyclist the ET effort was great too. (I should have taken a video of it in action, the guy wrapped up in the blanket had E.T waving and blowing kisses at the crowd). Much like Comicon earlier in the year, Costume-wise it seems like all these events serve as good excuses for people to get into something skimpy and/or cross-dress. The Eagle-fliers (top left) were very keen to show off their bows and arrows!







I didn't stay long as it was ridiculously busy and shade was hard to come by, but it was nice to see the event in action. And the crowd were definitely very supportive as flight after flight nose-dived into the water. Apparently the winning flight made it 129 feet smashing the Canadian record, there are photos and more details on the Flugtag website.

So, did I return home inspired to build my own flying machine and take to the air? Well despite my prior experience (well, that one flying lesson last year), I didn't immediately reach for hammer and nails. Nope, it was boiled egg and sausage meat engineering for me this evening....far safer, and the results are yummy!

I miss Scotch Eggs, Sausage Rolls and Cornish Pasties almost as much as I miss Fish and Chips, so I was very pleased with how these came out.


The recipe is from A Perfect Day for a Picnic , and most of these are for the Cookbook book club at work tomorrow.....if I don't scoff them before bed tonight that is.

Night all. x

Commoon misconception.

It is a common misconception....

....that there is a man on the moon...

....in fact there is a giant song sparrow, who perches and serenades the stars with his slightly flat rendition of David Bowie's Space Oddity.

So now you know.

Are you dancing?

I have never been much of a public dancer (*), I think I can count on one hand the times I've danced in front of other people. Most memorably for me was the occasion at a family wedding many moons ago. I found myself so inspired by a Billy Joel track (probably Uptown Girl), that I managed to mash-up Celtic Sword Dancing and The Robot, to hideous effect. (I can only hope that I am the only one that remembers this....and I am eternally grateful that back then video-cameras were few and far between).

In recent years, only the imbibing of copious amounts of alcohol have led to more than a mere foot tap, and then I have found myself looking down and wondering whose legs those are jiggling about so ridiculously, before regaining self-control and retreating to the safety of wallflower status once again.

It may be surprising to learn then, that I LOVE to dance, and behind the safety of closed doors and drawn blinds, I will boogie away on my own for hours at a time. Particularly on overcast or rainy days, I like nothing more that to push my spinning wheel to one side, stick on ELO at full blast, and then I twist, I Charleston, I fling out moves from Saturday Night Fever - and I absolutely LOVE it. And as I get older, I find this seeping out into public more and more.

This week has been a prime example, as in our fourth summer in Ottawa, we have finally headed to Bluesfest.

Belle and Sebastian - dreaming of horses.

Belle and Sebastian's enthusiasm and energy was infectious last Saturday, and I found myself bobbing, tapping and I may even have snuck in a little shimmy at one point. Now to the outside observer, I may still have appeared to be the Brandy Snap that my dear brother-in-law thinks of me as - refusing to let go with anything like wild abandon. But for me, this was a novel experience - movement, in public!

My dance-based week continued last night at the Dusk Dances in Strathcona Park. This is the 3rd year they've run, and I've been every year, and thoroughly enjoyed it. This is dance as art rather than as social activity, so I can't say that I picked up many moves to add to my limited repertoire, but the fun and joy the dancers showed is encouraging nonetheless.

 











There were spooky marionette brides, moonlight-projection based pieces with werewolf overtones, and an emotional love story told with the aid of bathing-suits, showers and sliding about on slippy wet plastic sheets.
If you're in the area, there are still performances tonight and tomorrow, it is pay-what-you-can, and a fab way to spend a summers evening in the park.

So tonight, it is back to Bluesfest, this time for Bjork. Not sure whether that will be a dance-inducing performance or not to be honest. In fact, maybe some of the performances last night might lend themselves to her music after-all. Not sure I can pull of Marionette-bride-with-multiple-wavy-arms all by myself . . . but if I do, i'll be making sure that there are still no video-cameras to capture the moment for prosperity!


(*) Yes, I have decided to label myself as a non-public dancer, as opposed to a private dancer. Tina Turner has a lot to answer for.

Random encounters....

A young Harry Potter-a-like child just ran up to us while we were walking Jasper, holding out a scrap of paper with a badge scrawled on it in felt-tip (on second thoughts, maybe it was psychic paper and that's what I wanted to see!).

He claimed to be a New York cop who needed to confiscate our dog for being too ridiculously cute.

When I challenged the authority of a New York cop in Ottawa, he ran back to his friend who was watching us with binoculars from a safe distance, shouting " we got on the wrong plane, we aren't in New York".

Life is good.

Scrumping....

Last week I ventured out into the big wide world and returned to my cosy nest with a bag full of grapes and a mushroom bigger than my head. And all for free.

The grapes came courtesy of an afternoon in a stranger's backyard, organised by the fabulous Hidden Harvest. People with an over abundance of fruit/nuts, offer up their wares to volunteer pickers. On this occasion 7 of us turned up, picked the vines bare, and came up with this mountain of grapes:

The bounty is then divided up between the home-owners, the food bank, hidden harvest projects - and the pickers!

These are concord grapes I think, very fruity - they taste exactly like the grape juice you buy in cartons, quite a kick. I spent the next afternoon peeling grapes. Well squeezing really. Then into a pan with water and a little sugar.....boiled up, sieved to remove the seeds - and I now have 3/4 of a jar of grape jam. Very tasty grape jam it is - but you don't get a whole lot of return for your labour with these puppies!


I wasn't deterred by this though, and on my second mission, cycled off to Rockcliffe park to pick myself a mushroom - check out this beauty:

Dog available for photoshoots on request

It is a 5lb puffball. And yes, I knew it was safe to eat. According to my research it is pretty darn difficult to get puffballs confused with any other fungi (but do your own research if you want to go mushroom picking, I am no expert!). The main disadvantage of picking mushrooms in the wild is the extra stage of preparation required - bug removal. Thankfully I am not a squeamish girl, which is a good job as there were 15+ slugs, 20+ woodlice and 4 centipedes to pick off this fella before I could get to the cooking (I may need more protein in my diet, but I'm not that desperate).

Once peeled I decided that soup was the way to go, and found simple recipe to follow.....added milk and garlic. Cooked up a very fragrant soup - which looked horrendous! I could have taken photos for you, but I wouldn't wish that on you, be you family friend or stranger. Suffice to say - it minged.  I managed a bowlful (I felt obliged), but the rest has gone to that beloved home of all my cooking disasters - the compost bin.

I'm not giving up on this scrumping/free harvest idea.....but I am hopeful that my next adventure will yield better results. Watch this space.

Just missing goldilocks....

This is not a bear, it is a city-beaver:

This is not a bear either, but I bet you've not seen a cuter fake-bear-with-human-torso-wearing-a-skirt in a long long time.

This is not a bear, it is a note stuck on a post-box.

That is all. x

As is tradition....

Today we have a Bank Holiday to honour our beloved Queen Victoria's birthday (news of her sad demise has been slow to reach Canadian shores. We like it that way so please keep quiet!).

Breaking with British Tradition, Ottawa has organised three days of glorious sunshine with the current temperature 31 degrees with a nice light breeze.

I am fighting back against this mockery of the English system, and have spent the afternoon baking Blue Cheese flavoured Cowboy boot biscuits. As is tradition.

Long may she rein.  

An Easter Sunday hike....

 

 
A morning walking in the woods in Gatineau Park .....spotting deer, evidence of a very active woodpecker, an off-road Unicyclist, second breakfast of Beetroot sandwiches (yummy)......and then we had ice-cream.
 
A fab morning all round. X

We have a winner.....

The snowbank is no more. Here is the little that was left yesterday morning (with dog for scale, not because he is an attention seeking muppet):

And now the space is bare. It survived remarkably well considering the temperatures last week, we rocked up to 27.4 on Wednesday according to the Ottawa Citizen. Craziness, apparently 9 weather records were broken, all I know was that I got to get back on the bike, spin on the front porch and even got rosy cheeks in the sunshine. lovely.

And this morning? It's -4. Yep, that's a 31.4 degree drop. Winter coats and thrummed mittens back on for the dog walk this morning, but crikey it's beautiful out there:

So, I am casting on my knitted vegetable, sat with the sun shining in the window. Steve (Paul's brother) won the competition, commiserations to those of you who had been banking on receiving knitted veg....you can always commission some!

And while I'm here, a very Happy Birthday to my wonderful (cheeky sausage of a) Dad, and my fab brother-in-law Tim. Hope the sun is shining where you are too. X