Moo and I dropped the boys off at school this morning. Then we went off to the Beer Store (bit early for alcohol?!) to get some replacement lighbulbs, bird seed and salt pellets for the water softener tank. We didn't know which salt to buy so walked home, checked the tank, walked back, found the ones we wanted. Drove home with our purchases.
Moo changed the lighbulbs.
We filled the bird feeder which was a present from KP & A. We have already had some bird visitors eating from it. Moo looked them up in our bird book (UK birds) and they look like Great Tits but I had a comment from Mary Ann who lives in Ontario who said that the little bird that sat on my hand yesterday was called a black capped chickadee and she said they were very cheeky and amusing to watch, so we are wondering if these are the same ones. She also told me that the seed heads were milkweed.
Thanks Mary Ann, you are very knowledgable.
Then we got on with the task of making Smallest's curtains.
Measuring, pinning, cutting, ironing, hanging.
The material
Moo apologises for her clothes!!?
Look at us with our tape measures around our necks - so professional looking!
We checked the smoke alarms. Only one out of three was working. One battery was dead and the other had no battery in at all. Tut tut!!
Then we went into the cold room (I guess it's a storage room which is as cold as the fridge, we put stuff in there if there is no room in the cupboard or fridge), anyway, I noticed there were a few nibble marks in the butter. There were some chocolate bars in there (luckily not touched), so everything came out and was rehoused or boxed or double bagged. Cheeky mice!!! Now we have to get some traps.
Around about 2pm we put on our warm stuff and went for a long walk around the village. We looked at all the houses. Saw the new local shop. Saw where our sellers had moved to and posted a letter there. I did knock on the door and was ready to apologise for calling them 'dishonest' but no-one answered so we walked away.
Canadian Geese flying
We saw the community centre, the fire station, the ice rink that isn't icy yet. We also saw a tree with loads of shoes hanging off it.
This disturbed us greatly. It was eerie and we had no idea why it was there and why it was full of children's shoes. We didn't like it. When we got home we googled it. Apparently a shoe tree starts with person throwing their old, used shoes up into a tree. Sometimes it stays there all alone but sometimes others throw their shoes up there too. Some people put messages in them or poems or their accomplishments. Knowing all that made me view it in a completely different light. When I looked this up on google it seems there are many of these trees all over North America and there are rules to throwing your shoes onto trees!
Looking closely at this picture, they are not really hanging but that's the story from the Internet.
Whilst Moo and I were walking past this tree we had to walk along a main road with no path. We decided to walk the other side of the barrier so we were safe from speeding cars and trucks, however we didn't notice that the other side of the barrier fell into a ravine. This meant we had to 'elegantly' climb over the barrier and into the oncoming traffic without looking like complete nutters. I think we just managed it.
Guess what game we had to play this evening? Yes Disney Monopoly again. Small's favourite game. The one he always wins. We have started to call him Ebenezer as he always counts his money and tell us how much he has. He won again today and ended up with $10,000 ( he thinks - he's far too rich to count it properly). Smallest was his partner today - he likes to sort the money that Small wins!
N.B. It has come to my attention that I am not always finishing stories. So the story of the sump pump: for those that don't know what it does - it removes excess water away from the house. The previous owners of our house say they have never had a problem like we had before. The plumber has now fitted a pipe that slopes from the house to a point away from the house. In the summer we will have to redress the problem and get it sorted properly. Hope this clears any unanswered questions. Please let me know if I fail to finish any other stories. How annoying it must be to start something and then not finish it. It is probably resolved in my head and therefore I don't think I need to write it down. What a wally!!!
3 comments:
I've been having a catch up! Bah Humbug to the sump pump, we've had a partially flooded basement 3 times and spent 6 hours carting buckets of water upstairs too after a power cut during a thunder storm, not nice! We have a tree shoe close to us! In an area used by the local high school for cross country training, they throw the worn out running shoes up there to mark the end of the running year! Love the peaceful shots by the lake, Ontario is very surprising, and in the summer you can't beat the beach and the lakes around you, like you said, you don't need to go further afield. We love Tobermory in the late summer (the one in Ontario, not Scotland), you should definitely plan on visiting Lake Simcoe and the general Lakes area all around there (a bit North of you), and also up to Barrie and around Georgian Bay, it's so beautiful. Also West of you, the 21 all along the Eastern short of Lake Huron is really pretty, lots of little towns to explore and great beaches, especially at Goderich. We may as well start planning for summer as we're not getting a winter this year!!
The Chichadee's are so tame aren't they? They get their name from their call, chick-a-dee-dee-dee, very distinctive, I think they sound like tiny little squeaky toys! Those milkweeds are really pretty when the seed heads burst too, and they line the roads in the summer with reddish pink mopheads that are sweetly scented and attract butterflies, especially the huge Swallowtails, Red Admirals and Viceroys. Lol, there endeth the nature lesson!!
Hugs
Brenda
Thank you muchly for the sump pump clarification. Everett xx
Hello again....I'm not very knowledgeable just old...LOL I googled Great Tits and I'm not sure we get them here. I'll have to look in our bird book. If they are tiny and yellowish they could be our version of the Goldfinch. They are about the same size as a chickadee but not quite as chubby.
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