Look What's Blooming!

My red tulips bloom first and are on the wane. ~

I'm anxiously waiting for the white tulips I planted last fall to open and fretting over whether they are in a sunny enough spot.

The new kind of Forget Me Nots, that I put in last year are starting to bloom ~

The first two bunches have opened and the leaves have dark green veins on a dusty white background.

But, the show stopper this week is this! ~

Trillium grandiflorem (White Trillium)

I live in Ontario and the Trillium is our emblem and official flower.  It's a small, woodland plant from the lily family.  The flower is made of three leaf like bracts, for the petals, that are pure white.  As the blooms age they turn to pink.

The seeds are spread by ants who swallow them and ummmm redeposit them elsewhere. They are very delicate and difficult to transplant.  I was lucky to have two of them take in my front yard.

It is common belief that it is illegal to pick Trilliums in Ontario, but that is only true in conservation areas and provincial parks.  Still, you don't ever want to pick them as it seriously injures the plant.  Without the bracts, the plant can't produce food for next year and may take many years to recover.

Only fairies should pluck the blooms and only when they are in dire need of new haberdashery! ~ 

Aren't these the dearest little flowers?  I'm sure the first ones were planted by dryads!

Getting What You Need, When You Need It!

I have been working away at cleaning up my rental property since last Thursday.  My sister and brother are partners in this property and both had heavy commitments over the weekend, so I soldiered on myself on the days they couldn't be here.

I keep searching for the positive in this situation.  I focused on how surprised and pleased my partners would be that so much was accomplished while they were away.  I read all your kind comments of sympathy and support.  I tried my best to not let bitterness settle on my heart over all the tenant had done.  I wanted to forgive her and move on!

On Sunday, friends spontaneously showed up, armed with cleaning supplies.  Wendy cleaned all the windows and that took some doing!  Dan fixed broken kitchen cabinetry and killed the biggest spider this side of the equator!  As much as the actual work was appreciated, it was the kindness that I needed at that moment.

I joined them at their home, that evening, to watch a TV show.  I don't have TV and there was something I particularly wanted to see.

What could bring one daughter from her farm and the other daughter from Brooklyn, to Toronto for the weekend?

Emerald, front row seat tickets, sent straight from Harpo, for the Oprah live Lifeclass Tour! ~

Farm girl, on the left, had been chosen to ask a question. She never got the chance to ask her question. I never did see my girls on the show.

Still, I think it was meant to be and I was meant to watch that show.  The subject was "The Power Of Forgiveness".  What would you say it is, when a woman with no TV, exhausted mentally and physically, goes to a friend's house to (maybe) see her daughters on TV and has four of the top rated speakers tell her how to do the very thing she has been praying to be able to do?   I call that divine intervention! 


If you are really, really trying, I believe you do get what you need, when you need it!

It Takes Some Courage!

Sorry to have been MIA this week!  I couldn't decide if I should pretend I was vacationing on a tropical island, without Internet, or tell you what I have actually been doing.

I mentioned before that I was in the process of evicting a tenant.  I wanted to let the subject drop and promised myself I wouldn't tell you how many thousands I was going in the hole, how much damage was done to the property or how badly eviction day went.  I kept searching for the positive element in all of this and wasn't finding any.

Let me clarify that I am not a landlord by choice. The property belonged to my mom. When she passed away, the recession was in full force here, there was a very public and volatile native land claim going on in the next town and the building was in serious need of repair.  Needless to say, we could not find a buyer at any price.  There were no funds to pay taxes, utilities or maintenance.  My brother, sister and I decided to buy the property from the estate, do the repairs and rent it out until the market stabilized.

That's not the courage part.  That's the dumb idea part! ~

We trudged through 3+ months of legalities to get out of the mess with the tenant.  She moved her boyfriend and another family of four in with her.  She got a puppy. We were under a no harassment restriction while the process was crawling along.

The neighbours endured her friends tossing beer bottles in their yards.  They endured her kids running all over their yards and breaking down fences.  They tried to ignore the obvious signs of drug dealing going on.  Still wondering where the courage comes in?  I can tell you it wasn't found in the sheriff who was too scared to enforce the order and left us to get her out.  Wasn't he the guy wearing the bullet proof vest!  What did he expect me to do?  Threaten her with a home decor craft?  Point my glue gun at her?

The courage comes in over that puppy!  One neighbour went to her to complain about it being shut up in a non-insulated shed, in the winter, that was filled with broken glass and garbage.  He had the door slammed in his face.  He couldn't stand the cries of the little thing all night and would sneak in after dark to feed it.  Maybe that's not a lot of courage, but it's at least trying.

Then, the daughter of the tenant told another neighbour that her mom had run over the dog in the driveway and it was dead.  A week and a half later, I see the puppy limping up to the tenant's door and crying to get in.  It's the day before eviction day.  What on earth am I going to do?  My sister tries to coax the puppy to her but it will not come away from that door.

Then we see an SPCA van slowly driving by.  My sister hails it down and asks if they are looking for an injured dog.  They are.  Someone has called it in.  That someone had to give her name or they would not come, though she had told them she was afraid of retaliation.  She couldn't bear to watch the suffering and agreed to file the complaint.  She is a young mom of two kids and had to wait feet away from my rental to pick up her kids from the bus every day.  That took courage!

The SPCA guy banged on the door until they finally answered and managed to talk the babysitter into surrendering the dog.  He knew he would have to come back and formally charge the owner with animal abuse.  He was nervous to come back, but he did it.  Handing over that citation took courage!

The puppy had a compound fracture, left untreated for over a week.  The vet said it was in extreme pain and the leg would have to be amputated.  The SPCA is pursuing court action on the animal cruelty charge.  I can't urge you enough to support your local SPCA.  They may be the only hope one little puppy has!

They are certain the puppy will find a home as soon as it is well again.  I call that young mom our village Freedom Fighter now!  She's tiny and she's young, but she did what no one else did and she deserves the title!

Just as I was struggling to maintain faith in people, she came along and restored it!






 

Inside The Famous Bitter End Nightclub

Since you were all so kind in your words of encouragement to my daughter, as she tackled her live show at The Bitter End, I thought you might like to take a peak inside the club.

This is the oldest rock club in NYC and everyone who is anyone has played there on their way up!

These posters are all originals!  Joni Mitchell, Neil Young, The Band, Bill Withers! ~

Carly Simon, Arlo Guthrie, Dion, Harry Chapin, Cat Stevens! ~

How about Lady Gaga when her hair was still brown?  That's her in the framed pic. She didn't wear many clothes then either! ~

Katie said it was a first to see her name in ink instead of chalk! It may not be lights, but it's an upward move. ~

The live feed made her nervous, but she settled in after the first song and decided to enjoy the moment. ~

This is the first time I have watched a live feed. Hey, high speed only became available to me a year ago and I pay through the nose for limited data use!  Here I sat, in Canada, and it was just like I was in the room with her.  Her sister in laws and myself were messaging her husband, who was at the club, throughout the show via FB.  Sometimes, we forget how amazing these new technologies are!

Thanks to all my blogging buddies who said a little prayer and wished my girl well!  It must have worked, as they have asked her back and a world class record producer has agreed to do some demo work with her.

Did you guys know you had such clout in the entertainment biz?

Move over Simon Cowell; the blogging ladies are picking the stars now!

I Can Take A Hint!

On Good Friday, my daughter, her husband and their six children came home for their Easter visit.  It was a lovely, sunny day and the kids played in the yard while the adults soaked up the sun and chatted among ourselves or over the fence with the neighbours.

The kids have a toy box in my spare bedroom and were in there getting some favourites to take outside.  I had forgotten that I had put a pile of school photos on the dresser in there. Usually, the current school pics hang on a little 'birds on a wire' line in my library.  I had taken them down at Christmas and never put them back up.

I'm thinking somebody wasn't too happy with this oversight.  After everyone had gone home, I found this. ~

Grandma will have our pictures in the library if we have to put them there ourselves!  It's not the most chic arrangement but I get the hint.

Of course, I did not see my youngest daughter and granddaughter as they are still living their Brooklyn adventure.  Through the miracle of the Internet, I will be able to see my daughter perform live at New York's oldest rock club, The Bitter End.  Katie auditioned for and won a spot on the singer/songwriter sessions!  She plays at 7pm on Easter Sunday (I know, I know but the entertainment biz does not shut down for holidays) and it will be streamed live.  This is an important chance for Katie to have her song writing heard and she is nervous and excited and counting down the minutes until she gets her shot at showing what she can do.

Just to stand on the stage that hosted such talented songwriters as Carly Simon, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul & Mary and Neil Diamond is beyond what Katie ever imagined!

If you live in NYC you may want to pop over to Greenwich Village to catch the show.  Any of those who want to watch the live feed, tomorrow evening at 7pm, you can find it by clicking Here.  It's a short performance, just 15 mins. long.

Maybe, you'd consider saying a teeny, tiny prayer that it all goes well for her!


Happy Easter everyone!!!

What Would I Do Without Paint?

I wanted an Easter egg tree to hang some little ornaments that were gifts to me.

Pottery barn had a cute one. ~

But, yikes, the price!  This one was $74.79.  What are those people thinking?  I have a hard time spending that much on a 8' tree to plant in my yard!


In a corner store I found this one for 89 cents. ~

It's a little garish.  Okay, it's a lot garish!  It's wood and the branches are flexible, so maybe I can do something with this.

A little grayish white craft paint helps.  An image downloaded from The Graphics Fairy gets Modpodged on and that helps a lot!  Some watered down brown paint gets wiped across it all to add a little age.  A couple of strings of beads attached with a glue gun and this is getting cute!


I have somewhere to hang the little glass eggs and ducky now! ~

Let me think, now.....$74.79 or 89 cents?  Hmmm.

Easy Peasy Pillow Redo

It's down to the last minute sprucing up for Easter weekend and time to switch out some cushions in the family room.  Out go the heavy fabrics and winter colours and in come the cottons and off whites.

Storage is a huge issue in this old house and I prefer to add a cover to an existing pillow.  I bought a neckroll cover in a light beige cotton for $3.99 at Oxford Mills.  I couldn't make one for that and it fit a roll pillow that I already had.

I downloaded an image of a wild bunny from The Graphics Fairy and printed it out on a laser printer.  You need an ink based laser printer or a photocopy to do this.  Instead of using the Citrasolv transfer method, I used a clear Chartpak blender pen.  You can buy these at art supply stores or online for under $10.   To see how to do transfers click Here.

In under 10 minutes I had that dark pillow looking like this. ~

It's a touch of spring on an otherwise dark chair. ~

This one is so quick and easy to do!  

I'm sharing the bunny with:
These Peas Taste Funny
Sweet Talkin' Sunday
Saturday Nite Special
Creative Bloggers Party And Hop
Uncommonly Yours Link Party
Tell It To Me Tuesday