Home and Lifestyle — Page 85 — You are in My World Now

Can a backyard have too many roses?

June 26, 2008 by Tricia

My yard is so full of roses! I don’t think we’ve ever had this many roses blooming at once. It’s unbelievable.

The rose above is Jacques Cartier I believe … if not it’s the rose that’s right beside it which is Barrone Prevost. Both are lovely antique style roses with heavy rose perfume scent. In fact those two rose bushes are the largest in my yard right now standing close to 12 feet tall each and as I said just jam packed with roses.

I love it. I wish my roses would bloom like this all season, but of course the first roses of spring or early summer are always the most prolific.

Walking the dog is a true workout these days

June 24, 2008 by Tricia

Chris and I just got back in from walking the dog. I’m wiped out. She’s just so full of energy and she tugs and tugs and lunges at things. You certainly have to pay attention all the time or you’ll be pulled off your feet if you’re the one holding her leash!

It’s like a major workout. I’m all hot and sweaty right now. Nice huh.

Last weekend the new neighbors who haven’t moved into the house next door yet were over doing some reno work. They were tearing down their living room dining room ceiling. It was that awful popcorn stuff. Well .. they kept taking breaks outside the front of their house and Chris and I happened to be trying to get some gardening done … the next thing I know the new neighbor and his friends were partying in our backyard.

We had Midnight outside with us and we hooked her leash to the foot of the chiminea. The Chiminea weighs 150 to 200 lb … well she managed to tug so hard that she lifted the chiminea and the leash slipped out from under the leg or foot of it. Maybe we should use some of those industrial CAT5e cables as a leash?

She’s just so strong!

She only weighs about 60 pounds but she’s obvious all muscle.

Do you still use old fashioned window air conditioners?

June 22, 2008 by Tricia

We living in an older home. It was built in 1927! It’s well built but overall I don’t think the previous occupants did much to change the home. It’s heated with oil so we have an old oil furnace and of course that means no built in air conditioning. I’m sure we could add air conditioning but I think we’ll be replacing the furnace soon anyway so we might as well wait.

So … we use window air conditioners to keep our house cool in the summer. Unfortunately when my husband put them in earlier this month during the heat wave that we had here we discovered that one of the air conditioners (the cheapest one we bought) was no longer producing cold air. It worked more like a fan instead. We figured that the ac compressor is probably shot.

Since it was a cheap unknown brand air conditioner we decided that rather than try to repair it we’d just replace it with a new one so we bought a new air conditioner this weekend. Good price too. Luckily it’s cool here right now because we still haven’t installed the new air conditioner. The other one will cool the house, but two work better for this house.

Does anyone else still use clunky heavy window air conditioners?

Does your husband refuse to throw things out?

June 19, 2008 by Tricia

Ladies, help me here … Does your husband or boyfriend have certain things that they refuse to throw out?

Sure we all have things from our past that are no longer useful, but we hang on to them anyway for the memories. Right. Ok that’s fine … a dusty box in the attic or closet somewhere to store our past treasures might work.

My husband though … he has this collection of things from his college days ranging from those stupid plastic toys that came with McDonald’s meals to funny t shirts that just don’t have a place in our home. I mean … most of the t-shirts are worn with ripped collars or holes or stains in them. They look absolutely horrible. If he was just saving them that would be one thing but he actually wears them!

What to do?

Terrible weather in Toronto

June 19, 2008 by Tricia

Since last Friday we’ve had some pretty bad weather here in Toronto. Severe thunder storms with winds that knocked down trees, super heavy rain and more!

The other day … I think it was Monday we even had hail!

I grabbed my camera as soon as I realized it was hailing, but the rain was coming down so hard that the hail melted in my area before I could take a picture of the grape size hail!

Even this photo doesn’t really show how hard it rained that day. I believe there was still a little bit of hail coming down while I took the picture:

Apparently some areas of Toronto had worse hail than we did. A lot of cars were dented! The news said we should look for “hail” sales at dealerships in about a month!

It’s been so cold too! I turned our furnace back on, although it hasn’t been quite cold enough for it to turn on … so we’ve been sitting in our house with sweaters or blankets covering us. Hard to believe that it will be summer in about 27 hours! If feels more like autumn around here.