Recreation — Page 62 — You are in My World Now

Pretty pink Octavia Hill

February 3, 2008 by Tricia

This rose has the lovely name of Octavia Hill. It was developed in the UK by Harkness and introduced in 1995.

I’ve had this rose growing in my garden since 2002 – the first full year we had our house and landscaped our back and front yards to include raised garden beds! So it’s one of my older roses.

I don’t photograph this rose very often because I mistakenly planted it at the back of one of my garden beds and now that my garden has matured this rose has plants of equal height around it and frankly it gets lost in the crowd!

I’m always delighted though when I discover that it’s blooming as it’s flowers are so pretty.

As you can see Octavia Hill has light pink flowers, glossy green foliage and grows to a height of about 3 feet. It’s a repeat flowering rose and I’d say mine blooms three or four times each growing season.

The flowers give off a mild scent. I find you have to get close to the rose to really smell it, but it’s a lovely scent.

I must remember to seek out this rose this coming summer and take more photographs of it’s lovely blooms.

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

The CN tower – Tall, Long and Narrow

February 2, 2008 by Tricia

Grab the Photo Hunt code.
Photo Theme. Visit participants.

This weeks theme is Narrow

This is Toronto’s CN Tower … it’s sometimes mistakenly called “The needle” – as in Seattle’s “Space Needle” – by our American visitors and while it does look a bit like a long, tall narrow needle it’s real name is the CN Tower. CN stands for Canadian National.

Up until September of 2007 it was the tallest free standing structure in the world. I think it’s title has been replaced by another tower called the Burj Dubai which is located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

The circular part near the top of the tower holds a restaurant and observation decks. One of the observation areas has a glass floor and let me tell you it’s pretty scary to stand on and look down! The tower is exactly 1815 feet and 5 inches tall. You can get to the top by riding one of the elevators that travel up the outside of the tower, or by climbing many many flights of stairs.

It’s certainly and impressive structure that draws many tourists each year.

Bunny cuddles

January 30, 2008 by Tricia

Wordless Wednesday

Aw … it looks like this little bunny is trying to comfort or perhaps warm it’s little buddy with it’s ear! Isn’t that sweet?

Walks in the park

January 29, 2008 by Tricia

The weather finally warmed up enough over the weekend and today that we were able to take our puppy to the park for the first time.

We’ve had her since the end of November but because she still had two sets of shots and a rabies vaccination to get we weren’t officially able to take her to parks or other places frequented by a lot of dogs until about a week ago. Trouble was we were in a deep freeze here in Toronto when we first would have been able to take her to the park that I can see from my front door!

Sunday evening, after a busy day, we brought her to the park. We’d wanted to get a long lead but given how she still likes to taste everything that crosses her path we decided to take her to the park on her normal 6 foot leash.

She loved the park! Her nose was down to the ground most of the time as she smelled all the others dogs that had been there previously.

We met a couple of other dogs and their owners too.

After we left the park we realized that her leash had actually broken. The rivets that held the handle together had fallen out! All four of them! We also noticed that the little plastic trash can that holds the poop bags was missing.

Around that time we heard a man coming. He was calling out a name, lets say it was “Morty” … he was yelling “Morty get over here” … “Here” … “come here!” As he staggered along. We looked up and saw quite a large dog heading our way. It stayed away from us as it was just walking peacefully to the park it’s leash dragging behind it, as it ignored his probably drunk owner.

We waited for the man and dog to pass and then headed back to the park. The man and loose dog made us nervous. Our puppy is small and Chris is actually a little bit afraid of strange dogs. Never the less Chris went into the park while I waited outside the fence. We figured it would be safer to keep our puppy away from the loose dog.

Chris ended up having a very strange conversation with the drunk or maybe schizo man. The man really made Chris nervous and I was getting weird vibes from him too.

Chris came out of the park and we walked to another entrance. We then tried to retrace our previous path to try to find our poopy bag container. We found it way on the other side of the park where I thought it would be. Where we should have walked in the first place but the weird man with the loose dog was in that area so we retraced our steps from the beginning.

The next day we went to Petsmart to return the broken leash that we’d only had for about three weeks. We also returned a few other items like treats that we’d given to our puppy that had given her diarrhea. She’s got a very sensitive tummy! With our refund we got a new leash and a 30 foot lead.

We figured what the heck. She didn’t try to pick up anything in her mouth while in the park the night before as she was too busy smelling everything and or playing with other dogs. So on Monday we took her to the park on the long lead and she had a BALL.

That night she met a dog named Cooper … a mix that looked like it might have had a bit of Golden Retriever in it, and a Black Great Dane called Luna. The Great Dane was only 7 months old. We have two Great Danes in our Puppy class that are supposed to be about 5 months old and both are huge compared to the 7 month old that we met last night.

Anyway, we had fun and going to the park will become a regular part, hopefully, of each day. At least one walk will be to the park … well unless it’s freezing cold out!

Starting to plan our bathroom renovation

January 29, 2008 by Tricia

Speaking of our basement renovation. We’re going to put in a really nice bathroom downstairs. We have a bathroom down there but it’s just a roughed in bathroom with a tiny grungy dark shower and a toilet. Right now it’s the main bathroom that my husband uses. I hate going down there!

Our upstairs bathroom is really tiny. It has everything we need but it’s sooooo small. So … if we renovate the bathroom in the basement when we do our basement reno I want a really nice bathroom … one that I’d consider our main bathroom and one that I won’t mind using one tiny bit.

We haven’t decided exactly what we’ll do down there, but I’m picturing a whirlpool bathtub with an overhead shower, toilet, basin style sink with perhaps Danze faucets and nice lighting. Since the bathroom won’t have a window it will need to be bright, but I suppose we could put a dimmer on the lights or perhaps have two sets of lights controlled by different switches so the lights could be lower if one was having a relaxing bath and wanted to set the mood with low level lighting.

Did I tell you that my nephew is going to plumbing school? Uh huh. I’ve already talked to him about our bathroom renovation and he’s more than willing to help us out. He even said he might be able to get a discount on some of the things we’ll need.

I hope we can start our reno sometime this summer.

If you have any cool ideas for a bathroom reno I’d love to hear them.