Gardening #4: Signs of Harvest

Its taken a month to get the next gardening update in but here we are!

The main reason is that I haven’t done much gardening and there really hasn’t been much to update on. Most of my blooms from spring lasted quite a little while and now that summer is here, the garden is flourishing especially with the crazy amount of rain we got before the last few days of extreme heat.

Without further ado, lots to talk about. Let’s check it out!

Water Garden

Compared to the 4 leaves it had when I first got it, this lovely water garden (aka. my one water lily) has a ton of leaves and two flower buds. Of course, one of them is blooming. I was so happy to see that I wasn’t doing anything wrong and taking good care of it. Its so nice to see during the day when I wake up and look outside that its thriving.

Front Garden

On one side of the garden, my Dianthus actually is blooming finally. It took long enough. I probably am thinking of moving it and replacing it with a row of hostas or something because this spot just lacks so much sun and along with bad soil that is still taking time to be better, its just making this grow so slow. My neighbors’ hostas were blooming at least a week before mine and they look like a few times bigger. However, I’m still trying to figure out what my big reno work for the front yard is so I’m hesitant to just move a plant and then have to move it again the year after.

 

Another reason to redo the front is that my flower patch is starting to look really overgrown. I think its just that, in terms of flowers. I have flowers that open in spring, summer and fall which works great but then its so dense around. I just need to sit down and figure out what I want to keep. However, looking at all the flowers right now, I’m really happy. Obviously there is the Crimson Star as always but I do kind of want to move it now since its just out of control big.

Then we have these two. The roses were planted last year in this spot and I was worried that it wouldn’t make it but its small and cute but still managed to get 3 flowers bloomed. I’m so happy to see the touch of red. At the same time, the newcomer this year is this furry little plant and its also starting to bloom. I don’t think this is in the right spot but once I open up my side garden when its not suffocating weather for the bee/butterfly garden, this will go right in there.

Backyard

Not a whole lot of change with these two except for just growth. Yeah, look at the raspberries. Apparently trimming it makes it grow even more out of control. Sad part is that we never got around to the strawberries but we fed a lot of happy bunnies. I’m not too mad about it. I’ve just accepted that its a reality. We are thinking of putting in some fences around it but its not going to make a difference.

As for this little patch, I just opened up this year. Its actually looking alright. Everything is growing a little slow and I think it has to do with the soil quality. Nothing has died yet and I can see the little Cone Flower at the end still growing strong. Its not as big as the one in the back and nowhere near it, but once it adapts to its move, it should do much better next year (provided it survives).

Container Garden

Lettuce #1

Cucumber

Herb Garden

Cucumber & Kale

Lettuce #2

Kale & Lettuce

Bell Pepper

Kale

Mosquito Repellent Garden

Magnolia

Petunias

We are lucky that we got a ton of lettuces this year because after the first harvest, we lost two already from the cucumber pot. However, everything else, particularly the kale is thriving. I have some lettuce coming back. My new non-lazy watering strategy is making everything grow beautifully. The cucumbers are looking fantastic. Actually they have a lot of flowers and some cucumbers forming so fingers crossed that we’ll get some harvest soon-ish, but not going to count my chickens before they hatch. We literally have kale feasts now. Its just way too big and we can’t eat it fast enough. The biggest success is that the bell peppers experiment turned out the the container one is doing much better. The picture is dark but if you squint really hard, you’ll see that there are two bell peppers growing. At the same time, this mosquito repellent garden is looking the best in the last few years. I’m really happy with it.

Vegetable Garden

Blueberry

Cucumber

Swiss Chard

Cucumbers

Peppers

Zucchini and Cucumbers

In terms of the vegetable garden, I once again forgot a before and after picture. I just spent Canada Day weekend getting rid of all the horrible oxalis grass covering the entire area. Its one of the reasons I think that the cucumbers are looking yellow and sad. We did go to the Dollarama to pick up a sprinkler hose which is a great addition, except you might want to consider getting it somewhere a little better and more durable. Ours already broke twice so its already having a lot of duct tape fixes. What I can I expect with a $3 product? However, it lets me walk away to water the container garden while it just takes care of the watering for me. Zucchinis are the only one in this plot that has some growing. I’m hoping that it’ll all work out. Everything else is just moving along, except my herbs on the side. The lavender needs to probably be moved but my mint is out of control.

Overall & What to look forward to…

There been a ton of growth here. While there are some losses, its actually doing really well this year. I added in a watering system to the kale and cucumber container because it was just draining too much. Actually the watering systems work really well, especially the past few days when its been record high temperatures of 44 degrees Celsius or something. I do warn that the next update will be in August as we are coming up to Montreal Comiccon and Fantasia Film Festival. It might put a little stop in some stuff depending on the situation. However, I always have my first week of vacation coming up so hopefully we will have some more projects. I have a few goals. Maybe finally opening up my plot but we need something else to happen first which is in the works.

That’s it for this gardening update!
How is your gardens looking? Any harvest?

Gardening 2018 #2: Garden Center Haul

2 weeks or so has past since the first Gardening 2018 post!

Time sure does fly by. I’ve been working hard on weeding and setting up the garden with what I have so far. There is still a ton of stuff to do but Victoria Day long weekend is the staple weekend where I go to the garden centre and pick up at least my first big haul! This year, I went back to Les Serres Jean-Francois Dauphinais.

This place is still one of my more favorite places to go to. I actually also made a quick stop over at Pepiniere Auclair.

Here’s a lovely mosaic of what I did pick up at the center as a starter and after, we’ll take a look at what I’ve planted and other garden updates as a follow-up from the last post.

Lettuce, Bok Choi, Zucchini, Marketmore Cucumber, English Cucumber

Clematis (3rd try)

Basil, Curled Parsley, Lavender, Lemongrass

Geranium Citronella, Kale, Marigold

Water Lilies

Its the first year that my husband was fully awake to go to the garden centre with me and ended up leaving feeling like he enjoyed it. That is the difference of being on graveyard shift and normal shift (at least for him). It was a very different experience and he was a real champ and kept me company and helped me out a few times with the whole gardening thing. A different experience in some ways. This is definitely just the first batch and the two flowers are the only ones currently not planted in ground yet. We have a few little gardening clean-up areas left but my husband has been working on a few little things helping me open up some more of the garden this weekend as well.

Let’s take a look at how everything looks now!

First Part: Front Yard

The flower patch in the front yard definitely has grown a lot more since the last update. Amazing what two weeks could do. Crimson Star still doesn’t have any buds so I’m wondering if it will since its already much later than usual. The tulips are all blooming now and giving some beautiful colorful life to my front yard. Once these end, the yellow flowers in the back should bloom if things go well. Aside from that, it seems that my middle area is not coming back so I’m going to be moving something over that has been cramped up in a corner of the garden forever but I just never found a home for it. Update on that next time for sure!

Moving along, the Bleeding Hearts are looking spectacular. I’ll be posting some cool pictures of it over on Avenue of Daydreams over the next week or two. Its scheduled but I can’t remember when.

Honestly, this sad patch along the front facade of my house did get a nice trimming and yet again, I forgot to take a picture of it since the last time but the Dianthus seems to be coming back. This patch seems like its not having much perennials come back, however, as I walked around this week, I saw, what I believe is, the cone flowers coming back. Its the little leaves in the top right area. I remembered i had moved one there and it was shadowed by the hydrangeas but this year I trimmed the hydrageans so hopefully it’ll successfully come back.

Part 2: Strawberries & Raspberries

Enough said about this area. Its just growing out of control as usual. The strawberries are getting perkier and stronger every year. There are a lot of blossoms. Hopefully the bees are dropping by to pollinate it. As for the Raspberries, I’m trying to keep it under control but it sure looks like, its not exactly making much of a difference. I waited two weeks and already my lily is hidden in these raspberry shrubs already.

Part 3: Container Gardening

On with the container gardening! We are actually have quite a few of these this year despite saying that we’d have less. As usual, the planter for the ledge of the patio full of marigolds. Marigolds naturally repels mosquitoes so that is the purpose of them being at the edge. Talking about mosquito repellent, here is my mosquito repellent container.

Geranium Citronella, Lemongrass and Marigold makes up for my mosquito repellent container. I read somewhere that if you walk by the plant and brush your hands over it, it will help keep the bugs away. I did it on one arm and it didn’t get me but the other arm caught a mosquito bite. Even if its not effective, it still looks pretty nice. One of my prouder planting moments 🙂

A little change here as well. Usually I get a few herbs and plant them in a container garden. This year, we got the lavender that went into the ground right away (at least I chose to do that), leaving these two so I put them into a smaller pot. I’m hoping there’s enough space but the strong one will survive, right? It’ll make it out! *positive thoughts*

Others may hang flowers in their hanging pots but since 2 years ago, we’ve been planting lettuce in hanging pots and let me tell you, they are quite successful usually. This year, we are changing it up and putting 2 lettuces instead of three. Three always ends up one being scrawny and sad so hopefully two will work out for the better. With that said, the lettuce this year was slightly weak and when I was taking them out, two broke off from their roots. I’m currently trying to revive them in water to hopefully sprout back some roots but don’t know if it will work.

As you can see, lettuce and cucumbers are dominant in the garden this year. With limited garden space as the expansion is still in progress, we are doing two cucumbers in containers this year and I did some companion planting research and paired them up with lettuce. Kale makes no difference so I just put it in since they don’t take a lot of space and we harvest them fairly quickly as we like to make kale chips and cook it.

The final two are just individual kale and my variety of lettuce containers. The highlight here is that I’ve rigged the top one with a watering system. To be honest, I don’t think the system works as well. The water goes down a little too fast for it to be useful. The wine bottle method in the bottom is definitely still doing the trick. I’m going to compare the two and see at the end of the season, which works better. Who knows before we observe for a little while longer.

Part 4: Vegetable Garden

The echinacea is back! I’m really happy about that. I did lose one of them but at least one came back so I’m already fairly satisfied with it.

We put up the same fence as we had last year. Its to prevent bunny attacks on my lettuce. This part is the general informal entrance of my patch since you pretty much need to straddle the front trellis to get in. Its not tall but can still be hard to do. As you can see, my blueberries are growing well enough. The green onions are bursting with harvest and there in the middle is a cucumber plant. We needed to keep them near the mesh side and I’ll be getting a trellis to link it to the side.

Continuing to the other side and the full extension. The far left is all herbs. Lemon Mint and Oregano came back and in the center, I planted the Lavender. As for the rows, The first row is Marketmore cucumbers and Kale. The reason for this is to swap things around. I’ve planted zucchini in the front for a few years and its normal to change things around to help the soil replenish nutrients. Second row is all the Bok Choy. And the final row is English Cucumbers and Zucchini.

Part 5: Water Lily/Water Garden Debut

Water Lilies

What can I say? I grew up with a pond in my backyard. Water gardens remind me of my dad. A part of me has always wanted a water garden so I made the effort to get a water lily and try to make it grow especially after my mom gave us these giant clay pots last year which was my dad’s. The water lilies was pretty pricey but I believe if you put them under soil over winter, its supposed to make it through every year. My mom is the expert on that so I’ll get more info from her soon.

And that’s it for the garden!
We have an idea of opening up a few more patches so my husband has been helping me a ton with that!
He makes the progress go a lot faster especially when opposite from my scattered mind of wanting to do everything at the same time, he actually focuses on one task.

Still some research! I’ll update with the flowers being planted in ground.
I just want to make sure that I open a big enough plot so that I can see the Clematis and it will give it the best chance of survival and blossom.
And a few moving plants about the garden coming up and pruning of a few trees.

Seems that this Gardening thing will be a biweekly deal as it currently stands.
I’m just a beginner gardener so its a journey all on its own.

Gardening Update #4: Rain & Harvests!

Welcome back to a long overdue Gardening update! It keeps getting bumped back and finally, now its time to report back after vacation.

Its been a rainy and gloomy summer. We can’t complain much because we live without the luxury of air conditioning in a bungalow so that means, when its hot, its boiling inside most of the time. Compared to last year, this is somewhat a heavenly situation especially on days where I need to record podcasts. However, plants and flowers aren’t like us and most of them need the sun and bees to pollinate in order to bear fruit aside from just water, which it also needs a lot of, of course. With that said, the garden is still doing pretty good. We started to have some harvests and the vegetables and flowers are all coming around.

In-Ground Garden

No blueberries or asparagus in these pictures as they are waiting for next year to have any harvest. However, they are so far doing quite well.

Here is the in-ground garden. Zucchinis are coming out now. The lettuce is actually doing worse than in the containers. You’ll see later. Cucumbers are also not doing as well as in the container however they are starting to form some cucumbers. Hopefully it’ll work out especially with all the rain. If only, there was more sun. One of the more solid plants are the Ground Cherry. The challenge so far is still actually getting it to ripen before it falls down. I had planted it two times before in containers with that same issue. Now I’m hoping planting it in-ground will do the trick so we can harvest some ground cherries soon. Its definitely looking strong.

On the other side is our trimmed but somehow still overgrowing raspberry shrub. Strawberries had their season and I would have shared the harvest but like a loser, I deleted all my pictures this past weekend off my phone when I was lining up for a Comiccon panel. Long story short, I don’t have it anymore and the season is over. We did have decent harvests but nothing as epic as what raspberry will be. We had two tupperware bowls already in the last two weeks, which is pretty impressive. As you see, there are still raspberries ripening so the rain and sun balance seems to work beautifully for it. Plus, raspberries are great to have as it also helps out the bees, which Canada has been acting on to encourage Canadians to plant more bee gardens. I got my bee garden kit, just trying to get the garden ready as it’ll be a raised garden that I’m trying to get ready.

Flower garden

In my flower patch, the flowers right now is my mini rose shrub and these yellow flowers. I have to remember to keep these in check as they spread really fast although they are super pretty. My cone flowers are also starting to bloom however, they are also super depressed because the rabbits now can’t access the vegetable garden and they decided that they’d snack on the cone flower leaves instead. They looked miserable for the longest time. And now there another one that I moved and suspect will have to move again. The flower garden needs to be restructured and organized. I’m pondering that at the moment.

Container Gardening

Herbs are doing fantastic. We’ve harvested some basil mostly and added it to our recipes. The others we keep fresh in the fridge. It gives us a reason to use fresh basil and make foods with it. As you may notice, my pineapple sage lost the fight with the storm and is not just one stem struggling to stay alive. At least it survived. I almost thought it was a total loss. The kale and cucumbers are doing great here. Pots do cucumbers miracles as they are growing well although, it won’t be successful until we actually get some cucumbers to harvest. Finally, there’s the eggplant. The over excessive rainfall and lack of sun seems to be affecting it the most as it gets more yellow everyday and its not really having anything yet.

Our lettuce harvests were probably the earliest. While they are growing slower now, they are still doing quite well. Especially since we have them in-ground and in two hanging baskets.

Finally, the last thing is our kale. Its been doing fantastic. We’ve really only been making kale chips out of them. I should really post up the recipes for it that we use. I promise I will soon. The kale has been treating us well. As this post goes up, I’ve been thinking of harvesting my next batch this evening and making some more chips.

That’s it for this gardening recap!
How are your gardens doing?

My Weekly Adventures: Hangouts, Adventures & New Projects!

We’re a little behind schedule for this time’s Weekly Adventures! Summer is here. Events and outings are being more plentiful. Some are still tentative or being planned. This summer is already pretty busy but a happy busy since its all fun stuff!

This time’s Weekly Adventures will have a ton of stuff from event recaps to outings with friends and some gardening update. I’m probably forgetting something.

Let’s start! 🙂

Our First Winery Visit

I’m a huge fan of wine especially as I’m getting older. I’m far from connoisseur and this is not exactly wine. Its ice cider, very specific to the Quebec region because there are rules in Quebec apparently that specify whether it can be considered that. Neige from La Face Cachee de la Pomme is one of my favorite brands and when they had this tasting I bought the deal on Groupon right away. It did take us a few months to actually book a time to do the tour and tasting but it was a lot of fun.

The full post is right HERE if you’d like to check that out!

Movie Night

I actually don’t talk about this a lot but I am a patron for two Youtubers that I love a lot! One of them is Mr. Kravin and one of the perks of the lower tiers that I’m in (because that’s all I can afford) is that we got a movie night with him. I never knew that was a thing. Usually its anime night and I tend to skip out on those a little but then he went on this site called Rabb.it and put on Halloween to watch together. I own Halloween and I mean like the entire franchise because I had to the Halloween marathon three years ago, I think. Its a pretty neat idea to actually have someone watching a movie together while being in different places.

It makes me wonder if the movie bloggers of our community should try to do something like that since it has voice and facecam so it would be like instant discussion. Haha! It was a ton of fun. I don’t really care much about the perks since when I contribute to be a patron on Patreon, its because I really want to support the content creator. Being a recent content creator myself (kind of?) on Youtube for Game Warp Podcast, it definitely puts into perspective how important it all is.

Grand Prix

Last weekend was the Grand Prix weekend in Montreal. Like the past few years, I went out with friends to hang out and look at some awesome cars and join into the festivities. There really isn’t much to say that I haven’t said in my post HERE.

For those that recently dropped by, Weekly Adventures aren’t usually like this post. Summer means I do more event coverage around Montreal (and vicinities) so those are my adventures and all I can do is recap them here in case between summer blockbusters and your fun summer that you miss some cool posts. 😉

Dinner with Friends

Fruit Platter at Allo Mon Coco

Two Eggs with Sausages and Bacon, Allo Mon Coco

Tropical Sangria at Barbie’s

Nachos

Soup of the day: Tomato and Vegetables Soup

Garlic Shrimps with Rice

More fun time with friends! I had nice brunch at Allo Mon Coco.  My friend is preparing for his next marathon so he took the healthy route with a fruit platter and of course, I’m not, so I took my normal with eggs, sausages and bacon. Its awesome! Breakfast food is my absolutely fave.

At night, I had a nice hangout with my girl friends. Its been forever since we’ve got together.  We’ve been busy with home or work stuff but now, we finally got together for dinner then afterwards went to Starbucks to have a nice chat and catch up some more. And, we might even be planning a little outing soon plus, a movie together is coming up soon as well! The summer is filling up and I’m super excited! 🙂

Game Warp: June News Blast!

If you saw this post the past week, you can skip ahead unless you know, you didn’t check out the episode then consider this a reminder. Our News Blast is a rather short one but with some good content. Game Warp is a part of my life now and Elwood and I are working hard to build it so excuse our shameless self promotion. The gaming world is well-established right now and we are trying everything possible but the only people that can help are the lovely people we already know from our lives and our blogs. That is you, my friends! If you have friends that like gaming, share our Facebook page with them or the video or whatnot. Everything little bit helps us out. I promise you that we work super hard and to make it better, we were supposed to be once a month and now we are getting three shows in a month, starting this week with the June News Blast. Each one has a bit of different content talking about new releases and then our featured review will appear as well. There is a video to go with it as visual aids or gameplay. Give it a look and help us spread the word!

By the way, if you ever need to retrace videos, you can head to either That Moment In or I’ll also have the posts for Game Warp on the menu set up some time this coming week.

Hope you enjoy the episode and the next one is coming up soon! 🙂

E3 Press Conference Coverage

Game Warp is my life now. I just mentioned that. It would be hard to pass up on the biggest event in the year for gaming. That’s right! E3 happened and ended yesterday! However, we’ve been checking out the live press conferences and put together some recap highlights in case you want to get a quick look at whats coming up for whichever console or gaming company. Here are the links. Its been super busy but just so much fun! Check it out! 🙂

EA Press Conference
Bethesda Press Conference
Microsoft Xbox Press Conference
Ubisoft Press Conference
Playstation Press Conference
Nintendo Treehouse

Gardening Hurdles and Updates

This a quick update on the garden. For one, I am officially feeding two rabbits in my garden. They started, as captioned above, with eating my lettuce. Starting this week, they’ve been having a tasting of all my kales and a few days later, they went to test out the broccoli as well. Operation Rabbit Prevention is now on! I am going to put up a fence of some sort this weekend to make sure that rabbits will not access the garden before its too late.

On a happier note, I think the few strands of catmint are attracting cats to the strawberries and raspberries area to sit once in a while so rabbits haven’t eaten my strawberries and we even managed to get one harvest which I need to bake something soon.

And also, the best thing in the garden is zucchini. They are strong and looking great. No picture of the eggplant but as of this morning, it had one blossom, meaning at least one eggplant. Awesome!

That’s really it for now. I’m getting materials later today and then getting to work on the garden for Operation Rabbit Prevention. I love rabbits and maybe I’ll grow a lettuce garden just for them in some corner but I also like seeing harvests so consider me selfish for now as I work on this gardening project. I’ll have an update next Weekly Adventures!

The 3 Brewers Beer Launch Rhubiscus

I’m not beer connoisseur and in no way will I ever be. In fact, I can’t even drink that much beer. However, my darling friends thought about me when they saw a beer launch which they had an invitation for a beer sample for at this restaurant called The 3 Brewers called Rhubiscus. I love rhubarb desserts and hibiscus drinks so this is right up my alley.

Now, thats a sample, right? Look at the size of that drink. I only took a few sips for my own health reasons. While I can’t say that I love the beer, it isn’t bitter which is a good start. I couldn’t figure out what the aftertaste was but I guess it had a little bit of hibiscus flavors. Hibiscus is a tough flavor to master. The one place I’ve been completed pleased with was in Egypt and then recently was last year at Aux Vivres during Just for Laughs for their Hisbiscus lemonade. Not a huge fan. One of my friends likes it more. I’m guessing her husband was okay with it and not excited. Its a new experience, right? Plus, we had great company for dinner. Fun times! 🙂

Cute Kitty Pic

Upcoming:

• Netflix A-Z: C & D Selection
• Baking & Cooking
• Game Warp: next  two episodes for June
• and more…

My Weekly Adventures [on hold]: The Ugliness of Being Sick

This week is all about being calm and quiet.  My mind not so much but activities, yes.  Trust me, its a good thing. With a breakdown (physical or mental) feeling like its looming in the background earlier in the week, I tried to take it easy and find some routine back in life so that I can avoid it. But, the title already says it all…I lost that battle in a really really bad way eventually…

Still, lets take a look at this week.

1) Running Update: Week 3

The rain, my friends! Its been my absolute enemy.  I used to do dragonboat so drizzle, I could work with but its just been downpours. I ended up doing my Tuesday run around my house.  Like I literally ran up and down the stairs then circles around the dining table and my den and my bed then back and forth in the basement, etc then repeat. I was jogging doing chores with one hand because I needed to have the Running App track my movement with the other hand.  It was crazy and I probably looked ridiculous but it was done in the end.

The second thing I’m learning (again) is commitment.  Training is a choice and a dedication.  One that means you trade off certain things and rearrange life to do this because it means something. Just like any goal, right? So with that said, despite the stupid migraine plaguing me on Friday and I eventually just took the night off after starting to feel a little sick.  I actually felt better on Saturday and went for my run, which turned out to be a huge mistake.  You’ll see… especially since I managed to go do groceries and run a few errands before realizing my body was not too happy.

2) Updating the Appearance

I’ve talked about this for two years at least.  My stuff on the side bar was from 2013! 2013!!!! Can you believe that? That’s when I started losing touch with blogging a little but this week, I sat down and took care of it.  Change the header picture last week and then updated a few things and rearranged stuff around.  Now it’s better! I’m not changing the theme since I just changed it last year or something. I’m happy with where this is all going. My indexes are all back up to date and will be updated on a weekly basis as promised and trust me, that Disney baking project! I’ll get that Snow White recipe done! 🙂 I literally have all the ingredients and even a little more for a little baking extra (once my energy level increases).

3) Garden Update

There was a lot of rain in the past week.  I mean, a lot.  So, the good part was my garden was so alive.  Everything grew like crazy.

Lettuce after all the rain

Cucumber Plant

Ground Cherry

We’re starting to harvest the lettuce and its delicious. Both the iceberg and romaine are awesome.  The cucumber plant is having some flowers now so its all good.  And the ground cherries are looking lovely.  My issue is that last year, we had that but it never ripened before it fell.  So I’m hoping to figure out why that happens and fix it.

4) A Little Visitor (who could be my strawberry eater)

Can you see it?

I went out for a little bit of fresh air and to catch some pics for the garden update.  And who knew that I turned around to look at the mess of moving over a plant to free up space for my raspberry eventually and something brown moved around in my peripheral vision, kind of. Its a little bunny.  I have neighborhood rabbits.  I know that because they hang out right in my garden here.  I’ve been suspecting the rabbits are the ones responsible for eating ALL of my strawberries but I guess I can’t get angry when its a cute little one like that…

5) Being Sick with the Not So Forgotten Gastroentritis

Being sick sucks.  We can all agree with that. Its been a while I haven’t had gastro not to mention one that took a billion years to build up to the actual symptoms resulting in my taking a day off work today (as I write this after sleeping and lounging around the entire day). It has not been easy.  From migraines to realizing I had a minor fever on Saturday and having slept 12 hours but still lasted into Sunday and then the fever tapering off and my date with the bathroom began for hours.  It was memorable and painful and I just couldn’t work up the energy to go to work nor did I want to pass on whatever bug I had to my coworkers because I’m not that evil. Its taken me a whole day with some congee, a good amount of warm water, sitting around lounging in bed and watching Netflix and wondering if it was actually over.

As I write this up, I’m rebuilding my energy and my health because gastro is ridiculously damaging especially since I already have the underlying IBS so my digestive system is already bad.  Either way, I don’t know how regular my posts will be this week.  I have the content.  I just need to write it and that takes energy that I’m not sure I have right now.  So I apologize if things are a little slower here this week.  Bear with me as I work hard to recover.  Perhaps, I’ll take this opportunity to write about vacation since that takes a whole lot less time than reviews.

Upcoming:

• Orange is the New Black Season 3 TV Binge
• The Fault in Our Stars Book Review
• Day in Seattle Vacation posts

That’s it for this weekly adventures! Stay Healthy!! 🙂

Is Summer Already Ending?

How’s weather for you lovely bloggers? This weekend has been ridiculously chilly in Montreal.  Its dropped to about 10-15C during the day.  Thats a huge difference to the beautiful weekend we had last week.  The sun is gone, the rain is falling hard and the wind is coming in a little also. At least Sunday afternoon warmed up a little more and I managed to do help with some painting and then went outside to scrap up the leaves from our trees that already started shedding in the front yard.

I’m struggling to find things that happened this past week that happened so I’m going to see what little bits I can come up with.

1) Guardians of the Galaxy and A Month Full of Anticipated Movies!

I’m definitely behind with all these movie reviews but truth is, I max out a little with writing these reviews so my brain is demanding a break.  Its the reason why I took so long to have the last review to wrap up Fantasia Festival (which I completed yesterday) and I saw Guardians of the Galaxy last week and totally forgot to mention it, even if the stranger next to me was super abnormal.  Thank you Cineplex for armrests that go up so that I could scoot closer to my boyfriend and enjoy the movie 😉 Review for that coming up!

August is a beautiful month FULL of movies that I want to see: Expendables 3, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, If I Stay, The Giver.  I’ll have to make choices.  It looks like I’ll be giving up The Giver for now and I’m still on the fence for If I Stay.  It all depends on how much time life is going to give me 😉

2) Week 1: Nike Training Club- Getting Lean Program

Last week, I started getting back into yoga.  On Monday, I seriously didn’t want to even think about starting the program again.  However, I thought about it and you know, its all in my head: If I believe I can do it, I know I can push through. 100% mental so its time to push.  I slacked off for 4 months, its time to pick up the pace and get back into the beat of things. Tuesday, I pushed myself to start  the program.

I’ve done the Getting Toned program before and that was pretty intense.  Somehow, I don’t know if its just that I haven’t done intense workouts in a long time but every single one in this Getting Lean (even the Dynamic Yoga) made me sweat buckets.  Its disgusting but at least I know my body is working hard and I’m being super nice and trying to rehydrate myself a lot.

Plus, did I tell you that I’ve been doing a 30 day detox from alcohol? I’m at my 3rd week and its been pretty awesome 🙂 Its really just a personal thing since I had a bunch of parties and wedding and whatnot in July and I drank a lot more than usual.  I felt that my body needed a little break from it all.

3) Garden harvest

As the weather is slowly getting chilly and reminding us that fall is getting closer, the upside is that we now have constant harvest.  Sure, I was really  just testing the waters this year so nothing seemed to be in abundance but although not shown here, my raspberries are getting ripe every few days and we always have 4 or 5 to try whenever we go harvest.  Then, I finally got fed up of my boyfriend not harvesting the lettuce so I went ahead and did it. Maybe we will have one more batch before it gets cold? Who knows.  A leaf stunted the growth of my Zucchini so I had to harvest it.  I did so some pruning of the leaves to give room to the four that seem to be growing 🙂

Gardeners, what are you harvests?

4) More TV!

On Friday night, I realized that Netflix is going to expire Pan Am in September so since it only had one season, I gave it a watch.

Pan Am gave me a few little surprises. One was that I was hooked and ended up watching it till 3am and then woke up and continued watching for another few hours.  After going out to take care of stuff for the house, I came home that night and finished it up. Second was that it has my absolute favorite French-Canadian star Karine Vanasse and she is absolutely lovely.  I adore her character. Third is the very handsome Mike Vogel, who reminds me that I need to catch up with the current season of Under the Dome 🙂

Then, I ask why did they cancel this series? It was so awesome! Classy and so much fun.  All the characters were great and the story was fantastic.

Of course that doesn’t end there.  On Friday night, I hung out with two friends watching TV and chatting.  We ended up watching reruns of Shark Tank and it reminded me that I hadn’t seen Dragon’s Den in ages and Netflix has it.

So there I was on Sunday starting to devour the 3 seasons available to me 🙂 Still watching Season 6 right now but its pretty awesome!

Aside from that, the other series to expire is two seasons of Justified and a movie called Like Crazy.

Any series you’re catching up with now?

5) Ready to start the eventful months + Planning!

I always try to keep my blog busy and I’ve slowed down a little in the last 2 months just in general to not burnout from everything.  With life in full blaze and picking up the pace with my new house (painting, furniture, arranging and the garden) and work, its really hard to balance. These few months have given me time to think up a few little things and refocus.  I have a few projects I want to start by 2015 but whether you are new or not, I’m personally very proud of my little recommendations month and I’m happy that I’m extending that FINALLY to books.  I already made the official announcement on Friday but just in case, till the end of August, the primary focus will turn to books on my ebook reader from independent writers.  I actually have a perfect timing for the first author I’m about to talk about 😉

Moving on, I hope to continue into September with this and add on movies but seeing as I already did a Recommendations month earlier this year, I’m still deciding on that.

A little glimpse at whats coming up also is possibly the most popular month:

– October and Halloween month 😉 I have an event ready and I’m deciding on what marathon to do.  I think I might have promised Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th BUT, that comes with the condition that I have to have finished moving and ALL my and my boyfriend’s DVDs have been organized.

– December and Christmas month..also wondering how to approach that this year since I’ve burnt through A LOT of Chrismas movies already.

Still, it’ll be busy and there will be lots of planning 🙂

6) ALS Ice Bucket Challenge

By now, a lot of you would have heard of the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge.  My friend nominated me on Sunday evening for it so I asked my boyfriend to freeze up some ice and came over to help me film this last night.  I nominated three of my girl friends and hopefully they’ll carry forward with it 😉

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10154501204580504

I’m not very saavy with this so I’m hoping the link will work for you as well.  If not, I’ll figure out how to embed the video right after my boyfriend sends it to me.

Have you been called out to this challenge yet?

7) The Power of Music

I’ve always connected to music strongly so when I saw this quote, it has stuck to me.  Sometimes, I go back and look for music to commemorate a certain time in my life.  At times, I even subconsciously would do it for a renowned singer or just go back to music my dad and I would listen to when I was young.  Sometimes, it just the meaning of what the music meant to me back then.  Every relationship (not limited to love) can be related to at least one theme song and thats what makes life so awesome 🙂

 8) Epic Patty Cake Song

Looks so fun! 🙂

Thats all for me today! Its already taken me a few days to put this together!

HAPPY TUESDAY, MY LOVELIES!

Long Weekend & Gardening!

These two weekends have been pretty awesome.  Its a new learning experience to plant my own garden and grow my own seeds.

Last week, that was exactly what I did (other than my food adventures HERE). Around mid-week, my boyfriend sent me pictures that the seeds, my little zucchini was growing.

Hello World, Zucchini!

By the time, this weekend came around and I went to go see my seedlings, some others were sprouting as well.  Of course, I was the genius and didn’t label them so I know two of my broccoli are coming out along with possible basil and oregano. Oregano is my guess and even some chamomile, which is also a guess.  It needs to get bigger for me to realize.  Those two are so small that I didn’t even bother to take a picture of them. I’ll probably do an update post on how that’s going soon.

For some who don’t know, I’m currently in my long weekend, which means NO WORK TODAY! YAY! Thank you, Queen Victoria 😉 Regardless, this weekend was the mega plan to go to this huge greenhouse producer garden center called Les Serres Jean-Francois Dauphinais out in St Basile Le Grand, a little town on the outskirts of where I live.  Originally it was just myself and Phoebe@Starry Traveler but then my boyfriend came along and thank goodness because we needed help with that 😉

We spent almost 2 hours there going through rows and rows of herbs and vegetables and flowers.

This was everything that I bought, with a few little ones from Canadian Tire, that we picked up everything and my lovely Clematis is out of the shot.

So lets have a little more close-up tour of what I’ll be planting for both my indoor garden and outdoors (if it happens, more about that later in this post).

Lemon Verbena, Stevia, Ground Cherry and Lime Mint

For you Vampire Diary lovers, I can make some vervain 😉

Raspberry

Delicata Squash, Ginger Mint, Strawberry, Blackie Sweet Potato and regular Sweet Potato…

The one in the top row in the middle is baffling me right now.  Its escaping my brain what it is…

Moving on 😉

Hibiscus

Spanish Lavender, Goldilocks, Mixed Lettuce, Crimson Star and Little flowers

Other then the two on the right, lettuce combo and little red flowers, the rest are all going in pots or indoors.

The most awesome part is that after my post about Crimson Star, there flowers if you miss it.

Flowers

I fell in love with them and although the garden didn’t have them, we managed to find stuck in the lower row of the Canadian Tire garden exactly two plants, one for me and one for Phoebe.  Score! That was a happy moment.

We still have one more plant that we haven’t shown, here’s the lovely Clematis.  The first plant I thought about wanting in my garden because they are so beautiful.

Clematis

That was my crazy garden shopping.  Its a bit late to sprout seeds from everything at this point so its pretty great to have found that lovely garden center. I’m sure to return there.  I have a few other plants I have in mind if these succeed.

However, there is a bit of issues on the outdoor garden issue.  My previous owners were not the gardening type and the gardening area has turned into partial storage and grasslands full of weeds.  As I was weeding away, I found some white worms.  I may be a gardening amateur but I know these not so little guys are a big no-no. This means, I need to treat my soil before I can use it.  I have some researching to do on that.  With my vacation a few weeks away and mostly time to work on the weekends, maybe I’ll have to throw in a few weekdays this coming week to try to get everything done.

Whats good is that on Sunday morning, we headed out to Ikea and bought a few more items for the house.  The most significant being some pots to plant my indoor herbs garden.  At least that will most along as planned and that will be done later today after a little fun time with friends 😉

I’m pretty done with updating on the weekend.  I bought some paint for the dining room also but that won’t be done until the last room in the upper floor is taken care of. I’m just going to say that the colors are very delicious because I can’t remember those fancy names.

Fun and exciting times!

I’m doing a bit of research (if I stop falling asleep while I do it) on herbs, vegetables and flowers to see where and how to plant it is more appropriate.  Also on my list, natural/organic treatment formula for my apple tree; how to get rid of white worms and how to have more space effective indoor gardens 😉

I know some of you are very wonderful gardeners. Any advice?

Also, no worries! Normal programming will be back. I have a fun week prepared and I promise you will like it 😉

Hope all of you had fabulous weekends and to my Canadian friends, Happy Victoria Day (unless you have another name because I know we like to be special over here in Quebec and have different names)!