buriedinfibre.com

It was a mostly quiet week. One where I didn’t to meet deadlines due to severe knitting pattern reading fail. But the weekend was busy and full of people.

I spent Friday cleaning up and Saturday morning cooking in preparation for some friends from Seattle and some locals coming over. I made cake, a couple of loaves of bread, spinach pie and soup with leeks from the garden. It was a good spread made even better when our local friends brought fresh from the boat spot prawns. The monkey BBQed them with the flower buds from the leeks in a little olive oil and salt. They were delicious! The leek buds were like a cross between asparagus and onion rings. Really tasty and something I never would have though of if my brother hadn’t suggested it. He’s brilliant.

Now we’re all waiting for the chive buds to pop up.

The next morning we went down to the beach for some much needed exercise for the humans and the dog. Almost everyone had a camera…

We were there later than usual so Gir had to make nice with other dogs. Something he did with various amounts of success.

We managed to hit a pretty low tide so the herons were out in force and mugging for the cameras.

Even with my little pocket camera, I managed to get some lovely shots. They really seemed to be posing for us.

These two circled around us making graking noises as they fought for the same fishing spot.

And this one seemed to be practicing his ballet moves:

Just another day at the beach with wonderful friends.

Yeah, I know, it’s Tuesday, for the second week in a row, but hey, at least I did it. I was actually thinking pushing the post back a week, ’cause really, it’s been pretty flat around here.

But I didn’t and now you get to suffer through the dull that is my life! Woohoo! Aren’t you glad you came?

It was a long weekend around here and since we did get some good weather, we though, “hey, we should spruce up the yard”. This involved two days of pulling weeds and grass out of the ginormous flower bed we made last year. The various crap we yanked out of there will fill about 6 yard waste bags.

The results were mostly worth it:

I’m loving the new patio. It’s given us a lot more usable outdoor space.

And the blooming wisteria is making my workshop look like a cute little cottage right now.

As if there wasn’t enough pollen around here with the rhodos and assorted bulbs, the fan palm had to get in on the action.

We bought it the first summer after we moved in and it’s as tall as the roof now. I guess it’s proof that we really do live in a little micro climate.

I’m glad we got that bed weeded. Also glad the neighbours didn’t call the cops when I screamed this morning bending down to deal with the laundry. Apparently my hams and glutes are less glad about all the gardening.

Next on the list is the $%^&ing book. Really need to get on that…

This blog post may contain language that some find offensive.

May contain? Who am I kidding, It WILL contain very strong language.

Suggested listening to accompany: L7′s “Shitlist” from Bricks are Heavy.

It might even degenerate into what the monkey has cheerfully dubbed “Lara’s hockey tourettes”. Which I usually save for bad Canucks games or apparently playoffs series involving the Blackhawks, but really, the furnace repairman warrants this, kind of a lot.

So. Let’s get started.

OMFG!!!

Dude! I dragged my sleep deprived ass out of bed at the asscrack of dawn so I could move books, shelves and barricade pets into a room to be out of your way and you couldn’t manage to show the fuck up?!

What the fuckitty fuck is your damage?

We’ve been trying to get you to finish the job you started for a year and a fucking half. Just do the motherfucking work and go away! Really. We don’t want to see you again. If I thought I could get a syphilis addled crack monkey to do this job, I would hire it over you. You’ve made it so it would cost a small fortune to get anyone else to do this job and you won’t fucking do it.

And now you think it’s fine that you don’t show up because of rain?! We live in Vancouver assmunch! It rains all the freaking time! And now you have managed to “fit” us back into your surprisingly busy schedule at the end of June?!! Wow! Thanks ever so fucking much you bastard son of a mutated warthog.

I feel slightly better now.

eta: Hey lady at pool shop if you called my number before and got Mrs Doogan, it was more than 14 years ago. Pretty sure I know my own phone number after 14 bloody years. This woman has now called 3 times insisting that she has the correct number.

2nd eta: She has now called 6 times and accused me of fraud. I have blocked the number. Unbelievable.

Is it worldwide fuckwit day and someone forgot to tell me?

With the return of lovely sunny weather and longer daylight hours, the cats have been waking us hideously early. Rather than try to sleep, (we’ve tried it, they just keep waking us up) we’ve started taking Gir down to the beach for a nice long hike along the sand, if it’s low tide, or the rocks and seaweed, if the tide is in.

Gir loves low tide. He sprints along the sand, wades through tide pools and has now discovered the doggie joys of rolling in dead stinking sea life. He is a regular dog. He even tried to chase a bunch of eagles. Don’t worry, they had no fear of him. Quite the reverse, they seemed to be trying to decide if his harness was a handy carry handle, like on a take-out carton.

When we’re there at a tide change, we get to see the herons gathering at the mouth of the inlet to catch fish.

They were just starting to come in when I started taking pictures.

And then a juvenile eagle swooped down out of no where, scooped a fish out of the water and flew off. It happened so fast that I wsn’t able to get a really clear picture of him.

That’s the eagle in the centre of the frame. The herons were all squawking and clearly pissed that he had disturbed their peaceful hunting.

I love where we live.

I woke on Saturday morning and realized it was May.  Remember when you were a kid and the school year seemed to drag on forever and summer holidays were over in a heartbeat?  When did life start moving like it was one big summer vacation?

The pets woke us up at the crack of dawn today so we decided to take Gir to the beach. It was fairly stormy this morning, gale force winds and dark gray clouds flying through the skies, so we had the whole beach to ourselves. Gir loved it! He smelled everything we passed, even munched on something that we couldn’t identify. Total doggy heaven. It was pretty nice for the humans too. I wish I’d taken the camera with us. The waves in the bay were huge! When we got down to the end of the beach where the river meets the ocean, there was a row of seagulls sitting on the train trestle with a blue heron sitting at the end of the row. Really gorgeous.

My plan for this year was to get through the basket of yarn and fibre that sits on the chair in the living room. Stuff does keep getting added to the basket, but in general, the pile is getting smaller. I wanted to knit 50 pairs of socks this year and that’s going great. I started pair number 20 last night and the last two pairs were patterned socks from Sock Innovation:

Vilai in Regia Silk.

Milo in Wildfoote. And here I thought I would never have a use for fifth position! Not as tight as I used to be able to get it.

I’m back to plain again. I did find I made a few mistakes and had to do some ripping when I was knitting these watching the playoffs and now that we’re in the second round against rivals the ‘Hawks, I though plain might make more sense.

Totally loving the Habs doing so well. I’ve given into a pipe dream that the Cup final might be all Canadian…

The weather was so amazing on Saturday that we went and got summer plants to pretty the place up.

Hopefully I didn’t plant them to early. And hopefully the weather will get back to not so stormy so we can break out the shorts, tees and sandals next weekend!