My first home-grown tomato

It was good! Unfortunately some animal ate half of one of its brothers - but hopefully I'll be able to harvest most of the 17 that remain on the vine.

The Full Glare of Reality

Ha... in spite of the title - this is another quick and not too deep ramble on my life. Gabe is coming back soon - which makes me incredibly excited, he's been gone so long now that it'll be weird when he's back. My field work is in full swing and coming along quite well. Thank you to all the wonderful volunteers who are letting me abuse them with hard work on their days off.

Funny stories about me being a total flake. Yesterday, I was out in the field and I put on my boots and then let the cuffs of my jeans stylishly fall outside of the uppers, rather than tucking them in. I hopped in the stream to measure the height of the recently recorded peak flow, and checking to see if I had enough freeboard on my boots to wade deeper, I realized that their cuffs were now soaking wet. Ah well... my feet stayed dry :P.

The other morning I woke up to see a squirrel literally hanging upside down by its hind feet from the Russian Olive tree outside my window. He was eating olives. Crazy squirrel... At least he isn't killing plants I love this week.

Otherwise, I'm hoping to have a bit more normal life once I've got the bulk of my field work done. Then I'll be able to start at the gym and swim and return to step aerobics.

Anywho... If I know you well, I probably can say I miss you and hope to see you soon to just about everyone save those I live with... and maybe even them.

Back to work for me..

Jennith

Aster post stormus

Observations:

1. Bone meal does seem to keep the squirrels at bay. I haven't had anymore digging where I applied it.
2. Social time is important
3. The reverberations of the internet can be seen in weird places (like mourning - see globe article from Saturday)
4. Friends are worth the drive pretty much everywhere.

I've actually attended a few social events and begun to catch up a bit on the people I've been neglecting. Of course, I didn't get as much stuff done as I'd hoped, but I feel a lot better. I visited with my gradeschool friend Simone - and its funny that even though both of our lives have changed so much we still totally get along. The weekend before I went to a movie and dinner with my friend Kendra for her birthday and met some of her other friend. That was fun even if I did get totally lost in KW. Saturday I went to a barbeque in Burlington and finally met the last of my highschool friend's kids. It was fun and we had a bunch of the kind of conversation that I haven't had since highschool - and I totally reused my gruesome tales of raccoon procreation to impress people (amazing the uses of knowledge gleaned from highschool science reports). Finally, I finnally caught up with my best friend which was good - because nobody else ever gets you as well as they do without a bunch of awkward explaining.... So, I'm bound and determined to eek some balance into my life in spite of an insane month at hand trying to get in 12-20 field days in well... 26 real days including weekends.. meanwhile I have a bunch of other stuff to keep up with too.

Here's to healthy balances.....

Cheers,

Jennith

Before and After the Rain

These two shots were taken about 2 days apart with the second shortly after an intense rainfall. Its amazing the impact an hour of rain can have.

What wood you do?

A mess of coarse woody debris provides habitat for all sorts of aquatic critter... we even saw a large speckled something or other (we think a trout or a salmon) This picture was take shortly after a strong rain storm pelted the area for an hour... somewhat altering our plans.

Daylillies Revealed

Here is that same daylily sometime later. I decided I needed a hike after my first photo shot and so I bounced off to Mount Nemo for a nice hike. Tomorrow is going to be busy and next week busier....

Violets in the Midst

These poor tiny violets have been largely shown up by the larger plants near by (you try competing with impatiens and a zonal geranium!) Still, they are still managing to flower!

Trumpets of the Mini-Petunias

I just love the colour of this one!

Vegetables in Strange Places

Much to my mothers chagrin I randomly planted 2 red cabages to fill in gaps in the front garden along the walk. They've done well (and frankly I find them quite attractive), but my mom thinks that it was perhaps a bit unkosher.

The Flower of the Tomato

Here is one of our 6 regular tomato plants in flower. There are about 8 tomatos developing, but I expect more in the future as the plants are all still flowering.

Mini-Matoes

I have 7 tomato plants... 6 normal ones and this one that I rescued from the bargain rack. Strangely, it hasn't grown much, but it continues to develop these 3 hearty tomatos, while being less than 1 foot tall.

Oregano flowers

My herbs have surprised me with their vigor. This oregano, nearly dead when I bought it, is not a massive sprawling behemoth with shockingly delicate adn beautiful hued flowers

Daylily opening

My current gardening feat that I'm most proud of is my Daylily Garden where I planted about 10 different varieties of daylillies and promtly forgot their names. This might be the Catherine Wood-something-or-other. In a later post, I'll put up a shot taken later in the day when they are fully open

Geranium Triad

So... I finally got the batteries charged on my camera, rushed outside and tried to take a bunch of garden photos in the early morning shade.

There is a bug in my lollipop

YUCK!! I discovered uneaten candy on my desk, figured it was safe to eat and as you can see was working on the lollipop. There is this nut thing embeded in it... at least that is what I thought when I started but a closer look made me wonder if it was a bug. I did check the label before starting to munch on it... It said it was made in montreal, figured that made it safe to eat... However, when I went back and read the label again.. I discovered that a meal worm larva was the final ingredient... should I keep eating it....? I haven't decided yet... I hope it wasn't something special that belonged to Gabe...

Keyword Analysis

	Num	Perc.	Search Term
	14	21.54%	priministers
	5	7.69%	jennith peart
	4	6.15%	david alexander risk
	4	6.15%	killarny canoe
	3	4.62%	jennith
	3	4.62%	pictures brucedale conservation ontario
	2	3.08%	jenn westmorland
	2	3.08%	chitaqua
	2	3.08%	mount katadyn
	2	3.08%	hiking stuck in bog
	2	3.08%	in denali by kim heacox
	1	1.54%	dragonfly park, guelph
	1	1.54%	mizzy lake trail algonquin
	1	1.54%	how to get to awenda provincial park
	1	1.54%	awenda provincial park pets
	1	1.54%	awenda provincial park pictures
	1	1.54%	wedding labels aspen leaf
	1	1.54%	bog-araska
	1	1.54%	peart harbour
	1	1.54%	sunita sayeram
	1	1.54%	muskrat eat hosta
	1	1.54%	bagpipes usher in tide fundy
	1	1.54%	swimming at mountsberg dam
	1	1.54%	david usher's blog
	1	1.54%	port carling iga hours
	1	1.54%	muskrats eat beebalm
	1	1.54%	jennith peart guelph
	1	1.54%	ontario hostas
	1	1.54%	echinacaea purpurea
	1	1.54%	chris straka
	1	1.54%	http://bog.araska.org/index.html
	1	1.54%	kashechawan tornado
	1	1.54%	hall-findley
	65	100.00%

The list above was provided to me from STATSCOUNTER, one of the counters I have linked to my blog. These are the search terms that landed people up on my blog. Priministers still seems to be the leader (it has been for nearly a year now), but "Cat in a box" hasn't made the list at all, when it used to frequently result in hits. Sigh... the priministers post is particularly bad... ah well. I'm glad to see that Hall-Findley made the list. I haven't really been paying attention to politics lately, but I like her. I guess I'm also glad that people searching for info on various ontario parks also actually make the click to check out my blog - there are a lot of hits under those labels, so I guess my titles are decent. "kashechewan tornado" I'm suprised at this one - one because I hadn't heard of a tornado in Kashechewan and I don't recall any posts related to tornados - but hey who knows the mysterious of googling something. Finally, its nice that no less than 10 of the 65 searchers were actually looking for me or my blog. Thats good. I've found some people have left no traces on the internet, while others are easy to find. For better or worse, I'm easy to find on the internet. Which is good, because I move around enough that I'm sometimes hard to track down in the outernet (aka the real world... and I'm glad that any old friend hunting for me via the internet can probably send me an email and reconnect.)

Alright, one more post and then back to work.