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Joe Cool (Tuffy P’s Animal Crackers, featuring: Jacques)
A dog park integrated into a water filtration plant
The designers of the new and improved leash-free park at Jack Darling in Mississauga did a great job integrating the dog park with the filtration plant.
The park is huge. Gravel paths loop through the grounds, descending to what remains of the old park on the south side, right up to the top of the hill formed by the filtration plant. There is a spigot for water on the north end, and a variety of landscape for dogs and people to enjoy – from meadow to path to sand. As well, they’ve planted loads of trees which will only gain character and interest over time. When we were there yesterday, there were quite a few dogs at the park but you would hardly know that because the grounds are so big. By contrast, there is a leash-free park on the RL Clark Water Treatment grounds close to our place (in Toronto – Jack Darling is in Mississauga), which is a sad cousin by comparison – a fenced off square of field, created with little imagination or ambition, which muddies up at every rainfall, and offers neither variety nor water. Kudos to Mississauga and the designers of the Jack Darling leash-free park for creating such a compelling environment.
Whoopie-ti-yi-yo
Git along little dogies
Whoopie-ti-yi-yo, a cattle call from an old cowboy song. Git along little dogies. Ever wonder just what a dogie is, or was? In cowboy slang, a dogie is a motherless calf. That much is sure. One story I read has it that after a particularly harsh winter, many orphaned calves were weaned too early, leading to problems digesting grass. That in turn led to swollen bellies, which were referred to as dough-guts. The cattle with dough-guts were called dogies. There are other stories. A Spanish term for lariat is dogal, so maybe dogie came from dogal. We know that other cowboy words came from the Spanish. For instance vaquero, a Spanish horse-backed cattle herder, likely morphed into buckaroo. Time for a cowboy tune…
Here’s Woody Guthrie, from 1944
How about Roy Rogers, from 1940
I’m going to finish off this post with one more – a yodeling version by cowboy singer extraordinaire, Don Edwards
New Garden
There is a little garden located between our neighbours’ house on the north and ours, kind of a no man’s land garden. It has been populated by orange daylilies for many many years. I think daylilies have their place, and they look nice enough during their bloom time, but after that, they are not so attractive at all. I suggested to our neighbour earlier in the season that we could do something more interesting in that space.
Digging the old daylilies out was a challenge. The old soil was hard and the bed was overcrowded with plants. By the time I had removed the daylilies and broke up the cement-like soil, my back was trying to convince me it was time for a extended break. Instead, we added in some triple mix and some compost, and my neighbour produced some excellent rocks for the new garden. Tuffy P and I had picked out some plants at a local garden centre yesterday, so we were ready to go.
Here is the new garden. I think we’ll call it the hydrant garden, since it features a prominent fire hydrant.
The Hydrant Garden
We’re also putting in some alliums as a surprise for next year. What you see in the garden are:
- a slowmound Mugo pine
- Saphire blue oat grass
- an Ophiopogon planiscapus Nigrescens. This is a spreading perennial grown for its distinctive grass-like purple-black leaves. Dense clusters of lilac flowers in summer are followed by black ornamental fruits.
- Stone Orpine ‘Angelina’
- Campion ‘Druett’s Variegated’
- Moonshine Yarrow
- and a couple pansies for a shot of colour.
Landseer at play
Today we took the Newfs over to Jack Darling leash free park in Mississauga. Memphis found a friend….
Goldfinch
The Goldfinch Mosaic
The goldfinch mosaic is complete and ready for its new home.
How to play the spoons…
I know you’ve all been waiting for this. Here’s a video I found on YouTube featuring David Holt.
Morning in the woods
I’m off work for a couple days so this morning I asked the dogs if they’d like a car ride to a forest. It turns out they were quite excited by the prospect, so off we went. There was a particular forest I had in mind, but there was a traffic problem on the highway, which I heard about on the radio, so we opted for another forest a little closer to home. Since we’ve had some rain over the past couple days, I thought we might find some hypothetical tasty edible mushrooms. I say hypothetical because any old fool knows there are no wild edible mushrooms in Southern Ontario.
It turned out that this was an excellent choice of forest. The first place I look in this particular spot is by a little saddle in the hillside, not far from where I park the car, a spot that features several oak trees. Here is the first thing I noticed.
Hedgehogs in the woods
This is a familiar site in this little part of this forest. The distinctive orange-tan irregular caps are a dead give-away. Hedgehogs!
These firm, toothed mushrooms are very tasty, and these are choice specimens. I found 16 or 17 of them, mostly in the same area. Two or three came from another spot, over on the other side of the trail, that is also fairly reliable for these mushrooms.
The part of this forest I visit also has quite a few hemlocks, and I always take some time to thoroughly look in and around the hemlocks because sometimes there are Hypomyces lactifluorum – lobster mushrooms. This morning I found around two dozen of them, and they were mostly fresh and choice.
And here’s a shot of this morning’s bounty!
Hey, we won something
The City of Toronto Etobicoke York District (whatever that is) has a ‘Great Garden Contest’ each year. This year, our front garden was nominated and has achieved 1st place in Ward 6 (Etobicoke-Lakeshore) in the Traditional garden category (the other category is Alternative/Environmental garden). Yay!! According to the letter we received, over 330 nominated gardens were judged during the months of July and August by judges from local horticultural societies – Etobicoke, Roselands, Swansea, and Westway. I’m a member of Roselands, by the way, but I confess I’m a terrible member. I don’t go to any meetings or other events – except the annual plant sale, which is excellent.
2nd in our ward for traditional garden is 65 Jellicoe Avenue and 3rd is 105 Thirteenth St. In the other category in our ward, 19 Paula Blve is 1st, 166 Hillside Ave is 2nd and 55 Burlington St is 3rd.
For the entire district, the big winners are: Best Garden of the District – 291 Beresford Ave. 1st runner up is 27 Sagres Cres.
We’re going to figure out where the other winning gardens are and go check them out!
We appreciate that our garden is getting a little recognition. Each year we try to find ways to improve it. Here are a few photos taken at different times during the summer.
Summer Garden
The Bench Garden
poppies
Never hit seventeen when you play against the dealer…
The song of the day today is Ian Tyson’s masterpiece, Summer Wages. I always think of this one as a very Canadian tune, yet it has become a bluegrass standard, performed by JD Crowe and the New South and the Tony Rice Unit and so on. But it’s David Bromberg’s version that really gets to me, over and over.
Here’s David Bromberg.
Geez, that’s beautiful, isn’t it?
Ok, Here’s David Bromberg…
The dreams of the seasons spill down on the floor
All the big stands of timber all ready for fallin’
And the hustlers sitting watchfully as they wait by the door
Here’s David Bromberg…
She’s a woman so fine I might never try to find her
because good memories are all we had before
27th Street 