May 24, 2010
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First ever Sam Smith Park bird festival

A thank you goes out to Finny’s Friend for letting me know about this event. He sent me the poster with the following comment: “With responsible behaviour always at the forefront birders and dog lovers can not just coexist but advance causes of mutual interest.”

Although I do have plans for at least part of that day, I hope to take part in a bird walk. I think that will be a lot of fun and very informative too.

May 24, 2010
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In the Garden

Yesterday was such a nice day to work around outside. We spent most of the day in the garden. The dogs napped in the shade while we weeded, cut, trimmed, raked, swept and so on. It’s looking pretty good. The next garden job on my list is to cut some big dead limbs off one of the apple trees and cut and stack that wood to season for the stove. The two apple trees are tall and old and were pretty much ignored. I want to take the dead limbs off both for safety and for firewood. Once the dead limbs are down, I’m going to run some LED lights up into that tree for the summer.

At the very back of the property, we have about 30 feet of what I can only call woods. I have a little bit of clean-up work to do back there that I’ve been ignoring. The dogs like to chase our cat Jacques back there. Jacques encourages this. I have a bit of cleaning up to do back there. There’s a composter I made from skids that was displaced when we put a fence around the property. We put the fence in because the dogs could get through and over the old chain link fence and we wanted to keep them safe in the yard.

The locust out front is finally coming into leaf. It and the small rose-of-sharon out back seem to be the last things to show themselves. This season everything seems to be in super growth mode, compared to last year.

May 23, 2010
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What’s in a name?

This morning, I had the dogs out at the local leash-free dog park. Some us of were talking about naming the park. I don’t mean some city-generated name after a politician. I mean a community name, something we come up with. If there are some Longbranch dog owners out there, tell me what you think. Let’s start socializing some name choices. Maybe we can all agree on one. Then it’s just a matter of re-allocating some resources from the garbage bin and fashioning a fancy home-made sign. I’d like to see the community start making more volunteer improvements to the park. Maybe the City will get in the spirit of it and ante up some real resources. We could form a volunteer group and turn our mediocre park situation into a better one. I had hoped The City would try to achieve that, but it’s almost June and nothing has happened yet….

May 22, 2010
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Infrastructure Upgrading

These photos arrived via email today from Finney’s Friend, a regular at the leash free park over at the RL Clark Filtration Plant, next to Sam Smith Park in beautiful Longbranch. Here’s what the email said:

Dear friends of Sam Smith dog off leash area and family recreational facility,
we are pleased to report that the City of Toronto has donated materials sufficient
to allow volunteers to construct a substantial “park bench” for public use.
Neighbors will continue to monitor deposits made in the water plant trash bins.
Further upgrades will be undertaken as material reallocation plans permit.
As in the past all such improvements will become the property of the city and be managed by the councilor’s own staff.

The poodle is Finney and the doodle is Riley.

I thought I’d better publish this right away, since when I published photos of the mysterious gate that appeared there a while back, Councillor Grimes office commented on this blog, giving the City credit for the make-shift gate. I’m happy to report that the gate continues to operate remarkably well. We await further improvements.

May 22, 2010
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Anchovy Front Gardens

Over on the right side of the photo, look for Jacques. If you look closely, you may see Bambi. Mycophiles will notice there are some rare mushrooms coming up in this garden. After careful research, I have identified them as Chip-bowl amanitas (not edible). These fungi share colouration with the well-known Amanita muscaria; however, the caps of these mushrooms are strangely reminiscent of chip-bowls. I checked them for odour. One was bbq and another was salt and vinegar. How strange.

For now, it’s time to simply keep this garden watered and fed as some of these plants come into their own. A few of them, such as the dogwood and the hydrangeas can grow quite large and will become the anchors to the garden.

May 22, 2010
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The Backyard Gardens

In the jungle back of Anchovy World Headquarters, I carved out the beginnings of some gardens last season. They’re coming along pretty well. I have a plan for another back there, but I’m procrastinating that one a while. The wading pool is for Memphis and Ellie Mae to keep them cool on hot days.