Garden, Bikes & Ballads
Hello! It's been a minute.
Summer keeps me quite busy outside instead of on my computer, but I'm doing my best to keep a better record of things.
Bluesfest
M and I attended Bluesfest, the local annual 10-day outdoor music festival that isn't actually about blues anymore, really. They had a free afternoon of music on July 19th to celebrate the city's 200th anniversary, and the evening shows were good enough to warrant getting a day ticket.
It was a great day of music, eats & bevvies.
In total, we saw:
- Les Petit Tounes, a Francophone folk band
- Choir! Choir! Choir!, a weird but fun singalong duo
- Natalie MacMaster, Donnell Leahy & family (a hometown Cape Breton staple, I grew up listening to Natalie and adore her)
- Rebelle, a Wakefield-local punkish industrial band
- The Sheepdogs, a Southern rock band from western Canada
- The Guess Who, who probably need no introduction.
We always bike to the festival, since it's a leisurely 10km and they offer FREE valet bike parking. On the way home, we decided to try taking our bikes on the newish Line 2 train to get home quicker. The process was easy! I'm so glad our transit system is becoming more bike-friendly.
Garden Updates
The garden is trucking along and providing us with a ton of good produce. Currently we're getting a whole whack of yellow beans (though they're waning off a bit), zucchini and eggplant.
Unfortunately we're losing a lot of our zucchini and cucumbers to squirrels this year. There was an explosion of squirrel litters in the neighbourhood and they're all competing for food. I've ordered some of those breathable fruit bags to attach to the plants, to see if we can protect our produce until harvest. Fingers crossed.
Our blueberry bushes are also currently at their peak. M manages the daily harvest, first thing in the morning so we don't lose too many to critters. We're easily getting about 3-4 cups every single morning. We freeze most of these for later use, but have also been enjoying them fresh by the handful.
The six blueberry bushes are easily my favourite thing we've planted. They took a few years to establish but are paying off in droves. They're such an efficient use of space too, we planted them in a little narrow space between our carport and fence that otherwise was getting zero use. Win win.
It's strange that half of summer is already past us. It always goes too fast, but I'm enjoying the warm days & bright evenings while they last.
Until next time.
<3 Allie