Tomato Red Pepper Sauce

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It is a long weekend, here in Ontario, Canada. And what am I doing on this long weekend? Well, Saturday morning I wanted to visit farms. Attila was game. I found information about local farms on the internet, what little there was, made a list, and off we went. Well, that didn’t go well. There was a bad accident on a nearby highway, it was closed, and the traffic was routed through our little urban area. What would have been a 15 minute drive into the country took two hours to get a mile or so to the grocery store, and we dealt with a lot of rude, frustrated, aggressive drivers who kept trying to take short cuts on dead-end streets. Since we were stuck in traffic so close to the grocery store, and so cut off from getting to any farms, we decided to shop. All I wanted was a bottle of lemon juice. What we walked out of the store with was two 25 pound boxes of Roma tomatoes, a 20 pound box of Red Shepherd peppers, and six pounds of onions. And that sealed my fate! By noon Saturday Attila and I were chopping and dicing vegetables; … Continue reading →

Small Miracle

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What a beautiful day! It is cool, cool enough that I am wearing a long sleeve shirt. But not so cool that I feel chilly. Perfect. Another heat wave is on the way, so say the weather people. I suspect they are right, the first week of September often brings hot humid weather. Today it doesn’t feel as if I have done much. BUT, I must remind myself that this is simply not true. First of all, I dealt with the dead mice in the trap that I set on the back porch last night. Mice are usually caught at night. When checking the bucket trap this morning, I was surprised to find two deceased mice. It took me a while to figure out what I was going to do with them. I settled for flushing them down the toilet. The trap has been reset. More traps need to be set for tonight, in the garden shed and in the garage. This is the time of year the mice are coming into buildings to setup their winter homes, and I intend to stop as many of them as I can from taking up residence at Mist Cottage. The barriers we … Continue reading →

What I Get Up To

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Attila’s ankle is getting better, bit by bit, day by day. He will begin physiotherapy soon, and hopefully that will help alleviate the pain. He has two issues, one an injury to his back, and the other an old injury that has been flaring up in his ankle. He seems to be able to control the pain using Voltaran (Diclofenac) rubbed on his ankle, this allows him to sleep at night. I think that applying this locally is much better for him than taking Ibuprofen tablets, as those could affect his stomach. Yesterday was very hot and muggy, and it did not cool down much during the night. It was, and still is, very windy. The wind toppled the Giant Marigold plants, and one of the Cosmos plants. They were then staked, and fingers are crossed that the plants will suffer no ill effects. The garden continues to yield a small but steady harvest of tiny tomatoes. They are washed and frozen after they are harvested, to be processed all at once when the harvest season is over, and any green tomatoes have ripened. A total harvest of about two six-quart baskets is anticipated. The tomatoes from our garden will … Continue reading →

Projects

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Projects! They can be horrendous. The garage roof was one of those horrendous projects. It began in late June, and the exterior portion of the project was completed on Sunday, August 26th. And it was a two-day push, those last two days, all day Saturday and all day Sunday, to complete it. Of course, there are a few little things that aren’t done, but that is the way of it with Attila’s projects. He is a person that always leaves a little bit… in the pot when serving food, in a project that he is working on. I think it is one of the reasons he likes to work alone, someone else might want to finish a job completely. Like me, I like to finish jobs completely and forget about them. Blasphemy! The garage roof project was undertaken by Attila, and it overtook him. In his absence from daily life, I took over and fulfilled all the day-to-day tasks that he usually takes care of, in addition to my own day-to-day tasks. Because they aren’t my tasks, they aren’t setup the way I would do them, so they were challenging. I kept Attila’s routines going, because I knew that he … Continue reading →

Turn, Turn, Turn

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Some sort of turning point has been taken here at Mist Cottage. I can’t really define just when it turned, or what it is, just how it feels. It feels settled. It feels comfortable. It feels right. It feels challenging. It feels fluid. It feels a bit unpredictable. I don’t really trust this change, not yet anyway, in time, if it is real and stable, I will grow to trust it. Trust is earned. Attila seems to have not only recovered from his “terrible, terrible mistake”, but to have come through some kind of dark night of the soul, and out the other side. He is still the same old Attila, but seems to have awakened anew, and is now able to smell the roses in this lucky life he has with me. What a year this has been so far! Every year seems that way though, but my mileage varies. The garage roof project is not done yet. Attila doesn’t usually finish projects at one go. He will push until he is very nearly finished, then suddenly stop altogether. It will take some prodding on my part to get him to complete the few, small remaining bits of the … Continue reading →