Its been a month!

Yesterday was my 1 month anniversary in Stratford.

I spent it gardening and receiving rocks for the garden and thinking about the garden (when I should have been working!)

The previous owner had done some pretty good stuff so I have good bones to work with. the soil is a heavy clay so lots of amending to do - bought some compressed peat substitute that is renewable (love peat but it is not renewable and therefore not a good choice). You throw the compressed bricks into a bucket of water and come back a couple of hours later to a lovely soup that then gets shovelled (or poured since I used too much water) on the garden and gives instantly satisfying brown fibrey stuff.

Planted a Magnolia (stellata - the multy fingered kind), some Hakenachloa - Japanese Feather Grass I think is the common name - that might be wrong), a globe shaped yellow threadleaf false cypress and a spreading juniper that I bought last year and over wintered in a pot - and moved to Stratford.

Received a shipment of a ton of river rock to go around the base of the silver maple where there is nothing but moss and dandelions. I can get rid of the dandelions but the moss is pretty sparse so the rocks are a better option. Then I can put a couple of chairs there and have a lovely sitting spot in the shade. (have a look at the chairs - they are from recycled plastic and come in 15 colours - you have to look really really closely to tell they are made from plastic! - and they are made here in Stratford!)

Work is all set up - pick up starts today - just have to persuade some orders out of people!! Have some HandMaiden casbah coming today or tomorrow - maybe that will do the trick

Go smell some roses!

Saturday

Myles's xray showed some "interesting" heart changes. Re-check in 6 months and in the meantime load him up with salmon. Wish I could be a little more active than that but at least I can do that much for him

Saturday brings taxes - or at least me working on them. Must get all my expenses in order and entered into my multipage spread sheet and then get the total off to the accountant.

Good thing the deadline is April 30th here!

What I really want to do it start hitting the garden centres and Anything Grows - which sounds much more fabulous that going through little pieces of paper!

Must work - play later

Myles is being Xrayed

I took Myles to the vet this am - the new vet now I am in Stratford - to see about the lumpy thing on his neck. We are adopting a wait and see attitude about it - it hasn't grown in 4 months

But.... the vet did hear something weird in his chest and I have left him there for an Xray - fingers crossed it isn't anything other than his murmur but the vet, rightly so, wondered why no one had xrayed his chest before to see if neck lump was also elsewhere


Fingers are crossed

Almost a living room

The first room I have tackled and tried to clear out is the living room dining room combination. It is long and narrow (27ft long by I think 16ft wide) and until yesterday was mostly full of boxes of books.

With my DD and DSs assistance it is now mostly cleared out

I am swatching paint samples so the walls are looking rather pock marked - blue but which blue, green but which green, yellow but which yellow. The paint store people are beginning to dread my arrival with another quest for the perfect colour

Canadian Tire has acquired a fair bit of my money as well - baby gate for the dog yesterday plus some stools, an ironing board and an iron, recycling bins x 3 (sorry Stratford but more people would recycle if we didn't have to sort things into so many different categories! - corrugated, cardboard, paper, plastic and tins ). The easier it is for people to recycle - the more they do it . Its a FACT!

Off to my knitting group - mine cuz I live here now

Settling in

Just a few kinks along the moving road - like a cat who went missing and was nowhere to be found - but has now been found. Way too much stuff and way too little time to do it all

The movers were fabulous - Avenue Moving - for anyone contemplating doing something crazy like selling their house and moving to Stratford (or anywhere else for that matter). The packed and hauled and shoved and grunted and managed to get my huge old butternut/tiger maple dresser up to the 2nd floor and my hugely heavy oak couch (also a queen sized bed so imagine how heavy that was!) into the living room

House is still full of boxes of course but a semblance of normality is returning.

Saw a rabbit run across the street this morning! Saw some raptors circling overhead the other day (5 of them). Can see stars! Can see blue sky right down to the horizon!

Boy did I do the right thing!

Now all that has to happen is for the Toronto house to close smoothly today and all will be right with my world

Oh and practically everyone I have met so far in the neighbourhood is from Toronto!

Kids are coming down on Sunday for a visit and to go and see the Swan March - pipers lead the swans back onto the Avon River from their winter home. What a great town this is!