Tuesday 16-05-2017 – It's Love a Tree Day!

Yea, sexy firefighters! And Catberries! WooHoo 😆

What kind of tree is it, MS? I’m caught up on The Handmaid’s Tale and it’s interesting. Miss Gaea was sitting on my lap so I guess I’m forgiven.

Cya and have a happy~
PG

Getur þú alltaf fengið uppáhalds borðið þitt (Icelandic)
May you always have your favorite ribbon

I’d already said hello to the big tree just outside my office window – and my front balcony, though he isn’t a native tree. He is a Norway Maple, a beautiful tree but not native to here. Some decades ago, the importance of native flora was not as known as it is now, and they thought “they are from Norway, another cold country with long winters, it will do well here”. Actually they are sort of pests, though they are far too beautiful for anyone to remove mature ones; we are just not supposed to let them propagate.

The funniest thing is that the maple leaf on the Canadian flag is actually a Norway maple, not a Canadian one…

We’d had a chilly and extremely rainy springtime here, even into May, but suddenly it is sunnier and warmer so the leaves are growing quickly, as are all sorts of flowers. Livia is sitting out on the front balcony now, but she’ll probably want back in soon, although she’s already had her breakfast.

Those pseudopanax look very interesting; do you know what the Indigenous people called them?

Unter den Linden! Famous boulevard in Berlin.
Yes, Linden (tilleul in French) makes wonderful herbal tea.

Moonshadow, I found a site about Maori uses of Native NZ plants:
http://maoriplantuse.landcareresearch.co.nz/WebForms/PeoplePlantsDetails.aspx?firstcome=firstcome&PKey=E394F651-C7CB-44CE-B187-915941580B3C

Like many places, we are experiencing the loss of our ash trees, felled by a parasite. Many along my street, fortunately not on my block, but the long block just north, yes unfortunately. The street looks so sad… 🙁 The black ash, a native species here, was used for many purposes for the Abenaki people, who live in the Eastern Townships region (L’Estrie) in Québec as well as in Vermont and is their sacred tree.

Hey guys! Oh, I just love trees. Our yard is full of them which is so lovely to have the shade. The downside is the leaf clean up (they’re oaks)…massive amounts of it. And grass won’t grow with all the shade…but who needs a high maintenance lawn anyways?

Wooo hoo…they tore out my kitchen cabinets and counters today. Coming tomorrow to start installing the new ones. I picked them out at the beginning of March but neglected to ask when they’d actually be installed. I thought it would be much sooner. I thought this day would NEVER come. We didn’t fully unpack the kitchen so we’ve been living with boxes in the kitchen and dining room for three months. If I’m the queen of the house the kitchen is my throne room…don’t want icky cardboard boxes in my throne room….lol.

I’m sitting here watching the cats inspect the changes. The changes actually seem like a good distraction for them.

MS, a bubble sheet test is a standardized, multiple choice test where you color in a circle by the correct answer. You use a number two pencil so a machine can read your markings and grade the test. School kids start taking them in kindergarten or 1st grade here…use to measure student and school performance. Do kids get tested like that in NZ?

Ha! They did help some, PG. And I’ll keep training them to help more. I’m bad about wanting to do everything myself, but there are so many leaves, it’s the perfect task to enlist some help. I really need to step up my handing over responsibilities to them so they know how to clean and cook and stuff when they leave home.

Hi all – family shenanigans today at mom’s, more expected tomorrow.
I love trees, and admire them when I walk around the lake. The chestnut tree at my late neighbor’s house is in full bloom, which makes me feel happy when I think of her on her b-day, May 13.
Baby Aslan currently has the run of the living room, as I don’t have an extra room for him. “Uncle Mac” keeps hissing at him and batting him away when he gets tackled by the small white monster, but he’s not making any attempt to leave, unlike Comet who says, “oh hell no, I’m outa here” and runs upstairs. Mac and Aslan = Mr. Wilson and Dennis the menace! Leela is lightly napping on a chair, happy to not be noticed, and most likely taking much pleasure in Comet and Mac’s “misfortune”.
Dewey is right outside the back door, Huey snagged the chair, Star is comfy on the lounge chair, and Berta is in the straw nest under the round table. Makes me happy that they are comfortable and voluntarily staying in my yard. Dewey knows there’s a baby in here so he won’t come in till bedtime.

Here is the reference. In that thread because it was the last reference I could find to X company and its characters:

Here is a real-life Zosia! https://secondstorypress.ca/adult/a-partisans-memoir

It isn’t at Nelligan (Mtl public libraries) but it is at the Mtl Jewish Public Library.
—
Zosia was the Polish Jewish woman partisan, who really became the leader after Jan was murdered. I loved her calm, mature assurance (though she was relatively young) as much as I loved the headstrong Romani teenage girl partisan Miri.

Back to less dramatic questions – yes I love those colourful espadrilles, and hope I can find them. I did schlepp the heavy stainless steel electric pot that needs a special power cord to Le Chaînon. Decluttering continues apace.

In the postwar years, department stores such as Eatons and Simpsons in Toronto directed East Asian men to the boys’ section as there was nothing small enough in the men’s department. This was of course very humiliating for those men, who found other places to shop.

KJ-After the 3rd episode it was like watching a train wreak and not being able to turn away. Hulu has signed on for second season so who knows what’s next…