The harvest this year came early.  I look forward to growing more again next year… and ever year!

I took a quick trip to Newfoundland last week for work.  I visited St. Johns mostly but took a few out trips to Cape Spear and to Cupids.  Today is the 400th anniversary of Cupids – the first English settlement in Canada!!  The roof top view of me and Conception Bay is at Cupids. 

For those of you who saw me surfing websites all winter trying to decide which seeds to buy and who then heard about me starting the garden before Easter to get the seeds going, I’m happy to report my little garden is flourishing!

Behind the fence we built two small boxes for my gardens.  Starting from the left I’ve got Painted Lady Runner Beans, mesculin and lettuce mix, carrots, lemon cucumbers growing up the wall, three types of peppers (the seedlings got all mixed up), yellow wax bush beans, black pear tomatoes, beets, and gai lan.  I pulled up some of the beets last weekend and had a taste – it was a mixed bag of beet seeds – and the two I tried were delicious.  Some of my yellow beans are about ready and we’ve been eating lettuce non-stop for months.  It got a bit overgrown so I reseeded this weekend but grew half as much as we don’t eat that much lettuce.

The purple flowers are borage I palanted around the trees out front.  They look really pretty in the sun!

An early spring in Ottawa, March saw no snow, April only a day of snow and now we are into May.  Over the Easter weekend Ryan and I took a great trip to York Harbour Maine and Boston.  A few weeks later I attended the great celebration of my grandparent’s 50th Wedding Anniversary in the BC Kootneys.  It was a great event and I believe people are still enjoying the video (see menu on right).  Please – anyone who wants a DVD version of the video, don’t hesitate to contact me!

We spent the weekend in Montreal moving Evan, Ryan’s brother, into his new dorm at McGill.  I came home to a bunch more ripe tomatoes and we are having a heirloom pizza for supper.   I think I am still full from all the fabulous food we had in Montreal – Au Pied de Cochon last night and Schwartz’s this afternoon for lunch.   On the drive home we even stopped at St. Albert’s for a few cheese curds.

First signs of tomato growth

Happy Canada Day!  Ryan and I headed down to Parliament Hill this morning for the noon hour show.  It was a spectacular event and we have the sun burns to prove it. 

We have also been in the house for about a month now.  The yard is still a mud pile but I have tomatoes growing in pots and we are as unpacked as we can be at this point.  We are really happy with the house and all the choices we made, but there is still lots to do.  Next up: installing blinds.  I feel a bit guilty about not having any better pictures to show you but I have put a few in Chez Nous for you to see.  Check out the Foodies tab to see how I’ve been enjoying the new kitchen and fresh summer ingredents when making lasagna!

Star Trek is back with the new movie that opened this weekend.  Taking the original Star Trek characters this new film erases and re-writes their back story setting the stage for a number of Star Trek films to come over the next few  years.  The film had me crying in the first 10 minutes and cheering at the end.  Ryan declared it was probably the best action film he had ever seen.  The film student in me couldn’t help but notice the great contrasts 0f the film – the black infinite space was often broken by a blinding white light that consumed the screen.  The action scenes, jam-packed with noise and movement, were often contrasted with opera music, silence, or just breathing.  Aside from the esthetics, the film played on my favorite sci-fi theme: time-space confusion.  This theme became more prominent in the Voyager TV series and is indicative of globalization and the current technological revolution.  We saw the film on the IMAX and both agreed that that is really the only reason to go to the theatre these days. 

BC Scene is on here in Ottawa and some colleagues and I took in a cooking demonstration at the National Arts Centre this week.  Chef Blackie from the NAC was presenting with Chef Robert Clark from Vancouver.  We ate delicious fish from the sea – oysters, prawns, scallops and it was all paired with fabalous BC wine.