My Garden

The one downfall (well the one that I will talk about right now) is that we do not have our own garden. I love to garden. Nothing fancy, but it's very satisfying to see your hard work bloom throughout the summer. Luckily my grandmother and mother both have homes with little gardens, so I get to help them out with their gardens.

When Andre and I moved into our current apartment just over two years ago my mother bought us three African Violet plants as a housewarming present. Shortly after their arrival we found out that our cat Mikey also had an appreciation for flowers. But his was more of a destructive sort of relationship with them. Now two years later I have one hardy little violet left after all the carnage. I've tried fertilizer and moving it to different locations, but with being in a basement apartment it's hard to find a place where it will have enough light.

I think I may have found the perfect place for it. A little while ago I had a talk with my friend Pam about our love of Lavender, both the scent and the plant. We had both tried growing it from seed, but had only succeeded it growing mold. Definitely not as exciting. So she surprised me one night by giving me a little potted Lavender plant. She had bought one already germinated, and re potted a little bit of the plant for me.

I put it on the window ledge, and soon discovered that Mikey hates it because it smells! Yeah for me (and the lavender plant)! So now I have a well lit home for both my violet and my lavender. This week the lavender finally started to bloom. I was so excited, and just had to share some pictures.

Summer Fun

Every year my grandfather (Poppy) and his wife have all of their family down to their house on Lake Erie for a big BBQ. Andre loves to go and play Bacce Ball all afternoon. This year for some reason it was a smaller group, and the rain threatened to ruin the fun all afternoon, but held out until just after dinner. Thankfully we were able to get everything inside the house before it really started to pour.

For those of you that don't know, I affectionately call Andre my own person paparazzi. He has to have photos documenting every aspect of our lives. I was the score keeper of the game but Andre made me drag out the camera to snap a few pictures of the game.

The following are some pictures of Andre and his dad Frank.

Commence finger crossing now!

The one thing that I want more than anything (well maybe almost as much as winning the lottery) is to own our own home. I want to be able to decorate the way I want. I want to have a kitchen that actually has useful storage, or more useful storage than we have right now. I want a garden to plant some flowers. I want more room!! Oh the list is endless, but I would settle for a little home of our own.

We don't have unrealistic dreams. We know that in order to stay in the area that we are renting in we won't be able to have the single home. That just won't be possible. We're fine with this and are perfectly willing to own a townhouse. We're currently working with a financial planner at our bank to help make that dream a reality.

A topic of conversation that routinely comes up is my grandmother's inability to maintain her home. She owns a 3 bedroom (converted from a 4 bdrm) townhouse behind my mother's home. She is a pack rat/hoarder and her house is, well, in one word disgusting. I can't stand to spend a significant amount of time there.

Well apparently my mom and grandma were talking on Saturday and my grandmother mentioned that she's thinking that she might have to downsize to an apartment in a year because she can't take care of the house. This is huge because she's finally realizing what we've known for years, and we could possibly be ready to purchase a home by the time she's ready to sell!

I'm not particularly attached to her home, so if something else in the area went up for sale when we were ready to buy that was more suitable (ie. more move-in ready) we would probably take that instead, but the town homes in her area have been selling in just a couple weeks so they don't last on the market very long.

It's fun to daydream about our one day home!

Canada Day 2008

Andre and I really didn't do anything too exciting last year because our life pretty much centred around the wedding. We've been trying to make up for it this year, and have had a very busy summer so far.

Andre doesn't get any of the Stat holidays off since his company is open every day except for Christmas Day. This didn't stop us from planning a picnic at Bayfront park once he got home after work on July 1st. My cousin and godson, Jonathan was visiting my grandmother so we brought him with us. He is always on the lookout for new "experiences" so we thought this would be a new experience for him.

One of the first things out of his mouth when we picked him up after saying hello was "Oh my gosh Jenna, you're my godmother!" I guess somehow this had come up in conversation with my grandmother earlier that morning and he just thought this was the most amazing thing to have learned. The entire day he would just blurt out how he couldn't believe that I was his godmother. He told me that it was like having three moms (his mother, his step-mother and myself). I told him that it just meant that I loved him very much and that he would always have a safe place to visit if he every needed one. He seemed happy with this.

Over all it was a great afternoon. We had a great lunch at a picnic table right by the water and then found a place for Andre to nap under a tree while Jonathan scooted around the park on his scooter and I walked behind him. It was a fabulous day.

"Ceiling Watch 2008" comes to a close

It's finally done. I received the glorious news when I walked in the door from work this evening. It's complete, no more leaking! Yeah!! I'm so happy. My allergies were becoming quite unbearable for a little bit before they got rid of the rotting drywall.

When they had someone into inspect the ceiling they discovered that not only did someone seal up a hole in the pipe with electrical tape, but when the house was built the lines were not installed at the correct angle apparently thus preventing the normal flow of water out of the pipe.

So now we just have to wait for everything to dry out completely after they had to cut open everything today to fix the pipe, and then have the ugly, ugly hole covered. Apparently they (the owners) just want to slap some painted plywood up to save us having to "deal with the mess of drywall". The real reason is that they just don't want to have to pay someone to install drywall. They sure didn't care that mold was growing over our table for months and months.

I hate the idea of having to live with a huge eyesore above our dining room table, but at the same time am happy that this mold problem is just about over. Since they took out the rotting drywall and we sprayed the wood my allergies and asthma has been a lot better already. I think I may spray everything again on the weekend though. I have a botanical spray that kills 99% of mold and mildew spores.

So without further ado here are the pictures of the during and the (hideous) after.

During:

This is what everything looked like the night that the owners daughter finally came over to get rid of the mold. The pink is a towel wrapped around the pipe so they would be able to gauge if water was actually still leaking. The leak was actually at the top of the pipe, so the water would drip around the pipe and pool between the wood and the drywall. That's why the black on the wood is so scary looking. It's very wet. The black thing hanging on the left is actually the electrical tape that some idiot had used to fix the problem in the first place.

After:

And now here is the hole sans leak. The plumber installed some wood to elevate the pipe and help the natural flow of water. Hopefully there won't be anymore leakage as long as we're renting. The black on the wood is much less scary looking now. It as been sprayed with bleach and a botanical spray to help kill the mold spores.
They don't want to cut out the wood, but I'm a little leary of them sanding the wood and potentially releasing spores into the air. Who knows what will happen now. Hopefully they will fix this hole quicker than the four months it took to fix the leak!