A Quick Peek in the Garden

Cleaning for Passover

Today is the first day of the week of Passover, which means that the Jewish women in our neighbourhood have been very, very busy cleaning their homes in preparation for their biggest feast of the year...

Last Thursday when we went swimming, I noticed that some of the "regulars" were not there and realized that they're probably busy cleaning for Passover. I'd heard about this practice and that it's a ton of work, but never gave it much more thought. The idea that some of the other swimmers were busy cleaning house for Passover gave me the inspiration to do some cleaning too, even though I'm not Jewish. I figured I'd start in the kitchen, since that's what the Jewish women talk about the most.

For some reason I decided to Google "Passover cleaning" to find out what their traditions are. Oh my! I had no idea! No wonder they talk about it as such a huge chore! You can do this research yourself if you're at all interested, but here is a quote that gives you some of the basics: The Torah commands Jews not to eat or posses chametz during the week of Passover. Chametz is any of the five grains --- wheat, spelt, barley, oats and rye - which has come into contact with water for more than 18 minutes. Before Passover, Jews clean their houses to get rid of all the chametz." Somewhere else I read, One crumb of edible chametz cannot stay in your house. So anything that is made of fermented grain and anything that has the power to ferment grain, like sourdough or ethyl alcohol (found in some deoderants and cosmetics) has to go. They wash, sterilize, blow torch, sell, anything that might have any chametz on it. This includes cupboards, countertops, dishes, utensils, stoves, freezers, clothes, toys. I had no idea!

So, I was inspired to do some cleaning, but for sure not to that extent! What I did want to do, was use environmentally friendly cleaning products. And so that led to more research - or actually digging out articles and books that I've been saving and reading because I was interested... but it never really went beyond being interested. I finally decided to put some of this interest into action.

With vinegar, borax, baking soda, lemon juice, vegetable oil and water you can clean almost anything without having to use any toxic agents. I emptied the cabinets and drawers, cleaned them, sorted all the contents and am getting rid of quite a bit of extra "stuff" that has been accumulating and that we don't need.

So even though I really do not like the smell of vinegar, I put up with it because I'm quite excited that I finally put my interests into practice, that I didn't use anything that would harm the environment or our health, and that our kitchen cabinets are all clean and the contents all sorted! Feels great!

Happy Birthday, Melanie!

Happy Birthday to our dear daughter-in-law, Melanie!

Positive Proof of Global Warming :)

Here's something fun that I clipped out of a paper a few years ago and just found in one of my files today.

Sure Signs of Spring

Re-using Scraps of Soap Bars

One of my New Year's resolutions was to do one new "simple living thing" per month for a year. In January I made my own yogurt, in February I melted down some scraps of soap bars and formed them into new bars like my mom used to do, and now in March I'm trying out homemade salad dressing recipes. I've made some Italian dressing so far. It was OK, but not something I'd like to put on my salad every day. So if you have any favourite recipes to share, I'd love to hear from you.

So, back to my soap-melting experiment in February... First I put about half of my soap scraps into a glass bowl, added some water, put on a lid, and ran it in the microwave for about two minutes. While some soap got sticky, the rest of it was still hard and not pliable enough to form into a new bar of soap. So... I called my mom for advice.

And, according to her directions, I put the soap in a pan with enough water to prevent the soap from sticking to the bottom. You slowly bring the water to boiling, giving the soap enough time to become soft and pliable.

Take a handful of the soft soap out of the pan. Be sure to wear rubber gloves because the soap will be very hot. And run some cold water over the gloves first so the soap doesn't stick to them.

Then run some cold water over the soap as you gently squeeze it together and form it into whatever size and shape of bar you want. The cold water will make it easier to work with the soap.

I got two good-sized bars out of approximately 40 scraps.

They were a bit rough-looking at first, but after a few uses they get much smoother.

And after a few weeks they now look like any bar you would buy from the store. I find this re-melted soap is quite a bit harder than the original (we mostly use unscented Ivory Soap). And that's good, because my soap in the shower and in my soap box that I use for swimming, seem to stay soft and so get used up a lot faster than our soap in the kitchen, which has a chance to completely dry out between uses.

Goodbye Beige! Happy Birthday, Ken!

A few weeks ago we received the following e-vite:

A full life punctuated by colourful shirts from around the world and great tales of adventure, service and love. Please join us as we celebrate Dad's birthday with a fun evening of appetizers, deserts and crazy shirts. Hope to see you all there sporting your own crazy shirt or blouse!

The only thing is that Gerard and I didn't own any crazy shirts. So we set out for Value Village (thrift store) to see what we could find. It was fun! And here are the ones we decided on...

If you look carefully you can see that Gerard's right eye is still red from when it got bruised by a branch earlier this week. But the red is starting to fade and it doesn't hurt or bother him at all.

Canada Blooms - The Flower & Garden Festival

Canada Blooms is an annual flower and garden festival in Toronto that features 6 acres of display gardens, floral design and garden building competitions, a market place selling anything even remotely related to gardening, speakers, workshops and demonstrations. It's a great place to get a feel of spring at the end of the winter, see what's new in gardening and to get inspiration for your own gardening.

It's amazing what they can all build in five days on a concrete floor of a trade show centre - waterfalls, tall trees, streams, ponds, a cob house with a green roof.

One of my favourite things to see at the garden show is the miniature gardens (and the miniature flower arrangements but I didn't take any pictures of those). These are about one square foot in size and the theme this year was "dancing on the green". Here are the two I like the best this year...

There were also a number of displays related to gardening in the city, like balcony gardening, portable gardens for those who rent and move around a lot, and growing your own vegetables in the city. This vegetable garden was interesting. The path is made of mushrooms.

Some of the trends in gardening seem to be the use of metal sculptures, water features, and fire in the garden. Also the creation of living spaces in the garden using expensive garden furniture, candles, fireplaces, and elaborate kitchen/barbequing set-ups.

On My Way to Canada Blooms

Yesterday after work I headed downtown (I'm still managing to get there about once a week!) to see Canada Blooms - a huge flower show. As I was on the street car going down Spadina, through China Town, I was thinking, "What a shame that I spent most of this gorgeous day in the office! Why am I going to spend the next few hours of beautiful weather, inside at the flower show?" So I hopped off the street car once we got down to the lake, and walked along the waterfront to the show. It was beautiful weather! Sun, wind, and water - a perfect combination! Lots of joggers, cyclists, strollers, and people sitting on park benches with a book or just soaking up the sun. Such a vibrant community! Lots of 20' and 30's living in high rise condos. I was wondering what it would be like to live down there. You could just go for a walk along the lake anytime you wanted. Or just sit out there watching the sail boats, people, the water....

Here's what I enjoyed along the way... Is this a bird house?

And I actually did see these flowers on my way to Canada Blooms. I'll show you what I saw at Canada Blooms in my next post.

How Much Fat Is in Your Food?

This morning I attended a workshop about "Preventing Stress and Burnout - Fitness in the Workplace". Not that I'm dealing with stress or burnout - it was just one in a series of workshops being offered at our monthly Toronto Association of Volunteer Administration meetings. When we arrived, there was a hamburger bun on a paper plate and a tub of margarine with a knife, on every table.

After introducing some exercises to do at our desks, giving pointers on reducing stressors in our work spaces, and suggesting healthy snacks to keep at work, the workshop leader got to talking about fast foods we might be tempted to pick up on our lunch breaks. Each table was given the name of a restaurant, two menu items, and a sheet of nutrition facts.

Our table was told we were getting a Big Mac and a serving of large fries from McDonald's. We were asked to follow the instructions on the sheet below: (click to enlarge)

Looking at the "nutrition facts" on our fast food menu (another handout not pictured) we determined that there were 33 grams of fat in the Big Mac and 26 grams of fat in the large serving of fries - a total of 59 grams. Dividing this total by 5 told us there were almost 12 teaspoons of butter in our fast food meal! Then we had to put that many teaspoons of margarine on our hamburger bun.

Can you imagine eating that much margarine on anything?! I don't think I'll ever look at a Big Mac and fries in the same way again. I actually don't ever order these items anyway and hardly ever use margarine either, but still...! I'm not sure how accurate this information is. It seems like an unbelievable amount of fat to me! But it must be pretty accurate because this leader goes around giving these workshops on behalf of a Fit4Life NY company so I'm sure they've done their research. Even it it's only half accurate, it's still a lot of fat!

Groups at other tables had to look up menu items from Burger King, KFC, a Chinese restaurant, etc. One group looked at drinks to see how much sugar they contained.

All of the drinks shown in this picture contained anywhere from 9 to 12 teaspoons of sugar each - about the amount shown in the cup in this picture. The girl beside me happened to have a bottle of Vitamin Water with her, like the one in the picture. She thought it was healthy for her and was shocked to find that she had been drinking pure sugar water! What an eye opener! It was very interesting! I wonder what everyone is ordering the next time they go out for lunch after attending this workshop?

What a Difference One Week Makes!

After seeing tulips and daffodils coming up in the flower beds in Niagara Falls last weekend, I checked our own flower beds when we got home, but didn't see any sign of new spring growth yet. Now, only one week later, there are all kinds of plants popping out of the ground.

Daffodils...

Crocuses...

Chives...

Columbines...

Multiplier onions...

And tulips...

This afternoon the temperature got up to 12 C. and by the end of the afternoon I just had to get started on the spring clean up outside! I always leave all the plants in for the winter because I love the way they look in the snow, and they also provide seeds for the birds. But that means there's a lot of extra clean-up to do in the spring. I'm sure we'll get more frost, so all I did so far is cut down the dead plants from last fall and loosen the soil. Now when the new spring flowers start attracting attention to the flower beds, they'll look cleaned up. With the time change to daylight savings time this weekend, it was light outside until 7:30 pm this evening and so I worked on the flower beds right until dark. It felt great!

Here's the new growth I found way down in the bottom of the sedum plant (brown above) after I cut back last year's growth.

What a change in one week! With the rain and the warm weather everything is just popping up out of the ground.

During this clean-up Gerard was also outside enjoying the great weather by picking up garbage on the street. When he bent over a bush to reach some garbage, a branch poked him in the eye, and by the time he got home he had a bubble of blood in his eye. We went straight to the local emergency department, got helped right away and, thankfully, everything is fine. The doctor said nothing was ruptured. He must have closed his eye lid on time and only bruised his eye. It might look pretty bad and change colours for about five days, but the blood will slowly be absorbed and everything should be fine. What a relief and what a blessing!

Last Odds & Ends from Niagara Falls

One more set of pictures from our weekend in Niagara Falls... Am I ever glad we went when we did! The weather last weekend was gorgeous - perfect for long walks along the Niagara River and for sitting on park benches soaking up the sun and watching people. Today in Toronto it's dark, rainy and very windy. A good day to stay home to cook, bake, watch the opening ceremonies of the Vancouver 2010 Paralympic Games and find out what sledge hockey is all about.

It was interesting to watch this guy make fudge at the Fudge Factory. I don't really care for fudge - too sweet and sugary for me. I can actually be in a fudge shop and not be tempted in the least! It was fun to watch him work since I'd never seen the fudge-making process before.

And we stopped by the Hershey Store for a free chocolat sample.

I love this clock!

I got a good chuckle out of the picture of this little girl. She was on a poster advertising an indoor water park. Looks like she's all scrunched up with excitement!

As we started in the direction of home on Sunday morning, we attended church in Welland with Aunt Glo, who is like a second mother to our daughter-in-law, Melanie. She invited us to be her guests at their "loonie lunch". It's a really neat idea. You pay a loonie (the common name for our Canadian one-dollar coin that has the picture of a loon on it) and get to stay for food and fellowship after church. They do this once a month to provide an opportunity for people to get to know each other and to promote community.

And that's my last post about our visit to Niagara Falls. I can't believe we packed so much into 48 hours! It was a wonderful little getaway! Lots of good memories!