Looking at life through a funhouse mirror
The hummingbirds are acting like assholes. There are three of them that swoop around chasing each other away from the feeder whenever one of them decides it’s time for a snack. Apparently, this means they are getting ready to start migrating. I’m not sure how well that will turn out, since they seem to be …
I am pretty sure I have mentioned this before, but I am a magazine-aholic. I currently subscribe to six magazines: Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, Bon Appetit, The Walrus, Cottage Life, and Toronto Life. I also get the Report on Business every month via my Globe and Mail newspaper subscription, bonus issues of Fashion (useless) …
When I lived in Cabbagetown (a completely non-suburban place, in fact about as urban as you can get) in a row house with a Victorian exterior and early 1990s interior (which was perfectly fine because it was the early 1990s at the time), the kitchen was a white womb of hard surfaces. The cupboards were …
The good news: the hummingbirds are back. The bad news: the racoons are back. It is possible that I aided and abetted the latter because of my method of composting, which involves flinging vegetable peelings over the deck railing into the forest at large. In my own defense, the height of the deck provides the …
The thermometer outside my bedroom window fell to its death on the patio below the other day. I am not sure if it jumped or if it was pushed. I must admit it was not the most accurate temperature measurer, except for first thing in the morning when the sun had not yet climbed high …
For some reason, it only just dawned on me that every official season is exactly the same duration of three months. Summer begins on June 21 and ends on September 21, whereupon fall takes over until December 21 and so on through winter and spring, until summer rolls around again. I think it took me a …
Until now, I had not been to downtown Toronto in six months. First it was because of the pandemic perils, then the ice went out and I decamped to the cottage to hunker down for several months of swimming, sunning, and sloth. In May, when their office opened again, my dentist, who I’m sure thinks …
We have acquired a ten-foot pole. Or actually, this pole has been around for some time, but it has been living under my radar. It is supposed to be an extension for poles you wish were longer, like brushes for washing stuff on the outside of the house. Or something like that. Whatever its real …
The red squirrel that Dennis caught the other day, down by the dock while I was swimming, has thankfully, I assume, been repurposed as dinner for a bird of prey. Maybe one of the ravens (are they birds of prey? Henry seems to think they are and makes sure to steer clear of them.) Anyhow, …
“Salads! A cool relief on a hot summer’s day!” the food magazine says. I am here to tell you this is not true. Not the eating of the salads, which is actually a very good idea, heat or no heat. It’s the making of the salads that is a completely ridiculous thing to do when …