Oh, We Get By With a Little Help From Our Friends

This is a quickie post since right now I am in bed recovering from having had surgery on my foot on Tuesday. All went well and while I won't be up and walking normally for a long time, I am feeling fine. Thank you for the kind notes and well wishes you have sent.

And thanks also goes out to my feline pal Eddie for help with the blog today.

I know these pictures aren't that great, but there is no way I could ever recapture this scene to get better photos, so these will have to serve in showing you what I saw the other day. Although I only caught him with his eyes open, I looked over to find him fast asleep, with his wee head propped up in the curve of chair. It looked so cute. Of course, once I went near with the camera he woke up and moved, taking away a sight that was very likely a once in a lifetime thing.

Out to See a Play : Gash

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/charlie-the-doll-from-gash-play.jpg" alt="charlie-the-doll-from-gash-play" width="640" height="480" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25215 blk-brdr">On Sunday, I met up with my friend Meghan and her friend Pamela, (who is now my friend too), and we went to see a play called Gash. This was part of the Toronto SummerWorks Performance Festival. Unfortunately Sunday was the final day of SummerWorks, so it's too late to see this play as part of the festival, but if you ever see that it is being staged, I'll say that it's a fun and engaging show.

No Sun But Still Fun : A Barbeque in the Rain

Our friends Chops and Leslie were coming over for dinner on Saturday, and we had suggested that they come early so we could spend a nice summer afternoon out on the deck. And just as they were scheduled to arrive a steady rainfall began and didn't stop until just before they went home.

A Sunday Walk and then Out for Dinner

I'm not sure about where you live, but this summer our weather has been rather iffy. So when a sunny Sunday afternoon rolls around, you take advantage of that and get out there!

We decided to take a walk through the park (Trinity Bellwoods)

A Close Up Look at a Family of Cardinals

c="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/male-cardinal-toronto-2014-01.jpg" alt="male-cardinal-toronto-2014-01" width="640" height="427" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-25137 blk-brdr">Before a few weeks ago, I could count on my fingers the number of times I'd seen a Cardinal Bird with my own eyes. But then beginning in mid July, a family of them nested in a tree beside our home, so for a few weeks I was seeing them everyday.This would be no big thing to the American friends reading, as Cardinals are fairly common in the United States, but here in Toronto we are nearly at the northernmost part of their range, so we don't see them very often. Well, to clarify, people living outside of the city might see them more regularly, but I don't think many people downtown see them very often.So I was pretty excited having this family taking an extended stay nearby. I got to know their chirps and calls and I think they got to know me too, because towards the end of their time here, they seemed to have gotten very used to having me lurking around below them with my camera, and they didn't seem alarmed in the least.They left a few days ago, and I miss them.I thought I might be wrong about them being gone, when on Saturday I was reading outside on the deck. I heard a fancy bird call and jumped up all eager-like to see what I hoped was one of them. Stretching on the tip of my toes to see over the fence, I looked towards the sound. There was a lady, about 40, dressed in hospital scrubs, on her bike and obviously on her way home from work. She had stopped in the road and was whistling a most impressive bird song towards a group of sparrows that live at the top of a light post. She had left some food for them and was encouraging them to come and get it. She actually called out 'Come and get your dinner' to them a few times before riding away. She never saw me seeing her. That was pretty interesting to catch sight of, but kind of sad because it wasn't 'my' Cardinals.Here is the father in his deep red plumage. I notice that the crest on the top of their heads is sometimes smoothed down and sometimes pointed right up ...