Goings On About the Garden : Part 2 – Cocktails and Barbecuing

In Part 1 (here) of our garden story, I wrote about the plants that bloomed this spring, tulips in particular. In this post I'll show you a bit of the fun we've had out there, so far this spring.

Before you get the impression that we booze it up a lot around here, since so many of these pictures include drinks, note that these pictures were taken over the span of two weeks. Yes, we drink and especially enjoy a cocktail outdoors when the weather is nice, but ... well ... we're not always drinking!

These first pictures are of Saturday a couple of weeks ago. It was a long weekend and we were treated to beautiful warm weather for it.

Andrea came over, wearing a pretty dress, to celebrate our first time sitting outside on the deck. These pictures are tightly shot because our surroundings were quite a mess, since we had just taken the covers off the furniture and set up a make-shift seating area that morning. I mixed up a pitcher of Rum Ice Tea Punch (a recipe for that coming up in an upcoming post).

Favourite F-Words : Friends, Food and Funniness

Our friend Meghan organized a great get-together on Thursday evening -- first we went out for drinks and dinner and then to a Second City comedy show.

She's a student at the Second City Training Centre, currently taking a class in Stand-up performance. I can't wait to see her do a show. You might remember this post about a story-telling gig she had last year. So, being a student at Second City, she could get a great deal on tickets to their new show, How to Kill a Comedian.

Another friend of ours, Julie, is also into comedic performance (see posts about her shows here and here), so Meghan asked me to invite her along. They had met at this get together I had for some female friends two summers ago, and have been wanting to hook up again since.

By coincidence, I met both Meghan and Julie at work. They'd both worked at the same place as I did, but during different periods, so hadn't crossed paths there.

Meghan's friend Pamela, (who has now become my friend too - we first met at Meghan's show mentioned above) also came, as did Nick.

It was lovely outside so Nick and I walked over.

We met for dinner at 5:45 at a Mexican restaurant that's just down the street from the theatre, called Milagro Cantina

Goings On About the Garden : Springtime 2015

ass="aligncenter size-full wp-image-28548 blk-brdr" src="http://www.loulou.to/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/yellow-tulip-bud.jpg" alt="yellow-tulip-bud" width="640" height="480">When I first started this blog I thought it was going to mainly be a journal about my plants, both inside the house and out. My plan was to write about what I planted and how it turned out, and generally how nature can still be accessed even when living in the heart of a major city.Then I decided that only writing about nature and urban wildlife was too narrow a scope (although I regularly read and really enjoy some blogs that stick primarily to gardening, particularly here one written by a man who lives in Chicago). So I added other topics, such as DIYs of things I make, stories about going out, entertaining, thrifting, beauty department hauls and cooking.But I still love the topic of gardening and plants, and today's post is about how things went this spring. If you're not into plants, feel free to look at the pictures and leave!As for division of labour in our garden, Nick enjoys taking care of the composting, from layering it properly, turning it regularly, and reaping the gold that is perfectly composted organic waste. The plants love it and really respond to it. He also takes care of raking in the fall and cutting any grass that needs it, although we barely have any.He also helps me get any new plants from the shops to home (see us getting our herb seedlings in Kensington Market last spring here, tulip bulbs in the fall here, and a visit to a new-to-us nursery here, for example). Then planting them and caring for them is my thing.All this talk about loving plants might lead you to believing that our garden is a show-stopper. It is not. After watching too many things die, I decided several years ago to only include plants that like our particular conditions as they are, and that don't require any extra watering. That's with the exception of some annual flowers that I put into pots to decorate our deck area and the herb garden (see last year's post about the potted plants here) which I do water. Everything else just basically comes up if it can tolerate the dry conditions, so for most of the growing season, there aren't really that many flowers in the yard. It's mainly trees and bushes (including the three perfect flowering trees - a forsythia, a lilac, and a hibiscus - planted a long time ago by some unknown gardener who used to live here, who I give a word of thanks to every year, because they are so beautiful. I wrote about them here).

Out to a Fancy Gala : The Royal Occasion

As mentioned in my last post (here), we were at the music venue, Koerner Hall, twice within a week, last week.

This time we were there for an event that we look forward to every year, called The Royal Occasion, hosted by The Royal Conservatory of Music. It is an event during which three people who've made a significant contribution arts and culture in Canada, are presented with an Honorary Fellowship. Our friend Isabel works at the conservatory and we are thankful to be invited each year.

There was a Gala Dinner for conservatory sponsors beforehand, which wasn't quite finished when we arrived so we had time to check out some of the vintage instruments and a sculpture in their collection. (If you're interested, I showed some of the wind instruments and sculptures in this previous post from the 2013 party, which happened to be where we first met our now good friend Andrea. I like it because there's a picture of me sitting in my seat in the hall and Andrea is sitting directly in front of me, but we were strangers at the time, only to meet for the first time about an hour after the shot was taken. Here is the write-up from last year, when I got a selfie with Ron Sexsmith).

Moving Music : Jayme Stone’s Lomax Project

A week ago Thursday, when we got home from the art gallery after seeing the Basquiat show (posted about here), we had an email waiting from our pal Isabel. "Hey Guys, Would you be interested in two tickets to this show tomorrow night?", it read. The offer was for a concert called Jayme Stone's Lomax Project, to be held at Koerner Hall.

Not knowing anything about Jayme Stone we scrolled down to get a gist of what the show was about. There was a picture of a man (maybe 35 years old) standing with his hands in his pockets and a banjo strapped over his neck. The written description said, "Celebrating the work of folklorist and field recording pioneer, Alan Lomax, this project revives and re-imagines traditional music from Bahamian sea chanties to African-American acappella singing from the Georgia Sea Islands to Old World weavers’ work songs, to ancient Appalachian ballads."

We were promised "fiddle tunes, and work songs collected from both well-known musicians and everyday folk: sea captains, cowhands, fishermen, prisoners and homemakers."

We immediately wrote back, "Yes please, we would like to go".

That evening, while having a glass of wine by candlelight, we listened to some of the the Lomax Project songs posted online. (It should be mentioned that we don't regularly drink wine by candlelight -- it was beautiful out so we were standing and looking out an open window and didn't want the lights on, silhouetting us from behind, so we lit a candle. The fact that it made for a romantic moment was an added bonus.)

The music sounded good - I was especially taken by the female vocalist's voice - but I must say, listening to a few songs through the tiny speaker of my ipad did not prepare me for what I was about to hear the following evening.

Koerner Hall is a special place, described as a "venue designed in the tradition of the classic 'shoebox' venues of Europe, built without compromise and with a mission to provide acoustic perfection for music of all genres". Not only is the sound exceptional within the actual theatre, the whole building is beautiful. Built right alongside the historic building that houses the Royal Conservatory of Music, the modern multi-storied glass structure shares wall with the old building.