In the garden and beyond: July 2014

This past week has been a hot one, and I have moved down to the basement for sleeping. Even though it's cooler down there, I still feel kinda groggy in this heat. I was chatting with the gal at the coffee shop near my office and she said everyone she had talked to that morning was saying the same thing.

I was reading a book while riding the LRT into work one morning and was so engrossed in what I was reading that I missed my stop! I heard the announcement "Churchill Station" and then the next thing I knew they were calling out "Grandin Station, Government Centre". Somehow I missed the three stops in between, including my stop, Corona. Luckily it was only a few blocks for me to walk back from Grandin Station to my office building.

It's quite possible that it was the fact I was reading Road Ends by Mary Lawson that caused me to miss my stop. If there's ever been a story that captured my imagination, this is certainly it. I read Lawson's first book, Crow Lake, several years ago and loved it. So when I saw she had a new one out, I jumped at the chance to read it. In fact, Road Ends is actually her third book. I had missed her second one,The Other Side of the Bridge, and it's now the next book on my reading list. I highly recommend any one of them and if you're anything like me, you'll become so engrossed in the chatacters' lives, you'll be sorry when the story ends.

In the garden, the hostas are thriving and the lilies and daylilies have started blooming. The nice thing about both lilies and daylilies is that different varieties bloom at different times, so when one finishes blooming, there's soon another one to take it's place.

The strawberries have been soaking up the heat and have been absolutely abundant. I picked some spinach and made spinach and strawberry salad the other day and have also been eating strawberries with angel food cake and ice cream almost every day this week. Angel food cake freezes really well, so I baked one a while back and put it in the freezer, and I just cut a piece as I need it.

On one particularly hot day I had waffles for supper with vanilla sauce from the Mennonite Girls Can Cook website, strawberry rhubarb sauce that I had made last year and put in the freezer, and topped with fresh strawberries. Dee-licious!