A living fence

Ryan arrived on Monday to put in a "living fence" for us. Melissa, his fiancee, designed it, but Ryan got to do the grunt work. :) Here's the before picture of the bed that Ryan dug out. Apparently our ground was too hard for the rototiller, so he had to do most of this by hand.

This is the bed after the plants were all in, but before mulching and edging. He had Faith and our neighbour helping out by getting rid of the grass he'd pulled our earlier. Faith decided that she should be paid 25 cents for her work...cheap if you ask me.

And, here is the finished product. It will take about three years to fill out completely, but I'm really happy with how it looks now. The bed has forsythia, weigilia, zebra grass, snowball, and some other stuff I can't remember now.


Thanks to Ryan and Melissa for all the hard work...and to Ryan for dealing with our grumpy neighbour (hint, hint...the reason for the living fence).

Not my kid!

One of my favourite treats are macaroons and their various incarnations in cookie form, such as haystacks. I love the combination of chocolate and coconut. Our local cafe sells a particularly luscious version of this treat called Tits of the Andes (seriously). It's basically a giant, dark chocolate haystack full of coconut goodness and topped off with a white chocolate "snow cap", which has a chocolate dab in the middle. (I'd show a picture, but I already ate it.)

Anyway, besides the great name, they also have a great taste. So, as a treat I picked one up today. After supper, I pulled it out and broke off a little bit to give to Blake. The kid loves anything chocolate.

I put the chocolate in this mouth, and instead of asking for more, he promptly spit it out and said, "Bleah." Bleah! I couldn't believe it! He obviously takes after the non-coconut lovers in the family (including his Dad). I swear this is a genetic defect as coconut is such a delightful treat.

On the plus side, this meant I got to eat the whole cookie myself. Yum.

Budding artists

Faith is passing along her artistic talent to her brother.