tonight, tonight

Went outside to bring in the recycling box before putting Jude to bed this evening. This made my entire day: a seven-year-old boy biking on the sidewalk, stopped at the back lane to wait for his dad to catch up. Belting out "DON'T stop beLIEVING, DA da dada DAAA dadaaa da". Oh what good taste in music that child has.

I must start battling the slugs. I have no interest or energy to do so but the scourge has spread from the lettuce into tomatoes and cucumbers and even my massive, hardy zucchini plant is succumbing. With little time to tend to the dirt, I spread coffee grounds along the lettuce and didn't bother picking them off individually to drown them, which google and the collective internet wisdom tells me I should have been doing. Now the disgusting, slimy, hermaphroditic snotbags are taking over my garden. They are everywhere!!! I am not a squeamish person but these things are turning me into a grossed out girl. I do not want to remove them with my bare hands but gloves will be too unwieldy to pick them off without ruining the plants. Should I take Chris up on his offer to do it himself? There must be hundreds out there! I can't leave that all to him...


Boy, things to learn for next year. I'm actually surprised at how well the garden has done this year considering we have no prior knowledge of gardening. I was so excited when leaves and shoots started sprouting up from the seeds I planted. I would go outside just to marvel that we actually grew something! And we've had green beans, zucchinis, peppers and more to show for our efforts. And we learn more for the next year. It's been better than I hoped for. Just goes to show sometimes you need to dive in and try something without knowing what you're doing. The outcome might surprise you.

This was one of my favorite moments of the summer. We went to the park a few weeks ago and I fed Jude pieces of strawberry carefully to stop him from getting juice all over his white shirt. Got home, left him to run around in the yard as I put the stroller and bags inside. I come out to see he's found the strawberry bag, opened it and has the entire gigantic strawberry in his mouth. Sneaky, sneaky.... juice running down sticky fingers and happy hearts. 

My younger cousin arrived today from Montreal to spend a couple weeks with our family. Jude is in love already. At the grocery store he had eyes only for her as she zoomed him up and down the aisles and spoke a mixture of french and english. And then we came home and she cleaned up all his toys for me while I fed him dinner. It's official, she's a keeper and I might have to kidnap her.