Patio for Pay
TV celebrity, food aficionado, trend-setter and personal friend of mine Pay Chen asked me to help out with the balcony on her new condo. Like most of these builds, this space was long and narrow, with only four feet of depth, making it tricky to put anything into the space. Pay wanted to extend her […]
The big pot o’money
I am going to expand my view, and you know what this means. I will need to go on hiatus again, and perhaps on vacation as well. You’re tired of me banging on Council, just because they are following a dream which is not my dream for the County. My job, as a journalisttrained writer, […]
The Trumpster Fire
“And what to my wondering eyes should appear” but the demise of democracy in the U.S.of A., my dear. Just when a person thinks things could not possibly get any worse south of our border someone ups and pours salt onto the gaping wound that is ‘Merica”. So, LOML and I just had a fun, […]
Don’t Cry Over Spilled Coffee
I don’t even know where to start this morning. I have a veritable cornucopia of choices. Rats taking over Toronto; the alleged rape of Andrea Robin Skinner; the closure of the Science Centre and the attempted assassination of former president, Donald Trump, CBS Sunday Morning being cancelled because of DJTurnip’s attempted assassination, channel-afterchannel inundated with […]
The little things
There’s a lot of big things happening in the County. Council has big plans, and we don’t particularly like them, for reasons letter writers and local residents have made clear. Let’s start with this: The train is moving too fast. Also the train is not headed to the destination we want to go. This is […]
The cost of landscaping
The cost of landscaping always seems to shock homeowners. Somehow people relate the cost of landscaping to the cost of gardening and are surprised to find out that decks and wood cost more than plants…not to mention the labour involved to install them. In speaking to several industry professionals, the average backyard renovation starts at […]
Gaining perspective
I see a lot of activity in the County. Like it, don’t like it. Some of us moved out to the Maritimes, where they found the us that used to be us. And they bought homes that were priced the way County homes used to be priced. And they found friends and neighbours just like […]
Happy Scamday
July is such a birthday month for our families! I’d bet if LOML and I enjoyed a slice of birthday cake, or three, with each of our July celebrants we’d look like the Weebles™ who wobbled. I’m not sure of the exact number of birthdays we celebrate, but I believe it’s probably near fifteen. That’s […]
A nation of nations
Canada Day! It’s been and it’s done. The County put on a great show of Canada Love. LOML and I celebrated quietly with visits from some of the kids and some of their kids. Personally, the older I get the more difficult it is for me to celebrate Canada Day. When I was a kid, […]
Casting shade
According to recent online studies (Wikipedia), over 70 per cent of all outdoor useable space surfaces being installed in our backyards are either stamped concrete, manmade pavers or natural flagstone. This is creating a phenomenon called ‘urban heat islands’ in cities and towns. This study goes on to show that we are able to increase […]