We went to the Okanagan for Easter. Gir loved it as usual – he has energetic playmates and all walks are off-leash. Unfortunately, all the tearing around has consequences.

A few weeks ago we hired Ron, a really fantastic landscaper to get our bantam backyard ready for spring. Our bedroom is in the basement and opens outside with sliding glass doors.

It was obvious that the previous owners had spent very little time in the yard. They had laid down some new turf for the sale/open house viewings, but left it to brown in the month since the sale completed. (Which was okay since we didn’t want to cut grass, but speaks volumes about the sort of stuff that goes on in the real estate market here.)

So in March Matt drew up a detailed plan for Ron, which Ron tweaked with his knowledge of native plants. The work was done just after Easter, in time for the heat wave. Here are the results!

Matt and I were both band geeks in school, so we’re lucky to be surrounded by musicians. Clare Morgan is a friend of mine since high school. She rocks the harp. She’s very experienced with wedding stuff too, so I barely had to ask for “the wedding package” and it was all set for us.

She brought the bigger of her two harps, Niamh. And she wrote us a beautiful song. (It made more than one of us cry.)

So much <3

Lois previously wrote about Russell’s birth story but we haven’t updated you on Russell since then. Here’s that post you’ve been waiting for, from Russell’s first five months!

Last weekend was the first sunny one in recent memory, so we hopped in the car and bought a bunch of things to populate our balcony with green things.

Matt built a table for the potted stuff and raised the cedar planter box on a stand so that they can get more sun. We used to have glass and metal railigs on the old balcony so we got away with putting things on the ground, but not so here.

We’re really lucky that our balcony is really big for a townhome, and it’s south facing and roof-less so we’ll be getting tons of light.

So far we’ve planted two boxes full of lettuce, some green onions and the old oregano that survived the move. There’s also a planter hanging over the southern railing which is seeded with chamomile.

We’re starting some more seedlings indoor first and then planting them in a week.

Hopefully it will coincide with some rain right away, too.