First Day of Summer/ Happy Father's Day

Aaaah!!! Finally Summer (my most favourite season) has officially arrived and I was not disappointed. Time to soak in all the glorious sun rays and go strawberry picking from our strawberry patch. We've had a strawberry patch growing in our front yard for several years now. I remembered the first year we had strawberries, they were quite small and there weren't all that many for picking, but they were really sweet and tasty.

Over the years, the strawberry patch has grown in size and the berries have gotten bigger too. This year, I weeded out alot of the other plants that were fighting for space in our front garden and pruned back a lot of the cedar bush to make more room for the strawberries. It worked and it looks like we will have our best harvest yet. Unfortunately, more berries meant more pesky critters coming by to visit.

Dick thinks it may be birds eating up our berries and suggested that we stick a brightly coloured object that will make rapid movements in the wind, such as a pinwheel, to scare them off. We couldn't find a pinwheel but we did find a Spinning Hot Air Balloon that might do the trick. I think we were somewhat successful as I did mange to gather at least 3 pints of strawberries so far. Of course, I had to pick some that weren't fully ripe yet because I didn't want to take the chance of losing them to those pesky critters. The result was that they didn't taste as sweet to me but the rest of my family still enjoyed them.

In fact we had enough to serve for a Father's Day Breakfast this morning. We made a whole pile of pancakes, served with honey, freshly picked strawberries and whipped cream. Mmmmm... it was very yummy. We completed the meal with some hamburgers patties and peameal bacon. Needless to say, it was very filling.

For some reason, Dick owns a Pink version of the Nintendo DS and some years ago, Derek had pasted some eyes, cheeks and a mouth on it to make it look like Kirby. So, for Father's Day, I made Dick a Pop-up card to resemble his pink Nintendo DS. The boys chipped in and we got him a new Nintendo DS game (Ninja Gaiden-Dragon Sword). Since Dick seems to have taken an interest in Chinese music of late, I had also asked my friend Anastasia to download some of her favourite Chinese Pop tunes for Dick to transfer onto his IPOD to enjoy.

Happy Father's Day and Happy Summertime!!!!!!!



What's this? Some pesky critter has gotten to some of the berries before we could get our hands on them.


More chewed up strawberries. Could this be the work of some hungry birds? I think so because they left other evidence such as white streaks on some of the leaves.

Dick having fun with the Spinning Hot Air Balloon. My son, Derek had to assemble it because I'm not very good when it comes to following directions for this sort of thing.

Dick had hung it up on the Lilac Bush about a week ago. Let's see if it works.

I still found some berries with bite marks in them, but the area right below the Hot Air Balloon seems to have the most whole berries suitable for picking. In fact, this is our third harvest so far this season.

These were the first 2 berries of the season from a week ago. They are small but still tasted good. They were about 1/3 the size of the heart shaped strawberry Kelly had given to me from a few months ago.

Here's the giant sized Heart Shaped Strawberry I got from my friend Kelly.

Looks beautiful.. Doesn't it?

Here's an alien-looking strawberry looking red and juicy and almost ready to pick.

In honour of Father's Day, I made Dick a Pink Nintendo DS Pop up Card. It resembles the one he actually owns. Don't ask me why he owns a Pink One. Must have been on sale.

It's got pop-up control buttons inside the card. Happy Father's Day.