a peek inside the fishbowl

We have a winner and this giveaway is closed. Thanks for your entries everyone. I hope to see you there!

OAH is celebrating their tenth anniversary and they’re marking this milestone with a really cool event. They’re calling it Inspirat10n Celebrati10n, and it will be a great opportunity to drink, eat, and mingle… but it’s not just about the nosh. The “inspiration” part of this evening is sure to awaken your inner foodie/decorator/designer too. The Ottawa At Home team along with a bevy of dynamic speakers will engage with guests in different ways throughout the event. And I’ll be there too!

The event takes place on Tuesday June 17  from 6:00 p.m. – 8:30 p.m. Tickets are $85 and include a $10 donation to the Royal Ottawa Foundation for Mental Health. By the way TODAY (Monday) is your last day to buy tickets at the early bird price of $75.

I’m very happy to be giving away a pair of tickets to one lucky individual.

• Leave a comment below telling me who you’d bring to this event if you won. For a second entry, leave a second comment on this post over at the Fishbowl FB page and let me know in a separate comment below. That’s it! (I think this would make a fun night out with a BFF, don’t you?)
• This giveaway is void where prohibited by law.
• If you can’t post your comment for whatever reason you can email it to me for posting at andrea at quietfish dot com. Please note, I cannot be responsible if your entry is misdirected or gets stuck in my Spam folder.

I will draw one name using Random.org at noon EST on June 6 2014. I’ll contact the winner via email at that time, who will have make arrangements to pick the tickets up at my place in Westboro.

That’s it! Over to you. Good luck!

… just because it’s been kinda pretty around here lately and I wanted to remember a few things.

ps. you can follow me on Instagram here. And Piper’s account right here. :)

I’ve written about my love/hate of backyard gardening before. For the most part, I don’t love gardening. I love it in May and June, when the garden centres open. I love to see progress, and things growing. I love harvesting things from the garden, whether it’s compost or the fruits of our labour. And I love sitting down and enjoying a well-groomed garden. But I don’t love the heavy lifting and the weed pulling and the mosquito bites, and I definitely don’t love gardening in August when my half-dead plants are pleading for their lives, making me feel guilty for buying them in the first place.

This is what the backyard looked like in April 2013.

This is the current view, taken roughly from the same general perspective. (You can click either photo to enlarge.)

It’s still an untamed jungle back there, but with a lot less mud than the Spring of 2013.

Yesterday I picked out a bunch of low-maintenance perennials, hoping they’ll survive and save us money in the long run. But as I was planting them it was abundantly clear that we’ll need to buy some good dirt and amend the soil in the flower beds, which consists of too much clay and construction dross. (Sidebar: Mark found a rusty hammer out there yesterday. I’m not even kidding.)

We’ve done quite a bit – I’m out there almost every day doing a little something – but there’s still a lot left to do, and there are two large expenditures looming on the horizon. (1) Our trees need to be trimmed, especially the maple on the left side of the photo. It’s lovely, and it shelters our back deck and provides fantastic shade, but it’s also killing the hedge and it needs to be tamed back. (2) That geedee flagstone patio needs to be completed before it drives me crazy or I twist my ankle, whichever comes first. I originally thought we could do it ourselves, but Mark insists that a retaining wall needs to be built into it to prevent the rocks from eventually sliding into the yard. I know it really just involves picking up the phone, but it still feels overwhelming.

Where are YOU on the gardening spectrum? Do you love it, or leave it?