Originally published November 19, 2010 This may very well be the last rose of summer. It’s also the title of a very beautiful, yet very sad Irish folk song. The Irish may, in fact, be one of the few cultures that have turned death into an art form. Here’s the link for the song, sung […]

Originally published November 18, 2010 I saw this slogan printed in very large letters on the side of a truck the other day.  It sounds like one of the great euphemisms of life. But that company certainly has brought a lot of life to, well, fungi! Now, if you thought knitting companies had difficulty finding

Originally posted November 17, 2010 November 16 was Button Day, so I am told. I am not sure whose idea this was. Most days of real significance have their origins in historical or cultural occurrences. Somehow, to have a day for buttons seems a little frivolous. A quick Google search led to this blog and

Originally posted November 16, 2010 What’s a Pawpaw? Actually, it’s a tree that grows well in the Toronto area, which is rather amazing given it’s unique name and even uniquer (is that a word?) fruit. Pawpaws yield fruit in September that look like small clusters of round green bananas, which apparently taste like a cross

Originally posted November 15, 2010 My daughter called from university today to ask for an Advent calendar.  These are the rather large, but quite thin boxes that hide chocolates under numbers, which count the days before Christmas. It’s also a very clever way to sell chocolates and to count the days before the day when lots

Originally posted November 13, 2010 Lucy Neatby posted to my Facebook wall that she was off to teach a class on 3 scarves – Sea Lettuce, Falling Leaves and Mirror, Mirror and her comment was..”a nice knitting cocktail!…” Lucy is an amazing designer. She may even be considered a knitting acrobat. What she does with

Originally posted November 12, 2010 Borscht, I’ve decided is an acquired taste. I varied the recipe, I posted earlier this month, a fair bit and I did have two helpings (my husband managed one), but you really have to like beets. This is what I did:1. I cut the ingredients back by a third –

Originally posted Novmember 11, 2010 Remembrance Day is the one day of the year that I read “In Flanders Fields.” It is all about being connected, about paying back in some small, more like infinitesimal way, the great debt that we owe to those who did not make it back from the many battles that

Originally posted November 10, 2010 My friend JB told me about a new program at the library.  Apparently it started in Denmark about 10 years ago and has spread. Participating libraries arrange for you to take out an author, for an hour or so, on your library card! Well it’s one way, albeit a very

Originally posted November 4, 2010 There was an article in the business section yesterday, which was actually “clipped” from INC magazine – (they provide the horoscopes for this site). It was about the importance of having something “flashy” in your store window or among your display samples etc…to get people excited about buying, which in our