Two Good Books

    A little rain this afternoon so I finished my current book and started another. After a period of nothing new arriving in my inbox from the library, three books arrived almost simultaneously, so I picked up one this morning, the others can wait. One good thing about the pandemic is that the library is currently not charging for overdue books.

  This is my third Mary Lawson books and I can tell I will enjoy it as much as the others. The others, which I have probably mentioned before, are "A Town Called Solace" and "The Other Side of the Bridge". All three are set in a small community in Northern Ontario and are packed with emotional, often tragic circumstances and complex family relationships that will stay with you after you finish reading.

  I finished this one today - a compelling tale of mystery and intrigue set in post WWII Eastern Europe, complete with spies, danger and human frailties. A good read.

o I picked up one today. 

More Grandkid Photos

    Gorgeous day today - hot but not humid. The family came over for lunch and stayed for a swim. After his marathon 30 lengths last week, James declared he was going for 100 this week. Keep in mind the pool is only 10 meters long. None of us thought he could do it but he did! He was pretty tired when he finished and really deserved his medal and prize of cake and ice cream. I'm sure he burned off enough calories with his swim, he's pretty skinny anyway.

Here he is with his silver medal (I didn't have a gold one)

This young man is 6'2" so we had fun trying to figure how tall the biggest sunflower is.

Using Up Zucchini

   It rained all morning so no tennis today, but the afternoon was very pleasant, sunny but staying cool. I had a few errands this morning and spent some time in the afternoon pulling weeds. They came up easily because the ground had had a good soaking. I also made a pot of soup and baked a loaf in the bread machine, so a productive day.

     I made a low carb lasagna yesterday using zucchini slices instead of the pasta. Other than that I used my usual recipe, a layer of spinach and cottage cheese (with lashings of garlic) and a layer of meat sauce and mozzarella, topped off with parmesan. One recipe I found suggested grilling the zucchini slices to dry them a bit but the final result was quite wet. However, today it was much better. Next time I will grill them longer. I got five portions so three went in the freezer.

Camera at the Ready

    Got the pool heater fixed yesterday (those darn spiders - seemingly they are attracted to the smell of gas and built a nest in there) so the family came over for a swim. It has been cool overnight most of this week so it took a while to get the temperature up but they were both in and James swam 30 lengths. The pool is only 10 meters long but still that was an impressive 300 meters.

I now have two pumpkins - this is the larger one. Should be ready for Hallowe'en.

Not sure what this is but it was worth snapping.

I asked Natalie to stand by the sunflower to show how tall it is - she's about 5'7".

Almost ready to be picked. I've had quite a few cherry tomatoes already.