Last of the Rhubarb

    I picked a few rather heat-depleted stalks of rhubarb yesterday and made some rhubarb chutney. It boiled and bubbled away for an hour or so, steaming up the kitchen and producing a rather pungent aroma from the cider vinegar, but finally it was ready and bottled. Almost two jars from what should have rightfully been consigned to the compost pile! I am rather chuffed as I do love chutney on a lot of things.

     Having said that, I still have some green tomato chutney from last fall so that should be consumed first since there are sure to be an abundance of green tomatoes to pick before the first frost.

   The rain has passed us by again except for 10 minutes of a light sprinkle, not enough to be of any help in the garden. Nothing in the forecast for the next few days either. It has finally been officially designated a "drought" in our area! 

Giant Sunflowers

     I didn't plant these intentionally, they just appeared by my composter in the Spring. The fence is six feet tall so you can work out how tall they have grown. Still three more to open but I thought I had better capture these three in case they were attacked by an animal (which has happened in the past).

The Latest Crop

 This week's pickings of tomatoes - every meal must contain tomatoes or I will be leaving them to rot on the vine. The cherry tomatoes mostly get eaten at lunch and a plum tomato got slipped into tonight's stew. All my  friends have a similar glut and next it will be the zucchinis!

    Still no rain although there were a few spots this afternoon as I was walking home from the Seniors Centre and thunder rumbling around somewhere close by. The grass is mostly brown now and probably won't recover before Fall. One neighbour has a perfectly green lawn and it looks so strange surrounded by swaths of brown! I guess they have an irrigation system. The one thing that is doing well are the (unintentional) sunflowers growing around my composter, they are well over 6 feet tall! I will try for a photo once the flowers have all opened.

Working at the Tennis Tournament

    Recuperating today after a very busy week. We had some really hot days which were extremely exhausting. Most of my shifts were early afternoon to evening so I was really dragging by the time I walked back to the distant parking lot at the end of the day! But I was glad to have the mornings to gather myself and prepare for the day ahead. We had a great party last night which made for a lovely send off and will encourage us to return to volunteer again next year. There were 1200 volunteers at this year's tournament.

This is me at the main gate in my uniform.

The men were playing in Montreal and we could watch it on the big screen TV.

I got assigned the VIP entrance a couple of times - it was much quieter.

My preferred spot!

We didn't get much chance to watch the matches but you can see how full the stadium was for the Final.

It's hard to catch the players in action but this is the Brazilian player serving in the final set.

Most of the big names were here for both the Men's and Women's Singles. Simona Halep won here in Toronto and Pablo Carreno Busta won in Montreal. There were many, many Romanians (and others) cheering on Simona with flags, signs and chants (SI-MO-NA) and the atmosphere was quite electric! I got to watch the last half of the singles match and a doubles match that followed. Two Americans won that. Well, that's it for another year. The men will be playing here in 2023.