For all the talking I do about the farm, I don't think I actually take that many pictures of the property – I mostly take photos of the dog. But of course, the dog is the best looking anything in the area, wherever she is, so it's hard for me to find the motivation to take pictures of other things.
I'm trying to take more photos in different ways to train that eye and develop a style, though, so we'll see how it goes. I mostly realized this when I was scrolling through the last few blog posts, but I've been taking more varied shots recently, so we're getting there. And of course, now I want to buy a new camera body and lens, even though I'm not even close to running up against the limitations of my current gear.
But that's all more of a side thought for now, since spring is starting up at the farm!
Not much to blog about – I was in the 99% totality zone but we had pretty consistent cloud cover, plus I wasn't actually planning on shooting anything, so my photos aren't super amazing. I literally looked outside and thought, “I bet I could take some photos” when the eclipse started.
It was mostly because the cloud cover diffused the sun enough for me to take photos of even though I don't have the correct filters. I thought about grabbing my tripod and then realized I don't even know where my tripod is right now lol. This was a pretty successful “shoot,” considering my lack of planning and nature's lack of cooperation!
Album here – not that many photos and they're all about the same, but maybe someone is interested! It was actually really cool to see how dark it got. It was kind of dusk-like, or maybe summer thunderstorm-y.
Shortly after I took the header image, the clouds completely covered the sun (right when the moon was supposed to 99% cover the sun, too!), so I don't have any shots of afterwards. And as I type this, it seems like all the clouds are moving out...
So this past week has been exciting in the sense that I got sick right after Keelan recovered, then when I was kind of recovered, he got food poisoning from some take out, and now we're both in the recovering phase.
To be honest, highly do not recommend.
But I felt well enough to cook two soups this week, as we have some ridiculously warm (for March) days. The header is a winter melon soup, which I made with a winter melon that I grew at the farm! It had pork meat balls, carrots, and vermicelli in it, along with ginger and garlic.
Once again, we went up to the farm for Family Day weekend! We were able to drive up to the house, but there was snow on the ground. It was also cold enough that we did not turn on the water. While we were there, we got more snow! Our neighbour actually came over and pre-emptively plowed a path for us to get back out, which was really nice of him.
Actually it's really interesting looking at my post from last year and all the photos – especially the river. While the river's not frozen solid, or even close to it, for many years, we definitely had more ice this year than last!
This post is overdue by many many months, but a lot of things happened that made me delay writing about... mainly in that I wanted to blog about the convention that my friends and I went to, but then none of us really enjoyed the con so it kind of deflated any enthusiasm I had.
But one good thing we did was go out for an omakase dinner at one of the oldest Japanese restaurants in Toronto – Ginko Japanese Restaurant! It was all of our first omakase experience and it was really wonderful.
Back at the end of October 2023, I had the opportunity to take a 3 day workshop held by my local cooking studio with noted wagashi master, Eijun Mitsubori.
It was a really amazing experience, and I originally wasn't going to do it! I had talked myself out of it when the class was first announced since the price point was a little high. But at the last minute, the studio owner offered me a discount since I'm a regular student at his other classes, and I scrambled to make it happen. I'm just a total sucker for a discount.
But I will say that it was absolutely worth it – I got a great deal but I would've happily paid full price! I'm only now getting to writing the blog post and editing the photos, but I wish I had the time/brainspace earlier since I'm sure I've forgotten a lot.
Shortly after our failed canoe trip, we went on a trip to Quebec for Keelan's mom's 70th birthday. We stopped in Quebec City on our first night, which is where the majority of my photos came from, then headed to the Saguenay-Lac-Saint-Jean region for the majority of it. And finally, Keelan and I headed into Montreal for one night to see friends.
It was as nice of a trip as I could've expected.
I actually am really proud of the photos that I snapped in Quebec City, though! Gallery here, with some of my favourites under the cut. And also minor commentary about the trip, haha.
Back in August, we had our annual canoe trip. It was a canoe trip in the sense that it was a trip, and there were canoes, but I don't think I would call this a typical canoe trip by any definition!
This would be the second time that Keelan and I were taking John and Kelvin, and the first time for Hussain. We already had one guy drop out. But no matter, they're all strong and have done trips before! We'll just get Kelvin into a solo boat! No problem.
We were headed to the Temagami region, and it was going to be my first time there. In fact, it'd be everyone's first time there, except Keelan's. All I'd heard from him was that the lakes were big and the wind could be even bigger. Meanwhile, after my extremely windy trip on the French River last year, I was thinking, could it be worse than a constant funnel?
As usual, I procrastinated editing photos, but at least they are being put up in the same month in which I took them!
We had an unseasonably warm weekend where it was over 25C! That was unexpected… not unpleasant, but I’m not sure I liked it. We had a lot of garden work planned and doing that in summer-like heat was not fun.
Anyway, under the cut are some photos I’d like to highlight, but the full gallery is also available at this link!
