Beat the Heat

Last week in Ottawa, the temperature hit a sweltering 36.3˚ which was almost a record.  

Forests were spontaneously igniting, asphalt was melting, people were diving indoors to hide in air conditioned comfort and kids were splashing around in pools or running through sprinklers.

To cope with the heat, Auntie was making Popsicles as fast as I could eat them and as fast as the freezer could freeze them.  Uncle Jim was eating ice cream with chocolate sauce and washing it all down with iced espresso.

One furry critter just couldn't take it any more and passed out on our deck after gulping down some water from a dish that I leave out for visiting kitties.

I guess her den wasn't air conditioned, poor thing!

Timber! A Mighty Maple Comes Down

It was a warm and stormy night. 

At 9:30PM the doorbell rang.  "Who could be visiting at this hour?" I thought.  I was in my boudoir, wearing a peignoir, my hair in a chignon, sipping Pineau.  It was pouring rain and really windy.

Uncle Jim answered the door.  It was our next door neighbour, Eric.  He had bad news.  A huge limb from the 100 year old maple tree between our houses just landed on his roof with a big bang.  He wanted us to know about the limb in case it fell from his roof and on to our front porch or on us if we walked down our shared lane.  This was a definite possibility since there was so much wind and I think I saw pigs flying by.

Oops, that can't be right!

The next morning in the light of day we had a good look at the situation.  It was worse than we thought.   The fallen limb was hollow.  It had twisted in the strong wind and was now resting comfortably on Eric and Maya's roof.  That limb was wider than me!

Maya called the City and since the tree belonged to the City they took responsibility for it.  They would send someone on Monday to take a look at the tree and plan a strategy to remove the limb and see if the rest of the tree needed to be cut down.

Before Eric and Maya moved in a few years ago, the house belonged to the Devlins who had lived there since the 1960's.  Mr Devlin was always complaining to the city about the annoying tree and urged them to chop it down...

Sorry but you're evicted!