The great garlic transplant

Last fall, before knew we were moving to the big city, Agata and I planted about 80 cloves of garlic in our community garden plot. We were driving through the city last night and decided to check on them - and look what happened!

In what was maybe a rash move, we decided to transplant the whole lot of them to Toronto, and see if they could a) survive the move and b) grow in our rocky Toronto garden. We dug them out of the garden and put them in little plastic pots for the drive. 

Adorable, non? The smell in the car was incredible. It was like being bathed in raw garlic for hours on end. But we all made it, more or less (the bedroom still inexplicably reeks of garlic, even though I've done  my best to launder all the evidence), and Agata planted them in our newly dug-up backyard garden in the dark.

When I went out to water them this morning, everyone looked alive. Now we cross our fingers and hope that they can hack it in the big city..

New house crush

I think I'm beginning to fall for our new house.

It took some time. When we first got here, it had all the elements we were looking for. It had a big back yard (enough for the garden and the dog to share), it had a tonne of space and a full basement for storage and lots of light and a big kitchen.  In that sense, we hit the jackpot.

But the house wasn't much to look at. It seemed to have been a frat house of some kind in the past, and there were holes in the walls and cigarette butts and beer bottles everywhere, and the paint was musty yellow and grimy. And, the house used to be a corner store, a feature that resulted in a slightly awkward layout and a lot of windows, some of which were covered in newspaper when we got there.

After some major re-painting (with the help of lots of friends and lots of beer), and window cleaning, and wall-patching, and TLC, the house has really started to win me over. Being in an old corner store means you get lots of light, and nice curtains gives us a bit of privacy at night.
 
Anyways, here's our store-front living room. I might just be in love.

We even managed to work around the fact that we all had many bookshelves, and they all look different. The wacky book-wall has grown on me as well.