Heat Wave in Ontario

It has been in the low 30s (celsius) all week, with high humidity. Today apparently it's supposed to feel like 46 degrees. Riding the bus and subway with a mask on is like walking around with a wet pillow pressed to my face. It's the kind of bone-melting heat that makes you want to spend all day in the swimming pool or draped over a patio chair under a tree with book and strawberry lemonade in hand. It's not the kind of weather that will let you get anything done. It's too hot to clean house, too hot to do any hobbies (because your skin sticks to everything), and too hot to cook or even eat. So I have given myself permission to accomplish nothing for the next few days other than the bare minimum. The garden can go to weeds, the green tomatoes toasting slowly in the sun. The housework can wait. After all, what's a little dirt and dust? Taking the long view, in the end, we're buried in dirt. Or cremated and turned to dust. A little in advance isn't going to hurt anything.

Summer in full swing

Garlic cleaned and stored for the winter. Weeds almost under control. Bushes in the gravel garden have been pruned. Lawn mowed. Green beans, zucchini, cucumbers, raspberries, and basil all being harvested daily. Lavender harvested and baked into cookies for the freezer. Pool is at 85 degrees. And I have this week off work. Ahhhhh...

Garlic Harvest!

I planted five varieties: Zajac, Red Russian, Georgian Fire, German Music, and my usual nameless Ontario variety. So far the last two seem to be the best producers. Looking forward to tasting them all!

Look what I found on a drive this weekend

Being a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, I found this sign delightful.  I looked up the history, and apparently there was a settlement of LDS converts who joined the church in the 1830s in that area. In 1846, they hacked the Nauvoo Road through the forest to link up with the main road running to Sarnia, Ontario, where they could cross the border into the U.S. They all eventually made their way to join the body of the church in Nauvoo, Illinois, and there weren't many church members in Ontario after that until the 1950s or 60s. Fascinating! And neat that they've kept the road names.

Found in Omagh Cemetery, Halton, Ontario

Andrew Suiter, from Ireland, and his wife Hannah Green Suiter, from the U.S., had seven children, three girls and four boys, and then the oldest daughter died in 1845, age 15. They had two more daughters, bringing the number of living children to eight. And then in one month, in 1851, seven of those children died. They ranged in age from 19 to 3 months. Only one son was left alive, Robert, age 9. The Suiters had two more children, a boy born in 1853, and a girl born three years later who lived only one day. So after giving birth 11 times, Hannah Suiter was left with only two sons.

Andrew Suiter died in 1863, age 56, and Hannah died in 1879, age 68. And then Robert, the only son who survived the epidemic or whatever it was that killed seven of his siblings, died two years later at age 39. I looked up his death record; he died of suicide.

The one remaining son, Andrew Jr., appears on the next census in 1881, age 28, a clerk, living in what looks like a boarding house. The last of eleven children, carrying on alone. I haven't found a marriage or death record for him. He doesn't appear on the family headstone, and I don't know if it's because he moved away or because there was no one left to bury him. It breaks my heart.