can say now, having just thinned my turnips, that there is no discernible difference between "turnip greens" and "rapeseed" and will stop correcting people when they say they are eating turnip greens when in fact they are eating rapeseed -- my apologies for being tiresome.

I cut my fingernail badly in a kitchen mishap, and it's fascinating to see the nail grow back -- I have no idea what's happening down there in the nail bed, some autonomous force is in charge

current feeling

it's hard to believe those pallets of garden soil and stacks of windshield wiper fluid that are piled up outside the exit to the grocery store aren't freebies you throw in your cart on your way to the car

On my way to donate blood I noticed they are knocking down the Banting Institute, built in 1930. I once took a cutting from a vine that grew at a window, a window I imagined Frederick Banting once peered through.

"If you envy my life, work harder!"

we didn't host King Charles, but we did have two teenaged British rugby billets, and they left us with this loot, God save the sultana:

when someone dies earlier than expected it's a shock, but there comes a time when you have to admit that it'd be surprising if they were still alive at this age -- you release them from the tragedy of early death, but you still miss the years you could have had with them if they had remained alive

Last chance to see work by Andrew Scott, Michael Winter, Andrew Rucklidge, and Stirling Scott (this amazing deer) -- BIG PAWS NEVER SEEN group show at the West End Phoenix space, 3 Bartlett Ave, Toronto. Drop by today, Saturday, 3 May, 2-4 pm! We'll all be there.

counted nine guys around me with moustaches, started feeling old

I'm part of a group show of visual art this Thursday, May 1st (that's tomorrow) at the West End Phoenix HQ, 3 Bartlett Avenue, Toronto. There'll be lots of recent watercolours and collages and some paintings too, come say hello! 6-9 pm.

I do enjoy spending an afternoon in a Margaux Williamson interior #MoCA

kid lost his bike lock so now he's using mine, and my bike is so decrepit I can't rationalize buying a new lock (so expensive), so I've taken to tying the bike up with a length of rope -- so far it's been good practise for my knots.

remembering that time I tried on a second-hand coat in the Value Village and found, in a side pocket, an almost-full mickey of whisky, and realizing this was intentionally stashed there, someone was coming back for it.

kid begged me to buy him a loaf of white sliced bread, so I did -- first loaf like that I've had in many a year, but I just toasted up two slices and spread mayonnaise and cut up a tomato and sprinkled pepper & salt and wow that is a nice sandwich.

Every time I read a book of the collected letters between two writers, the book always ends the same way -- one of the writers dies and the letters stop.

I gave blood today and the nurse who pricked my finger said, "You're well-hydrated," and no one has ever said that to me before.

sometimes, to understand the mysterious inner life of my son, I go into his bedroom while he's at school and note what new things he's placed on a shelf or put on his desk.

as someone who spent every Victoria Day weekend of his east-coast 20s waking up hungover in a tent and unzipping the fly to a foot of overnight snow, I'm not surprised by a small flick in early April #Toronto

confronted with good-cop bad-cop but they are in the same person.

when you live in the city and hear the honk of migrating geese, it's like an advertisement for the rural: "hey, don't forget lakes and woods and moose and beaver dams, they're all out there..."

am germinating seedlings on my window sill and noticed the cords on the window blind have been touching the potting soil all winter and just this morning the pale leaves of a dicotyledon opened up and out sprouted a tiny set of louvres

a person, possible Susie, saw me reading this sign and beckoned me down a narrow laneway between 2 houses but I didn't know what chayotes were and now I feel like I may have missed out on some culinary wonder

If I lose something, I’ve stopped trying to find it. When I have searched and found a lost thing, I usually lose it again very quickly. Some things, I've come to realize, just want to be lost.

this is a David Milne painting of Toronto during a visit in 1947 called "Scaffolding". Could have been painted yesterday.

there's a lot going on on Geary

Was riding my bike down Queen Street when I saw this important booklet in the slush -- was outside a hotel, so I went in and sure enough the front desk said she's a guest. Maybe this American was trying to jettison her citizenship, to fall into the wide-open arms of Canada?

I took shovel to the snow covering herb garden and discovered thyme and sage still alive and green.

was putting something in the oven last night and didn't know if I should choose "bake" or "roast" on the dial -- it was sort of an in-between meal, and then I wondered what on earth goes on in there, what happens during the bake cycle that differs from the roast?

my son is about to head to Wales to play rugby over March break and, on the long list of items to bring, his coaches have recommended a "small umbrella". I've told him I want a photo of his team all using their small umbrellas in the Welsh rain.

I need a dummy ATM keypad installed on my desk so when I phone my bank and am asked what my PIN is, I can type it out and tell them

get a laugh out of seeing my teenager's fancy shaving razor gleaming on its immaculate dais while I re-use a cheap disposable found thrown below the sink amongst the toilet rolls

so many live rural webcams are pointed at a stretch of highway, when I'd really like to see a community, a brook running through town, the path of a lynx

as I lay on my pillow last night I felt this sifting in the back of my head of what sounded like tiny ceramic pellets pouring into the base of my spine; I thought ok this is an aneurism and prepared for death, but the sifting ended and now I'm guessing it's a similar condition to bending my knees

still not used to Paul McCartney not shaving

noticed a lot of Toronto resistance caved over the "$1.99 strawberries, product of USA" but not I -- I stand resolved and strawberryless!

while walking in winter I note the address of any deciduous tree I like -- curious bark or branch formation -- when I'm home I use google maps street view, take a screen grab of the tree in bloom (it's always summer on street view), import photo into a plant ID site, and find out what the tree is.

hell is paved in typos; room for improvent, William Blake:

am remembering, as a kid, my mother on her knees with 2 kg bags of sugar, stacking them under my bunkbed, because there was an embargo -- just remember the fear in my mother's face of a trade war affecting the grocery budget.

if six boiled and peeled eggs was something I'd ever think about buying in a grocery store, I'd want to buy them when they're not on sale

someone pointed out a shagbark hickory here in Ontario and I loved it so I read about its zone and soil preference and took a juvenile on the plane with me to Nfld and planted it; am thinking of it today buried under five feet of snow, with no shagbark friends nearby, just out by a cold lonely brook

I washed my phone this morning because the port where it charges was full of lint -- I left the phone on my desk to dry and this furry white paw reached out of the port and gingerly felt around; slowly this small animal climbed out and shook its wet back then slipped into the usb slot on my laptop.

I grew up a pretty bad snow-shoveler in one of the snow-shoveling capitals of the world, but I'm one of the best snow shovelers on this street in Toronto

there are a few serious swimmers who try to turn the community pool's leisure swim hour into a lane swim, and I love the old Portuguese man who floats on his vast back and intentionally drifts the width of the pool, interrupting their furious industry

Sometimes when I get a novel grocery item -- an artisanal salami or box of interesting crackers -- I'll stick the item deep in the fridge under a bag of apples, or behind a stack of sardines in the cupboard, and invariably the next day the item will be opened and sampled -- the radar of a teenager!

amazed at how many old people wear tremendous coats and galoshes but no gloves or hat; also, located my car on the street this morning, after the Toronto snowfall, by its license plate

Problem with "Gulf of America" is it's an even # of syllables when most bodies of water are best said aloud as 3, 5, or 7: "Gulf of Mexico" rolls better. Atlantic Ocean, Pacific Ocean, Indian Ocean, The Mediterranean, St Lawrence Seaway, The Great Lakes, all are odd. A compromise: Gulf of Canada.

Last fall I collected ginkgo fruit from a neighbour's tree. I rinsed off the pulp and put the nuts in vermiculite in the fridge. A month ago I moved them to a pot of soil in the window. I got curious and looked: a root is prying open the shell. A long process, but only a total of 10 minutes work.

it's good to memorize the shrubs nearby, so you can cut them in winter and have them bloom early like this forsythia from a neighbour's hedge which flowers in spring around a yellow fire hydrant, providing camouflage for the hydrant and, for a few brief weeks in May, a multitude of parking tickets.

when we finished the big jar of olives I rinsed out the container and turned it into a cloche, and now I have cuttings from lilac and a cherry blossom pushing out new life, which is nice to see in the dead of winter