Making news

Ever tried getting your name in the newspaper twice in 1 week?
It's fun! (click on newspaper article to read/ view a larger version)

Wild life

Our apologies to those of you who have been here over and over again only to find no update... It's not that nothing has been happening! We do hope that the previous post is and continues to be helpful for those of you planning to travel to Iona.

Since last posting our house has turned into a home! A few of the bigger projects we have in mind have not yet been completed but we've put a lot of hours into it and if you compare these photo's with earlier ones you'll get a bit of a "before and after" idea. The garden has also come alive and thanks goes to our first house guest P's mum Marion for creating some order in the chaos out there! With thanks to many generous friends for cuttings and new plants too.
At the first signs of spring P planted some seeds but that turned out to be a little early. In Southern Ontario most gardeners wait 'till the end of May for the last frost to pass! So, snow fell on Easter Sunday and the Magnolia's took a very long time to start blooming but now we've had quite a few hot and sweaty days, barbeque's too and Stephen's discovered a talent for pruning. Trees and bushes are looking extremely neat and tidy, the lawnmower is used regularly and the latest report from the garden is that the rabbit has eaten the parsley.

More wild life news is that P ran over a chipmunk with her bicycle recently which was quite a traumatic experience. However, generally we're both enjoying cycling to most places and looking at birds, squirrels and deer along the way. (View short video clips of Hamilton by Handlebar here). Last week we discovered Mount Albion Falls just 15minutes from where we live. Yup, we like life on the Hamilton Mountain! We did quite a bit of exploring with Marion. A visit to Niagara Falls, a walk around Canterbury Hills, we spent time with S's parents in Guelph, we showed off Hamilton and Dundas and we were able to make a trip up to Kingston to visit dear friends there. All in all a quality visit during which beautiful memories were made. In that time we also had a birthday / housewarming garden party, there were many phonecalls from the Netherlands, the postman brought wonderful packages, "het NRC" and cards and Marion's suitcase seemed like an endless source of gifts. Thank you to all!

On the 2nd Friday of very month we've been "doing the artcrawl". We're getting to know more and more people who are involved in that growing scene and for P things are getting busy as she gets involved with local designers, their shops and their newspapers. Stephen's wild life has been centered a bit more around the life of the Anglican Diocese of Niagara. Much has been going on, the main event being the episcopal election that took place last weekend. The coming weeks will see the start of the wedding season... Stephen will be involved with weddings for 4 consecutive weekends! It will be interesting to experience this as we look forward to our own...
Wishing you well, from our home to yours. P&S