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August 24, 2011. A huge lightning storm with threats of tornadoes is moving across southern Ontario right now. The rain didn't seem nearly as hard as I expected so far, but the lightning show here in Toronto was fantastic. Here's one of the photos I took from my front porch (Symington Ave., Junction Triangle, Toronto, facing north-east).

April 17, 2011. It's probably been eight to ten years since I last made kugelis, one of my favourite Lithuanian dishes. My previous attempts were not too successful, so that's probably why I haven't made it for so long. But today's kugelis was awesome, I must admit. And how can you really go wrong with potatoes, onions, bacon, and sour cream? Such an amazing comfort food, especially on a snowy/rainy "Spring" day. I also picked up some Švyturys Ekstra, the only Lithuanian beer available in Ontario, to wash it down.

Yes, I even baked a vegetarian version without bacon for Jen, and instead of the bacon and onion topping, I made a mushroom and onion topping for hers.

The whole house smells like bacon, potatoes, and onions now. Awesome. Already looking forward to breakfast and lunch. ;-)

Halloween, October 31 2010. Jen and I always carve our own jack-o-lanterns for Halloween, but I don't think ours turned out as artistically awesome as Amanda's tree-pumpkin.

Amanda, our upstairs neighbour Mark's girlfriend, is a tree-nerd who works for LEAF, so this bit of artwork is totally appropriate. The spiral pumpkin is Mark's creation. They also set up a "candy cannon" to shoot chocolate bars down a pipe from our balcony into the kids' candy bags. So much fun. Thanks guys!

A few more photos from Halloween at home are posted here.

Another photo of one of the little parasites we're finding on our peach tree. Right about now, it would be very useful to have a good macro lens for my camera.

You can see the parasites better in yesterday's photo.

Our peach tree has been having a bit of a rough time this year. It has been affected by a fungus called "peach leaf curl", so it has lost many leaves and we also had to remove all of the fruit that was starting to grow. This will allow the tree to focus its efforts on healthy leaves, rather than producing fruit.

More recently, I noticed these strange circular black things all over the tree. Sort of like little black half-balls, a couple of millimetres big, clustered in various places around the tree. When I pick them off, they're sort of squishy and juicy. Still not sure what they are. Any ideas?

UPDATE: This is a form of fruit tree scale. Typically controlled by washing, horticultural oil spray, etc.

Our backyard peach tree looks great at this time of year with all of its blossoms out. We're really looking forward to having our own fresh peaches again.

Spring has come early, and our rhubarb is already growing like crazy. I bet we'll be harvesting some by the end of April.

More random stuff in the kitchen. Yeah, that's definitely not Guinness. It's Mountain Dew.

Corks and hot chocolate. I guess this is what happens when I run out of interesting recent photos: I start taking pics of random things around the house.

On the shelf in our kitchen: A little trike planter (thanks Grandma!) and a bunch of squash (thanks Good Food Box!).