OUT and ABOUT with Seeker Chick Mai-Liis: Checking out the Unleash Pet Fest, Transition Cornwall+ Free Plant Giveaway and guess who visited my garden uninvited?

So better later than never I say as I post my latest OUT and ABOUTing adventure.

As always, a lot happened this past weekend but sadly I was only able to make it to 2 events as I spent the morning with my sister selling and giving away treasures at my “Toonie Table” at her house which was one of the 45 yard sales taking place in the Riverdale area on Saturday, June 1st. It is always good to purge items that you haven’t used in years and because Sheldon and I now live in our 680 Sq. Ft “Tiny House” we really do need to work hard at purging as space is limited and I can’t believe how much “stuff” we seem to have accumulated over the years! I was especially thinking that as I laid many, many purses and bags on the table for sale but heard from other “Treasure Seekers” that they too seem to collect a lot of things that they really don’t need.

The trick is when you go to buy something, you have to say to yourself, is this a need or a want and go from there!!!

Yard Sales are a lot of work but it was interesting to see how many people I saw during those few hours of 8am to noon who I hadn’t seen in a long while. Of course the fact that my little red “Olafmobile” was parked on the road caused many to stop and check out my “Toonie Table” which I came up with to make life easier for myself when it came to pricing items.

Yard Sales were taking place all over the City and the following day, Sunday, was Trash to Treasure Day when you put items to giveaway at the road and Treasure Seekers could drive around and pick up anything that appealed to them. Hence the saying, “One person’s trash is another person’s treasure”.

I also made a quick stop to take some pics at one of the Transition Cornwall + locations where members were giving away Free plants and also giving people information on planting and gardening. I stopped at the Aquatic Centre location where I got to admire Kat Rendek (above right) and Carole Boileau’s (above left) headgear. These two ladies always seem to play the part no matter where you see them or no matter what they are doing.

This year as we have a lot of wildlife on our property I had decided that I wouldn’t be planting anything other than Marigolds and Alyssum in planters on our deck lest everything gets eaten but “Once a gardener, always a gardener” as the saying goes, and I left with 4 plants that Kat gave me and proceeded to add another planter box with mint, a cherry tomato, pepper plant and majoram plus parsley as well, surrounding these with Marigolds of course as these are one of the plants that deer, rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks don’t seem to like.

However, as I mentioned I did get some cute looking but uninvited guests who decided to check out and knock over many of my plants. Not sure what they were looking for but hopefully they realized that there is nothing good to eat here and they won’t return to my patio area. Of course we are talking about Raccoons who come every night to vacuum up the bird seed that falls out of my large Bird Bath Bird Feeder that sits in my yard but this night they decided to venture closer. If anyone has any ideas on how to keep there guys away from my planter boxes please send me an email to: [email protected] with some advice!

Speaking of animals, I also, with my mother, checked out Unleash Pet Fest that was happening Downtown Cornwall this past Saturday, June 1st. What a treat it was to see so many pets of all kinds accompanied by “their humans”. There was a Super hero themed pet parade fundraiser (which we sadly missed) but during the day there was an Animal show, guest speakers, a Pet vendor market and several animal rescues on site to spread the word about what they do. Admission was free but donations were appreciated and accepted. We were only able to spend an hour or so at this event but check out the pics. The only problem with pets is that it is hard to get them to pose for photos – their humans are much easier to work with!

This week be sure to check out the 1784 Celebration taking place Friday June 7 to 9 in Lamoureux Park around the grounds surrounding Cornwall Community Museum and the many other events and happenings that you will find on the Seeker online calendar as well as in our Facebook group – The Seeker – Local Events and Community Happenings..