After the hurricane-that-didn’t-amount-to-much, the weather is brilliant this morning. A cup of tea at Receiver before heading to work.

Fruit flies in the kitchen have been the bane of my existence for as long as I can remember (I wrote about this bane in 2004 and 2008, and received much helpful advice in reply).

This year I decided that it was a losing proposition to try to control fruit flies once they’d taken over: I needed to get ahead of them, and remove the conditions in which they thrived.

And so that’s what I did.

I never left food or dishes out on the counter.

I washed everything to be recycled, immediately.

I washed out the kitchen sink drains with vinegar and baking soda every few days.

I wiped down the kitchen counters constantly.

Despite all advice from purists, I stored all fruits and vegetables in the fridge, tomatoes included.

And it worked.

The kitchen wasn’t 100% fruit fly-free, but over the summer I saw only perhaps a dozen, and I took their emergence as a sign that I needed to double-down on my prophylactic control measures.

In saying all this, I suppose it’s equally possible that this year happened to be an off year for fruit flies for other reasons: perhaps the combination of sun and rain and temperature conspired to be inhospitable to them, and nothing I did had much influence.

I will chose to believe, however, that I conquered them through my vigilance.

Here’s a Spotify playlist of 25 songs that prompted me to hit “like” this spring and summer.

Here are the songs on the playlist:

• Goodbye Rain - Hush Kids - Hush Kids
• Yo Mae Leh - Invisible Minds - Make up Your Own Stories
• Trying - The Staves - Trying
• Nothing’s Gonna Happen (Demo) - The Staves
• By Your Side - Ane Brun - Leave Me Breathless
• What You Want - May Erlewine - Mother Lion
• Moon Song - Phoebe Bridgers - Punisher
• Julianna Calm Down - The Chicks - Gaslighter
• A Feeling Felt or a Feeling Made - Siv Jakobsen - A Feeling Felt or a Feeling Made
• Is There Something in the Movies? - Samia - The Baby
• Rest - Leif Vollebekk - Twin Solitude
• Darcy’s Song - Sierra Eagleson - Darcy’s Song
• Sad Girl Summer - Maisie Peters - Sad Girl Summer
• Slow Burn - Kacey Musgraves - Golden Hour
• Soft Line - Lucy Wainwright Roche - Little Beast
• Elergy for the Present - Philip Glass, Dennis Russell Davies
• Options Open - Kathleen Edwards - Total Freedom
• Spiracles - COMA - Voyage Voyage
• Warped Window - Anna Mieke - Idle Mind
• Tourism (feat. Fenne Lily) - Henry Jamison, Fenne Lily
• Wild - May Erlewine - Mother Lion
• I Burn but I Am Not Consumed - Karine Polwart - Laws of Motion
• Zona Rosa - Caoimhín Ó Raghallaigh, Thomas Bartlett
• Salters Road - Karine Polwart - Traces
• Killer + The Sound - Phoebe Bridgers, Noah Gundersen, Abby Gundersen

Twenty years ago today on the radio I talked to Matt Rainnie about the cats of Marion Island. It was, I think, the high point of my erstwhile side hustle as a broadcaster.

With Hurricane Teddy on the way, it seemed like a good afternoon to pick the apples. And as I was picking the apples, I realized the plum tree was filled with the most wonderful ripe plums. So I picked some plums too. And then made apple plum sauce.

A joke from my childhood:

What’s the difference between elephants and plums?

They’re different colours.

What did the man say when he saw the elephants coming over the hill?

Here come the plums!

(He was colour blind).

These two raised almost more than $800 for cancer research today with their homebrew Terry Fox Run.

Ever since we installed a video projector in our living room a few months ago, Oliver and I have had a movie night every Saturday.

Oliver came up with a system for selecting what movie we watch: one week it’s a film released during his teenage years, the next week during my teenage years. Oliver picks the theme, I pick the movie.

Here’s what we’ve watched so far:

• Raiders of the Lost Ark
• The In-Laws
• Carrie Pilby
• Volunteers
• The Best Offer
• Peggy Sue Got Married
• A Star is Born (2018)

This week I secured special dispensation to extend my pool of eligible films back to my pre-teen years; the themes Oliver selected were death, Canadian history, animals, running, and autumn.

Could there be a better week for 1978’s Heaven Can Wait, directed by Warren Beatty and Buck Henry with the stellar cast of Beatty, Henry, James Mason, Julie Christie, Charles Grodin, Dyan Cannon, Vincent Gardenia, and Jack Warden.

It may lack animals and Canadian history, but it’s got death, running and autumn in spades. It’s also my very most favourite film.

And it was as good in 2020 as it was when I saw it in a theatre 42 years ago.

Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman are back on their motorcycles, this time riding from Argentina to LA in Long Way Up, premiering tonight in Apple TV+. They rode electric Harleys, supported by a team driving an electric truck.

Boorman is interviewed about the project by Robert Llewellyn on an episode of Fully Charged.

I ate Jackson for lunch.

Or at least one of Jackson’s tomatoes. It took 107 days from planting Jackson’s seedling to harvesting Jackson’s first tomato.

I sliced the tomato up, toasted a St. Viateur bagel, spread some ADL butter, added some COWS 1 year old cheddar, and enjoyed a very tasty lunch. The plate is by Michael Stanley.

Because it’s not easy to find otherwise, here’s the easy to remember link for live-streaming from the City of Charlottetown (council and committee meetings):

https://www.charlottetown.ca/video

On that page you’ll be able to watch whatever is being broadcast live, in real time, and you’ll also find a link to the City’s YouTube channel, where all past meetings are archived, which is at:

https://www.youtube.com/CityofCharlottetown