Your yearly reminder that the new edition of The Old Farmer’s Almanac is now in stock at The Bookmark.

This is the 25th edition of the Almanac since I started work with the publisher in 1997. That seems like a long time until you remember that this is the 230th edition.

When you buy the Almanac, you not only get a helpful guide to the natural world, useful with a pleasant degree of humour, but you’re also supporting my little business and my little family!

I can’t listen to Sound the Alarm from The Knocks without thinking of the theme for S Club 7.

Instead of “Epekwitk is the Miꞌkmaq name for Prince Edward Island,” say “Prince Edward Island is the colonial name for Epekwitk.”

My Hario Mizudashi pot, for making cold brew coffee, was one of the hits of midsummer heatwaves past.

Alas, in my drive to rationalize and organize the kitchen over the last 18 months, I managed to throw away the lid for its filter basket.

I discovered this when I poured a bucket of freshly ground coffee into the (lidless) filter basket only to have the coffee pass through the basket and into the sink below. What with the absence of the lid and all.

Hario does sell replacement filter baskets, but they appear to be out of stock globally. While I could acquire a brand new pot for about $30, that seemed an egregious waste of a perfectly good pot (in all other ways).

On a lark I tried fitting the lid of a spice jar from M. Vrac onto the filter basket.

And it fit.

Like a glove.

So I have a pot of cold brew icily cultivating in the fridge now, the satisfaction of performing a hack that would greatly please my late father, saved myself $30, and kept a beautiful object out of the landfill.

Yesterday I bought a pair of shorts for the first time in, well, forever. Which begged the question: what about socks?

I am a strict constitutionalist regarding socks, and have long-regarded the new wave of shorter socks with suspicion.

But I realized that the socks issue was standing in the way of the shorts issue, which was standing in the way of the “being cooler in 30°C temperatures” issue. It has never occurred to me until yesterday, standing in Marks Work Wearhouse, that I could break the logjam by simply expanding my socks acceptance.

So that’s what I did.

The punishing heat led to a decision to suspend all dietary logic and get ice cream not once but twice today.

After a late afternoon stop at Truckin’ Roll for ice cream sandwiches, we made a late evening stop at Icy Scoops in Sherwood for hot fudge sundaes.

My offer on PlugShare to let others charge their EVs in my driveway had its first taker this afternoon, from an impressive-looking vehicle that drove to PEI from the future.

As a special bonus feature, we’ll be the talk of the neighbourhood.

Mid-August means Artist Trading Cards night at the Confederation Centre of the Arts, the yearly skunkworks “50 people bring 50 cards of their own creation, and leave with one of everyone else’s” event that Monique Lafontaine keeps alive, year after year, through sheer force of will. I only hopped on board the train in 2017, and have gone twice since (2018, 2020), taking off 2019 for the exigencies.

This year was a collaborative effort: Olivia sketched out an idea about “being your true self” and handed it to me a few weeks ago; I mulled over how to bring it to life. I mulled until I could mull no longer: Wednesday night, with nothing to show for myself, and ink that, in this humidity, needed at least overnight to dry, it was go-time.

I dug some “woodgrain” business cards out of the stash I inherited from Bill and Gertie Campbell, and set some type: “find your true self.” In 24 point Bodoni bold, one of my favourites of the fonts I hold.

I printed 10 of those.

Then changed things up: “mind your true self.”

Then “wind your true self.”

Followed by ”unbind your true self,” “remind your true self,” “unbind your true self,” and, finally, “be your true self.”

The humidity did, indeed, cause drying to take a long long time; the shiny woodgrain cards didn’t help. By showtime they were still a little tacky, but not too much to transport and set out in Memorial Hall:

Forty-five minutes later, this was what was left:

Here’s a pie chart showing the popularity of each of the six variants:

As I wrote to some fellow artists yesterday, I was somewhat dispirited that “be your true self” was the winner: it was a last-minute addition to the mix, and fell outside of the rhyming scheme. Perhaps that was why it was popular? I was happy that “remind” and “unbind” came second, as they were my clear favourites.

I am very much a creature of habit, and switching out my habits on a seasonal basis is like turning a gravel boat.

Which is to say: I have a lovely back garden, with a table and chairs and an umbrella, and apple and plum trees to stare at, and birds to listen to, yet this morning—August 13!—is the first morning this year I’ve had my breakfast outside.

Now that the gravel boat is righted, I hope to be back here until the snow flies.

Olivia and I were sitting in the floor of Memorial Hall at the Confederation Centre of the Arts when I spied a plaque I hadn’t seen before, a plaque marking the 50th anniversary of the Centre in 2014 that was unveiled on May 20.

“That’s odd,” I thought, “surely I would have remembered such a royal visit.”

We looked at my photo archive to prove that we had no knowledge of the visit. We were wrong.