Second Week in June: TPZ

Food Mood: Feelin’ Soupy

Reno Ridiculouso: The Trees, Who Will Think of the Trees!  (place hand ringing here)

This week we finally broke ground.  This took a monumental effort on the part of The Architect and the Hubby to get everything through the City of Toronto permits process.  Like most places, I assume, the T dot (the Big Smoke? The Six?  What are we calling it these days?) has all kinds of rules.  Everything from the ratio of green space to built structure, which way your windows face relative to neighbours, etc.  But, most importantly the last few weeks has been THE DREADED TPZ!!!   

The TPZ is the tree protection zone. In Toronto you have to install a tree protection zone if any of your construction (including bin locations) is within a few metres of an existing tree.  It’s to preserve trees, and I’m for it, I think it’s good.  However, each TPZ must be registered and you have to deposit big money with the city for each one to ensure that the tree survives. 

When we began this process we had three TPZ’s, but after employing an arborist to give his professional opinion, we got it down to none.  Yeah!  We would still protect the trees but without a cash flow issue attached.

So, we began digging our basement foundation hole, and were keeping a rather close eye on a huge maple tree that was near the construction site.  Just because a tree doesn’t have to be protected, doesn’t mean that digging near that tree is going to be good for it’s roots.  We were more than a little concerned that digging all along one side would deprive this tree of needed root support. 

With this is in mind one Sunday afternoon The Hubby grabbed a sledge hammer and started breaking up our back cement pad that was under our deck.  Or at least that was the theory.  

Now please understand that the Hubby is a big strong man who does a super physical job that uses his strength all the time. He began hitting the cement.  And hitting it.  And hitting it.  With no result.  Hours later he had broken it up, only to discover another cement pad beneath.   Diligently digging around the edges revealed it to be four inches think.  WHAT THE FRESH HELL!!!  FOUR INCHES!  WHAT THE BLEEP IS BURIED UNDER THERE!    What a minute… what the bleep is buried under there??  Once in our old house we dug a big hole and found an entire metal bed frame in there.  We were grateful no one was “sleeping” in the bed. 

As the Hubby continued hitting the cement, The Neighbours began gathering, lawn chairs were brought out, various strong men tried their hands at the sledge hammer.   Big Talkin’ opinions were given. Two days later, we finally cracked the mystery.  A cistern.  A great big, massive cistern in our backyard.  A real son of a bitch to get out, taking the better part of a week.  However, as the cistern ran right up to the maple tree in question, none of the maple trees roots were growing in that direction and so the maple would not be destabilized by the construction.

So, we’re gonna call that a win this week.  A hard won win, but a win!

Minestrone Soup

½ a package of bacon, chopped

½ a red onion chopped

Two carrots peeled and rough chopped

Jar of tomato sauce

Can of whole tomatoes, (crush em up a bit as you put them in)

Box of no sodium chicken stock or veggie stock

Can of chickpeas, rinsed

If you have a rind of parmesan, throw that in too. 

Throw the whole nine yards in the crockpot and cook for my traditional, eight hours ‘cause that’s how long I’m away for.

When you get home, turn the crockpot back onto high, break up a bigish handful of spaghetti into bite size chunks and throw that in the crockpot.  Let it cook for about 20 minutes.  

Finely grate some parmesan cheese and throw it on top at the end.