Good Lord, Patty. I'll never complain about Ontario's native flora again!

I had a lovely modern kitchen faucet that cost an obscene amount of money and was at the cutting edge of fashion, if you can imagine that plumbing has fashion. It was one of those tall ones with an extendable sprayer on the end, very elegant. But its stream of water was weak from the get-go for no apparent reason, and after a couple of years it decreased to a mere trickle. My favourite plumber took it apart and found that it had several layers of mesh screen in the business end, at least three more layers than is usually found in the spout of a kitchen faucet, and all of them were clotted with lime.

That tall, elegant faucet also splattered its weak stream of water all over the place because, of course, it was released several inches above the brim of the sink. Whenever you washed your hands, or rinsed a dish, or scrubbed a potato, the water flew far and wide. I had never seen such faucets before that brief period of plumbing fashion, and now I know why.

So I junked the obscenely expensive fashionable faucet and, on the plumber's advice, went to Canadian Tire for a bog-standard Moen faucet that cost literally hundreds of dollars less. Years later, it continues to perform flawlessly.

Weather today is damp and chilly, with fog. On my way home from pool class -- made it today! -- I noted that the posties are on strike. Just in time for the Christmas rush. How traditional!