1. The reason “Tim Hortons” doesn’t have an apostrophe is that in Quebec signs must be in French and “Tim Horton’s” is the English possessive; to simplify matters the company dropped the apostrophe completely. (I’m not sure if this is true, but I read it online and it seems plausible.)

2. In The Bippolo Seed and Other Lost Stories by Dr. Seuss is a story called “Gustav the Goldfish.” It’s remarkably similar to A Fish Out of Water by Helen Palmer, which was the first book Eleanor ever read. Turns out A Fish Out of Water is based on Dr. Seuss’s story and in fact Helen Palmer was Dr. Seuss’s wife!

3. The Owen Sound Visitor Centre has free bike rentals and even child carriers, helmets, and locks.

4. I thought we’d solved the problem of animals eating our bird seed by buying safflower seed instead of sunflower seed since the squirrels don’t like it… but suddenly chipmunks are climbing the fence and eating the safflower seed out of our feeder. Now what?!

5. A few weeks ago I learned how to make an egg-free chocolate cake. It sank in the middle but the texture and flavour turned out great. Here’s the recipe I used.

6. I was having a lot of trouble with our lawnmower stalling and was frustrated because we already got rid of one lawnmower when repairs were too expensive — and were given another lawnmower by a neighbour. At Andrew’s suggestion I tried adjusting the height of the deck and it turned out that one wheel was set at a different height than the others. Once I adjusted it the mower worked like a charm, even on long, thick grass. Gotta love a free fix!

7. I read a fascinating article about the problem with the “clean beauty” industry. One point is that eliminating parabens from beauty products could actually be less safe because parabens are very effective preservatives at low concentrations and using no (or newer) preservatives could lead to more contamination. Highly recommend checking out the article.

What did you learn in June?