Victoria Tidbits

This little guy is Calvin, Beth's adorable house sitter, whom we found nestled under the vellux blanket on my bed when we returned after sightseeing.

Overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca I discoverred this small inukshuk, which I proceeded to make appear large by getting up close and personal. Can you see the framed freighter out in the channel?

This is a view of the gardens on the south side of the Empress Hotelin downtown Victoria. I couldn't pass up these beauties.

On our trip back from Botanical Beach we stopped at Whiffen Spit Park. It is exactly that--a spit reaching way out into the channel. We weren't wearing enough clothes to make the trek as far as it went (and my knee was screaming after its trauma at Botanical Beach) so we'll have to complete that another time.

I knelt down low to get this shot from the spit back into the harbor. Don't you just love those wispy clouds punctuating the brilliant blue?

Sometimes I just want to kiss the persons who invented cameras, film and, especially, the digital camera!

More Trip Delights from Vancouver Island

Inside this little card are quotes from very satisfied customers who have visited Camille's Restaurant in Victoria. Beth had found this treasure with her husband and, lucky for me, made a reservation for the two of us. Very yummy!

Another spot we found together, first on the web and then in person, was the Casa Grande Inn at Qualicum Beach. We read the abundant words of praise and decided all those people couldn't be wrong so made our reservation. Upon arrival what we found was a delightful room facing the water, with two queen beds (we are royalty, after all!), a spotlessly clean room, shining bathroom fixtures and all sorts of extras in the room. There were wine glasses and a corkscrew and lovely toiletry items. We were very pleased.

Another place we explored together was Abkhazi Garden back in Victoria. As we entered this lovely oasis hidden in a residential neighborhood, we followed a path of old and wonderful rhododendron trees.

In this shot you can see the house which stands overlooking the beautiful rocky slopes which the Abkhazis tamed many years ago.

I am so envious of all the rock setting off the plants.

This strong old tree dominates the beauty beneath it.

If you look closely you will see a duck and wee baby at the centre of these radiating water circles.

I just love the twisted tree trunks, the lush green of their leaves punctuated with bright spots of spring colour here. Doesn't this make your heart leap?

Here the eye settles on these perfectly formed white calla lilies. I just couldn't stop pointing and shooting.

To finish off our morning at Abkhazi Garden we climbed the rocky steps to the tea house. Of course I first had to oblige a solitary visitor by snapping her picture amid the beauty, a sure sign we were in a tourist spot. Once seated at a window overlooking the sumptuous garden we were thrilled with our food and ended up with a lovely British tea complete with scones and fresh-tasting strawberry jam and Devon cream. The garden is a treat for all the senses!

Worship at Cathedral Grove

Heading north from Victoria Beth and I stopped at a highway lookout point where I was intrigued by the patterns in the water here. I suppose we are seeing the currents relative to the depth of the water. Cool, eh?

At Cathedral Grove, found on the road across the island to Ucluelet, the big trees were waiting for us. My husband and I were here on our 35th wedding anniversary but it was raining and we didn't take the walks into the forest so I was anxious to do that this time. Along the highway you will find parking on both sides and signs to tell you where to go, but really, you'd just follow the smell of the trees.

The fresh greens at this time of year contrasted nicely with the well-trodden paths as we clicked away, capturing all we could of this spectacular place.

In the forest downed trees are left to rot and provide sustenance for new life as the ecosystem continually revitalizes itself. This makes the forest floor quite deep in places as the layers compound. In other places we saw bare spots where people have followed the path, such as below, by these uprooted trees.

I stood by this downed tree's giant root system, happy to be dwarfed by such awesome beauty. Well, I'm happy to be dwarfed by anything!

So now my memory banks have one more lovely thing to file away--our trek through Cathedral Grove.

A Country Tradition

Once a month a wonderful, hidden little spot in Central Ontario hosts one of our favorite dance bands, The Royal Aires, and as often as we can, we get a gang together and dance the night away to the sounds of the Big Bands. Lakeside, Ontario, prizes its one and only Danceland, which has a tradition which going back many many years.

A couple of weeks ago we drove the hour trip to Lakeside with a couple of friends and had a great time as always. You might wonder what is so special about this place. It actually has a new building built over the old pavilion-style building which I remember from my teens. We went there throughout the summer, maybe swimming in the lake, buying a burger, and then dancing at night. I remember the sides opened up to form swing-out roofs over those looking inside, but most importantly letting out the summer heat from all those dancers. Once I went to the washroom and when I opened the door to the cubicle there was a panty girdle sitting on the floor, all scrunched up in front of the toilet as though someone had taken it off, sat down, done her business, and then walked away! Yikes!

But times have changed. The facility was updated several years back and now sports the new building right over top of the old with air conditioning, a kitchen, a fireplace and an extended area of tables to sit at surrounding the dance floor. why did the owners spend so much money to build over top of the old building, instead of tearing it down and starting from scratch. I haven't mentioned the floor. Beautiful, even, perfectly finished hardwood is laid over a proper wooden base so as to provide 'give' and thus make dancing fun instead of painful. (It's amazing how many places today advertise dancing and then give you a tired bit of parquet laid right on concrete! That stuff will kill your legs.) So the floor is Danceland's treasure.

If you check out the website you will see another charming bit about Lakeside's Danceland--the customers are all ages. We like the big band music, especially since sometimes we are the youngest ones there, and that music speaks to older people who danced to it in the 40's and 50's. I noticed a tall man, slightly stooped, dancing with his wife who was leading him around the floor. They looked so happy and yet I could see his struggles. Maybe he had Parkinson's or Alzheimer's because his dance steps were shuffles and his wife seemed to be in control. How wonderful that there is still a place for them to enjoy something that obviously meant so much to them.

That Saturday night we picked out several students from dance classes in nearby London, not because we know them, but by the lovely steps they were practising. Some did the tango, others the schottische, lots of us waltzed and flew around doing the polka, but the most prevalent dance was the twostep which you could do to almost everything the band played. We get really tired of that and often do a quick polka step or throw in some jive steps from our many years of dancing together.

Our band of choice is the Royal Aires, pictured below. The leader is in the centre and he and his brother have been doing this for over 40 years. Amazing.

Last visit they had a new trumpet player who, it turns out, used to play with them many years ago, went on to play with lots of the greats, and now has 'retired' to play local engagements again. He was great on trumpet and pretty good as a singer, too.

If you happen to think this all sounds like a good time, check out the website above and join us. Might be a bit of a commute for lots of you, though:-)

Botanical Beach BC

Coincidentally, yesterday I saw Ocean's pictures of Botanical Beach and today I am posting mine. Beth and I ended up there on a rainy day so the shots are less than stellar but you can also check out the website I put above which has great information.

We loved this great old tree and Beth posed hunorously for my camera.

This is one of the famous tidal pools and I am putting it on my desktop today to remind me of our great trip. That way the trip lives on long after I return. Don't you just love the colours and the life varieties?

Along the forest trails we encountered many tree 'sculptures'.

These little flowers looked beautiful among the rainwashed greens surrounding them.

This is another shot of the intricate wranglings of the trees when left to their own devices. I am sure there are many weather stories in these gyrations.

Botanical Beach is reached by driving from Victoria west to Port Renfrew and then following the signs to the park. It is well worth the trip, even in the rain. After our hike, the hot chocolate we enjoyed in a little inn back in Port Renfrew really warmed our rain-washed bodies up as we soaked in the local flavour.

A Bag for Beth

A week before leaving for Vancouver I finished this yarn bag for Beth to keep her stray bits in. I couldn't post it then because it was a surprise, so I took pictures and saved them, waiting for today to write about the project.

Beth has a challenge with things like this as her cat loves to dissect them. Literally. Calvin hasn't met anything he won't try to eat or scratch. I knew, then, from the time I started this project that she'd have to keep it in the closet but she's used to Calvin and shouldn't have a problem. So I took the bag, she's now put all her stray bits of yarn in it and stored it safely away. Every time she looks at the bag she can think about our happy time together last week. Life is good.

The bag itself is my version of a pattern I saw in a beading book. The idea is to have a beaded garden; hence, the dotted Swiss-type fabric on the bottom represents the earth, the blue leaves (from the curtain material in Beth's old bedroom) are close enough to the real thing, and the buttons and beads are obviously the flowers. Siimple, eh? I thought I'd go nuts sewing on all those buttons! This was not beading at all but simply sewing on buttons, over and over. It took me a few days but I kept going because the effect was so pretty.

If you decide to try something like this, use the prettiest shirt-type buttons (no shank) you can find and buy some of that double-sided sticky stuff to put on the leaves and the dotted fabric. I would suggest using a softer fabric for the bag than what I did as sewing on the buttons was tough going through the polyester curtain fabric. I also would suggest putting in a lining behind the pattern panel when you sew the whole thing together to cover up the threads. I used iron-on stuff but would have been happier if I had just enclosed that whole panel so that the stuff inside the bag wouldn't get caught in the threads.

Hopefully you can see that the centers of the flowers are done with beads. You can also bead around the outside of some of the buttons to give an interesting edge, although my fabric was too stiff for that. The pattern I used suggested using an old linen tablecloth but I didn't want to destroy my cloths and didn't have linen anyhow. The wonderful thing about this project is you can just let your imagination run wild. I can see animal shapes for kids' bags, sports stuff--whatever you can dream up. And don't forget to check out those specialty button stores for inspiration.

Holidaying in Victoria

Since Monday I've been here in Victoria with my daughter whom all of you know as Shades of Bliss and that's what we've been having--bliss. Beth picked me up at the airport Monday afternoon. Since then we've eaten, hiked, eaten, took pictures, hiked, eaten, toured downtown on a touristy bus ride, eaten, and talked through gallons of cranberry/raspberry juice. Isn't having grown-up kids simply wonderful?

Victoria is still lovely but especially so this time as the flowers are blooming everywhere and the sunny skies of blue provide a perfect backdrop. Beth's house, new to her, has a lot of azaleas and other flowers which are blooming beautifully and we spent an hour or two trying to identify some of them. The first year in a new house that's what you do--let everything come up and see what's there and then decide what you'll keep and what you'll change. For me this is particularly interesting as there are varieties we don't see in Ontario.

This morning we got up very early--and drove all the way to Port Renfrew and down to Botanical Beach. We had thought we were in for a sunny trip to the tidal pools but as we wound around the road to our destination, the skies became cloudy, then dark, then full of mist and fog. Of course we had planned to do this today so there was no turning back. When we started hiking down the trail to the beach a light mist was falling and we were reassessing our clothing decisions. I had put on a short-sleeved shirt, vest, and a light windbreaker with my jeans. Beth had donned a short-sleeved tee shirt and a hoodie sweat shirt. We were under-dressed for the weather but determined to carry on, regardless.

The trail was rocky but easy and we were soon down to the beach. This is not a beach like I know a beach. There is no sand. Instead huge rocks, smoothed by generations of tides sweeping in and out, are filled with hollowed out bowls where reside dozens of species of ocean life. We saw many things that were new to us and also some we could name. Amazing!

Heading back around the bend of the beach we were stopped by the footing but not before I had taken a tumble and twisted my knee going down. Don't you hate that sickening sound of ligaments stretching to their limits? I was okay, thank goodness, although I'll have stiffness there for a few days. We walked back through the wonderful old-growth forest trail, stopping to take great shots of nature's artwork. The last section rose uphill for many minutes, necessitating some stops but eventually we made it back to the car, two hours later than when we had left it. I was tired but exhilarated. What a wonderful foray into nature on this most beautiful island.

Note: I'll have to post the pictures for this when I get home to Ontario.

How I Love My Computer!

There was a time when I didn't have one ; indeed, didn't even know such a thing existed. I wonder what I did without it? Of course, I refer to my computer.

1. Keeping our family books was done in a thin spiral ledger book where either my husband or I recorded our (many) cheques and (few) deposits. We tried to keep this up to date and pay bills before the deadline, thus saving money, but didn't always succeed.

2. The twenty-seven photo albums which line the bottom shelf of my library attest to my old-technology camera and the many trips to get film developed. When digital first arrived I started having my pics put on a CD and brought them home to my computer.

3. I wrote recipes out by hand for friends and they did the same for me. My recipe book was a collection of slips sliding out because the tape had lost its stickiness.

4. Research was done for our Classroom Puzzlers in libraries or by buying books.

5. When I needed a phone number not in our phone book I called information--and it was free!

6. Our business was conducted by sending out flyers to all the schools in Canada, taking orders by phone or fax, and shipping bulky puzzlers to each customer.

7. I sent letters and made lots of phone calls.

8. I spent my days when not working doing projects around our home and not in my computer room.

9. I taught French and then English (and not Computers!).

10. Essays for courses, writing projects, and other such things were all done on a--hold your breath--typewriter! (That was a machine with keys that actually went up and smacked ink onto the page. Holy history! If I made a mistake on the last line of the page and it was something important, I had to start all over again rather than correct and leave a smudge.)

11. Surprisingly I was happy without my computer but now it's the first thing I turn to in the morning or whenever I want to sit and relax. (Oh, I forgot to mention games, which have evolved in my world. Solitaire is no longer solo. You might be playing with 8635 other players.)

As much as I love my computer and spend a lot of time on it, when I travel I don't miss it. The change is always good. So Monday when I fly to Beth's place in Victoria I'll be leaving my computer behind but I may stick in my flash drive with my writing project on it so I can work at her place when the mood strikes. No pressure but just in case.

Beader Girl Broods

1. As the summer season begins I am wondering if there is anything to the fact that GOLF spelled backwards is FLOG?

2. Why is it that now we've pretty much decided we don't want to sell our house (even though it is still listed), we've had a very interested buyer here twice to check it out? We have no idea what we'll do if we get our price offered.

3. Today I'm driving to Deerhurst to pick up my husband who went up for a conference yesterday. I am looking forward to those 4 hours in the car on this sunny day. I'm taking some CD's and stopping at Weber's for the best hamburger in the world. A time to enjoy my own company.

4. Is my sister-in-law's fascination with and great love for her dogs linked to the fact that DOG spelled backwards is GOD? (She is a great believer as well.)

5. Wednesday is appointment day for me. Hair in the morning--time to rejuvenate again and pedicure in the afternoon--time to update my 'pretty feet' look in preparation for summer in general but more specifically for my trip to Victoria and Beth. Yay!

Live always as though life is great and it pretty much will be!

My Richest Room

You'll be wondering if my thoughts are consumed by money when you read that title but these pictures should allay your fears. My books consume a big part of my life. Here is a picture of one side of my library. I have catalogued all of my books (and most of my husband's) with my very own system adapted to my special space. (Dewey be damned.)


This second picture shows a much messier space and there is a reason for that. We had decided a couple of years ago to sell our home and downsize to a smaller one and I was reconciled to disposing of my beloved books. Well, not all of them. There are some I just cannot bear to lose. So, last summer, before our garage sale to end all garage sales (sale of the century?) I pulled my favorites and stuffed them into a section which was not for sale. This is the messy result. I just haven't had time to sort them out again. Some of my favorite authors are Sharon Kay Penman, Herman Wouk, Alison Weir, Margaret Lawrence, Rutherfurd, Mary Stewart, Pauline Gedge, Colleen McCullough, Diana Gabaldon, Mary Higgins Clark, M.M. Kaye and Antonia Fraser. I like historical fiction, stuff with substance which makes a time or place come to life.

The final picture is the fourth wall in my library and, fittingly, my books are watched over by this wonderful antique picture of my mother at seven years old when she was flower girl at her sister's wedding. From my mother I have received the precious gift of loving to read and to write. The desk is a little messy but tells a story about me if you look at what is there. Notice the jacket lying across it waiting for me to shorten the sleeves. And some of my beading supplies are waiting for me to decide whether to string my latest creation or go back to the design phase. Another picture leans against the wall, one my sister had placked for me last Christmas. It is a wonderful remembrance of my childhood and my oh-so-special siblings.

This is my richest room, then, because of the books, books and more books, but also because so much of my heart is resident there. These are the trappings of my abundant life.

Putting the Secret to Work

Every night for the last few weeks I have been reading The Secret, and am quite enthralled with its ideas; hence, my blog today is my plans for the two million dollars that I've believed into existence. (If you don't get that, read the book.)

First I have to have a plan to deal with the actual money. Should I just put it in a high interest savings account? Should I pass it over to our financial guy for investing? How much should I keep to spend? How much should I give to my kids? All of these questions are valid and have repercussions so I think I'll make an appointment with several financial people to get their ideas, and I'll also talk tax implications with our tax person. Oh,but the pressure of decisions! I think I have a few calls to make before I even decide how to take possession of this money.

The next question is about telling people. I hear there are many 'relatives' that come out of the woodwork when you get big money, so much so that people often go and hide, starting a new life somewhere else. And yet, I am so happy I can't stop smiling and people are bound to know something's up. Besides I don't know how I can keep from telling my friends and family and sharing in our excitement.

That leads me to the next thing--how much to give away and how to do it. There are people dear to me who need money, that's for sure, and there are those I would love to help, but how best to do it? Perhaps for my kids I'll set up some kind of fund that will pay them interest every year so that the pleasure of receiving the money can keep them happy for years to come, instead of just for a short time after receiving a lump sum. I have a couple of people I may secretly give money to but I won't even let them know where it came from so others won't be jealous.

And how to carry on living our life together? We are now able to work on the projects which interest and excite us, without having to worry about monthly bills. There are a couple of major things we will do on our lovely home and I'll buy myself a car again. I hope I can be judicious in my spending and not get carried away. We really need retirement security so most of the money is going into investments that pay us every month.

Finally I promise to stay happy and live a life of joy and abundance as I work the secret. You can, too!