Wanderlust and Words

“A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.” Oliver Wendell Holmes  When I’m travelling, I’m fully alive. A week can feel like a month because it’s packed full of new sights, sounds, and experiences. It’s harder to stay “awake” to what’s around me when I’m at home. I settle into comfortable routines, walk familiar paths, and fail to observe what is going on around me. I’ll be back in Europe this winter and I’m determined to live my time there to the fullest. I’ve come up with some ideas to get me exploring more widely. Some are old, some are new. Lots of them can be incorporated at home as well as on the road. 1. Don’t stay in a hotel. Hotels are a neutral environment. If you really want to get a feel of a place, you need to live like the locals. Housesitting means that I not only shop locally, but I also figure out how the local garbage and recycling schedules work, and may end up purchasing a fundraising calendar from th...

“Curiouser and curiouser the world makes me curiouser   I’ve so many dreams that come and go  Why is it so? Does no one know?”  It’s so easy to follow routines, to see what you expect to see, to fail to look around you. In an effort to explore the world around me with fresh eyes, I plan to post occasional photographs of things that have surprised me, made me laugh, or delighted me. Here are a few of the surprises I discovered in Richmond and while walking along False Creek in Vancouver. “Curiouser and Curiouser” It took me a while, but I was finally able to identify the beavers working on their lodge outside of Richmond Brighouse Canada Line station. Is it a lighthouse? A birdhouse? Or maybe a beached boat? None of the above! After digging around online, we found out it was a piece of public art installed by an anonymous artist , protesting the high cost of housing in downtown Vancouver. “I Love to Laugh” Who knew? An entire restaurant dedi...

My family spent many summer holidays on Vancouver Island, and I have happy memories of playing on the beach. One of my family’s favorite beaches is at Point No Point. It’s a private beach, but all you have to do is enjoy lunch overlooking the ocean or stay in one of their cabins to have access. As a child, a special treat was visiting Butchart Gardens after dark to enjoy the light display. There are free open-air concerts in the Gardens every night during the summer months. My sister and I enjoyed a performance by Ballet Étoile. The massed displays of flowers are impressive as are the fountains and amusing twig sculptures hidden in the bushes. In Victoria, my sister Clare and I walk at Willows Beach and Cattle Point most evenings.

Going to Ascot The Horticulture Centre of the Pacific holds an annual Arts & Music in the Garden with over 50 local artists’ booths set up along the paths that traversing the garden. Heron & Goldfish The Centre’s gardens encompass herbs, fuschia and lilies, a Japanese garden, an urban garden, a farm garden, and a birds, bees and butterflies garden and are a delight at any time of the year. But Arts & Music in the Park is special, and one of my favorite aspects of the event is the floral art designed and presented by the Victoria Floral Artists Guild . Many of them have a very wacky sense of humour. Seaweed at Sunset Additional photographs of the gardens are available at Sunshine and Shade: Horticulture Centre of the Pacific .

Local Happenings  Vegan Comfort will be dishing up waffles, quiche, scones, tacos, and more at the Saskatoon Farmers’ Market from 9 am-2 pm , July 27 . Grandora Gardens is selling salsa kits with all the peppers and tomatoes needed to make 6-8 pints of salsa for $17.50. They also have canning tomatoes - $30 for 20 lbs. Be sure to pre-order. Beppi’s Gelato is now selling gelato sandwiches and cakes. Plus they have a whole bunch of new flavours – cinnamon, crème fraîche, rose water, tiramisu, pina colada sorbetto, pomegranate sorbetto, apricot gelato. Food for Thought  Crystallised honey is quality honey. “Honey crystallises with age, becoming granular as the glucose molecules separate from the water. This can take anywhere from two hours to two years . . . . if honey does not begin to granulate after a long time and remains clear, it’s an indication of dilution or additives.” “ The secret museum in every city is a grocery store. It’s where you can grab and ...

Nelson’s Lakeside Park is lovely, even under smoke-filled skies. It’s a much better place to while away a couple of hours than by heading to the mall next door.

I've been fortunate enough to be invited to housesit near Nelson, British Columbia, every other year. I usually drive straight through with just one overnight stop, but this year I decided to take it slowly and visit some parks along the way. After 4-5 hours of driving past fields of flax, canola, and oil wells, it's surprising to see evergreen-covered hills in the distance and to arrive in the forests of Cypress Hills Interprovincial Park . The wildflowers were stunning, and I definitely plan to come back. My next stop was Red Rock Coulee near Medicine Hat, Alberta. Again, you're driving through fields lined with bales of hay when you head up a short hill and spy a maze of dry stream beds with large, round, red boulders scattered over the slopes. The ground was covered with fine white gravel and it truly felt like I could be on the moon. I had already headed off the main road to reach Red Rock, so I continued along secondary highways to my next destinati...