Wanderlust and Words

Local News  The Food Centre is hosting a free teleconference on finding your place in the marketplace by knowing your product and your customer from 1-2:30 pm , Apr. 14 . Kaleidoscope Vegetable Gardens is offering weekly deliveries of fresh vegetables on a month-by-month basis. The May box is expected to include spinach, radishes, green onions, Hakurei turnips, beet greens, beets, and pea shoots. Selection will vary from week to week and may be affected by weather. Almost half the delivery boxes are already spoken for, so put in your order now . The Night Oven Bakery has hot cross buns on their online order form . Plus flour, coffee, pains au chocolat, croissants – yum! My sister in law and I ordered takeout from Chef de Partie Catering this past week. We can highly recommend the lentil terrine served on a bed of sweet potato mash, the kale slaw (lots of red and green pepper slices for crunch and dried cranberries for sweetness), the dill pickle pasta salad, the m...

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 .

The Zero Waste Emporium at 1728 Douglas Street (across from the Public Market) bills itself as Victoria’s first zero-waste grocery store. They stock a huge range of products from bulk bins full of nuts, seeds, flour, and dried fruit to personal care and cleaning products. What really impressed me was the emphasis on local products – Tree Island yogurt and Avalon Dairy milk and cream sourced on Vancouver Island, Salt Spring Island tofu , vegan protein from Victoria-based The Very Good Butchers , almond/oat/hemp mylk made in house twice a week, as well as vegan cheezes from BC-based companies, The Cultured Nut and Black Sheep . And the list goes on and on. Many of these products are also organic. The owners state they are, “promoting ecological awareness by offering customers reliable, sustainably sourced products that will help you reduce your environmental footprint and empower your Zero Waste lifestyle.” Make sure you visit the Zero Waste Emporium if you’re ev...

"From the depths of the green garden-closes Where the summer in darkness dozes Till autumn pluck from his hand An hour-glass that holds not a sand; From the maze that a flower-belt encloses To the stones and sea-grass on the strand How red was the reign of the roses Over the rose-crowned land!" The Year of the Rose , Algernon Charles Swinburne Photos were taken at Government House Gardens , Victoria, British Columbia, July 2019

Abkhazi Garden is small but oh, so lovely! And filled to overflowing with flowers of every shape, size, and colour. What a delight!

Galiano Island is the Gulf Island closest to Vancouver. It’s small, not as touristy and developed as Salt Spring, and with many, many inlets and coves as it’s long and skinny. I spent 3 days on the island with my sister, Clare. We admired the sandstone at Sturdies Bay and the arbutus attracted my attention at Retreat Cove. We carefully left our treasures behind after a happy afternoon spying on the crabs in the tidal pools near Pebble Beach. We visited 5 artists’ home studios. I enjoyed the pottery by Sandra Dolph , but my absolute favorite was Marcia deVicque’s studio . The glasswork was lovely and her wild, tangled, forest garden was a feast for the senses.