Strawberry Patch

As of the middle of April the garden is coming along really well. Seeds I put in a few weeks ago are up and starting to develop secondary leaves. Try to ignore the few pieces of crab grass. That promises to be a lifelong battle. Radishes, Asian stirfry greens, and gai lan are all making appearances.

These strawberries are the variety "Seascape". They came as bare root plants and ended up taking up more space than I had planned. Still, it's worth it to have a productive strawberry patch. I miss the huge ones we had at our last place.

New French tarragon plants are also in!

The Garden Gets Started! April 3, 2010

This year Jeff and I each have a community garden plot at the Cypress Community Garden in Vancouver. With the help of our next door neighbour and friend Sara we've gotten things off to as early a start as possible. My life has been garden deficient since moving from Calgary. I'm aspiring to have these plots overflowing with produce for the next five months or so. Watch it all unfold here.

Our garden plots April 3, 2010. Chives, oregano, and a few flowers are up. Mushroom manure has been added. Weeds have been (mostly) removed...for now.

The worms in Vancouver are gigantic.

Asian stir-fry greens are already coming up!

Back to Alberta; hoping for snow

Oranges in Barcelona at the Palau Robert

Around the Palau Robert is a beautiful garden designed by Barcelona municipal gardener Ramon Oliva. The gardens around this neo-Classical mansion (built in 1903) are filled with palms from the 1888 Universal Exhibition that was held in Parc de la Ciutadella. The Palau Robert is now home to several galleries and hosts many special events. The most impressive thing, besides the exhibit on special effects that was on at the Palau, may have been that the gardens were full of wild tropical birds and oranges.

London Landscapes

In Southbank, some polkadot trees.

Somewhere near the BFI there were tunnels with nice lighting.

The blue one has small LEDs embedded in the wall between bricks.

The Tate Modern. Maybe the outside doesn't stand up to the inside.

The Millennium Bridge (partially seen here in the foreground) is pretty fun, though.

Hyde Park.

Still Hyde Park. Beautiful fields of long grasses around one of the ponds.

Also in Hyde Park, the Princess Diana Memorial,

designed by American landscape Architect Kathryn Gustafson.

A graft gone crazy near the Princess Diana Memorial.

The 2009 Serpentine Gallery Pavilion, designed by Kazuyo Sejima & Ryue Nishizawa of SANAA. Every year the gallery installs a new pavilion by an architect or designer who has never worked in the UK before. Don't let the public-looking nature of this place fool you, though, it was certainly WAY off-limits when I was there. Perhaps because it had just been unveiled a few days before. See what The Guardian had to say here.

Gasworks Park in Seattle, Washington

Designed by American landscape architect Richard Haag, Gasworks Park is a beautiful place to be on a sunny late summer day in Seattle. You get a great view of the city across Lake Union and at the very least you can partially retrace Heath Ledger's steps through the park and the nearby neighbourhood of Fremont (check out the movie 10 Things I Hate About You).

All photos from September 20, 2009.

Bye-Bye Vancouver!

I am off to London! I will miss Vancouver's beaches, mountains, and gardens, not to mention all the good times to be had here in the summer, but good European times await!