Wednesday, August 23, 2006

interesting quotes

"Healthy people are inextricably linked to healthy environments..."

-John R. Parkins, "A Better Way of Living", Mosaic, summer 2006


"...Ecological citizenship invites a closer connection, which leads to change in policy, economy, and lifestyle."

-Brian McLaren, A General Orthodoxy

Friday, August 18, 2006

a confession
















Here's one of the green spaces in my parent's neighbourhood. Hopefully our gardens will eventually grow into looking this good! My friend Laurie says good things don't usually happen fast and she's probably right. I feel kind of bummed that the CN triangle looks so shabby at the moment, but everyone keeps telling me that it's a great start. So we'll go with that!
The other evening I was watering the sun garden when a 50-or-so gentleman walked by. He complimented the garden and then said 'I bet plants get stolen don't they' or something like that. I said ya, it was a bummer and that I probably had about 50 plants stolen this spring. He took a few steps away then turned around and said 'I have to admit I took one plant, I think it was.... a tulip... ya, a tulip.' Then we chatted for a bit, told me about a floral arrangement course that his ex took, asked what kind of plant the hens & chicks were and recommended an electric fence if I wanted to keep people from wrecking the garden. According to him, anything nice in this neighbourhood either gets stolen or destroyed. 'Oh well you've got to try!' I told him! How hilarious that he felt he needed to come and confess to me! Well hopefully he'll feel for the garden a bit more now and spread the word to respect it.

Monday, August 07, 2006

Tigrida


One of my newest favorite flowers! Tigrida... or Mexican Shell Flower. I happened to pick one up at a garden sale in Robert's Creek last year and loved it. (Incidentally, another flower colour change--it was yellow last year and came up white this year. What's in that soil, anyways?!) Last week, I picked some Tigrida seeds at the UBC botanical garden, yay! Mexican Shell Flowers, here I come!!

the sun garden grows...

Julie and I put out a bunch of sun-loving plants that I've been saving for the sun garden. Not to mention, we added a bunch of annuals that I picked up from Emerging Hope (see below). Still more scarce than I'd like it to be. But it's just a start. Gardening takes patience.........
here are some pictures of the sun garden at sun down:


CN triangle

here is the CN triangle. It actually doesn't look too bad in the first picture, but it's usually overrun with garbage and weeds. We hauled the soil down there (second photo) and now tonight Julie and I threw a few annuals in there to get some colour going before the 'real' garden gets in there. I don't feel too satisfied with it at the moment, but I guess it's still an improvement. I got 30 plants for $30 on Sat!!! from Emerging Hope (www.emerginghope.ca) a group that does gardening projects to employ people from the downtown eastside.