Butchart Gardens March 14, 2010

Indoor garden

Pretty blossoms.

Magnolias again.

Rhododendron bud.

Yes, you can see gerbera daisies at the florist, but they add a nice bit of colour here.

The Alcanterea revisited

You may remember this unusual plant and the picture of the sign I posted back in January.

Well, now there is a new sign. Now the plant is from Brazil instead of Chile, and the new spelling of Alcanterea with the 'ea' ending rather than 'ia' ending is probably correct. The plant is nearly finished flowering so, sadly, I guess that will soon be the end of it. Who knows if I'll ever see another one of these in my life.

And that was the last weekend of the Spring Prelude indoor garden at Butchart's. Correction: I was wrong - it actually continues to the end of the month.

Blossoms February 12, 2010

But one almost doesn't need an indoor garden because spring is happening outside.

The View Street trees are out!

And some others around town, like this tree beside the harbour, are beginning.

Blossoms

Here is the interesting pattern I was talking about on the inside of the White Fawn Lily.

How nice to see the trees in blossom. Some are

finishing already.

A walk in the park

Yesterday we walked through Beacon Hill Park to Cook Street village. At Pic-a-Flic we rented "Little Fugitive", a 1953 black & white film about a 7-year-old Brooklyn boy who takes off to Coney Island after he mistakenly believes he killed his brother. A simple movie which brought back childhood memories and gave us some chuckles.

Here are a few pictures of the park.

Along the back side, the chestnut trees are starting to come into leaf.

I want a decent photo of the inside of one of these White Fawn (Easter) Lilies as the centres are quite decorative and colourful. But their little heads hang down so it's a challenge to focus the camera while it's nearly on the ground facing upward, and the wind is blowing the flowers around.

The Shooting Star (Dodecatheon hendersonii, I think) is a small flower native to western North America from southern BC to California. From the BC Archives website, the name Dodecatheon "has its roots in the Greek words twelve (dodeka) and gods (theos). Pliny gave this name to a spring flower, thought to be the primrose, which was under the protection of the twelve principal gods." I have no idea who Pliny was, but I'm always interested in where words come from.

Heading home we passed by this pond along Douglas Street.

Canada Geese are flying by honking quite a bit lately.

What's that they say about not having your subject facing out of the picture? :-)

For such large birds they have delicate-looking heads. It's nice to have the telephoto so I don't have to get too close. As a kid, geese scared me about as much as our neighbour's bad-tempered Angus bull... although, come to think of it, I never had a bad experience with a goose.

And finally, on the way home out of the park was this magnolia. I must admit, I'm almost getting to like them.