Life in Colour

Well March is almost over so next Sunday Jude over at Travel Words here will select a new feature colour for her Life in Colour series. And I ended up finding lots of photos for the Green Theme so this post will be like the last hurrah for green. 😀

Greens on Lantau Island, Hong Kong.

Next up are some greens I spied in Brighton, UK. During our stay in London in 2019, we took a train to this seaside town...a lovely day and some wonderful memories. 

Next is a lovely tranquil spot in the Sun Yet-San Gardens in Vancouver...a delightful garden in that city’s Chinatown area. 

A ride at Santa Monica Pier...we just watched! 

In 2014 DH and I toured the old set of Coronation St, his favourite TV show...this is part of the outdoors set. 

Filming of the interior of the pub was in a set inside the main building at these now demolished studios. 

The next photo is in the Cotswold village of Bibury...I was fascinated by that plant that looked like it belonged in the tropics! 

Next photo is some green in Singapore...

Only a tiny bit of green in this next photo taken in Bunbury, Western Australia. Driving down this suburban street in this town, we just had to stop and check out this front yard. Marge Simpson of course is resplendent in a green frock. Not your average front yard I think! 



Next photo shows the different greens in this sunken garden in Mt Gambier, South Australia. 


The next photo is closer to home...I spied this at our local ( but smallish) shopping Centre. How times have changed since my childhood and even the childhood of my children! 

Looks fun! And the grownups don’t even need to rummage for coins! 

Yep! Just tap the credit card! 


Last Sunday was Palm Sunday which means palm leaves and palm crosses! 

We have a granddaughter who lost a leg due to sepsis. Here she is in a green dress having fun on a green slippery slide. 

My friends in the Sunday Stitchers group found out that there is an Amputee Awareness Month so in November 2019 they honored  Carrie at our monthly meeting by presenting me with 2 bags of story books for her. How special are these lovely ladies. 

The last photo is a meme attributed to John F Kennedy that I shared on my FB page a few years ago. For many years DsD1 and her husband lived on a grazing property and I naturally started to take an interest in the farming/grazing sector so I could be more informed of what the lifestyle entailed. 

How true this is! 

Took the photos; never wrote the blog post! #2

Today we received an email. Because my brain 'often races at a rate of  knots', this email caused my thoughts to jump to remembering  a day we spent exploring Vancouver last August.

The email was from Ross and Ann who so generously took DH and I on  a guided tour of some of the sights of Vancouver. We had never met them before, but they were friends of DH's eldest brother and his wife from when they had been exchange teachers in Canada. And as we were part of Keith and Sonja's family, we were treated as honoured guests.
Here we are having a delicious seafood lunch with Ross and Ann

We saw lots more of Vancouver that day, but in this post, I'll share some photos that we took on our first stop...Chinatown.

In Vancouver Chinatown there is a very shallow building; it is 6 feet from front to back.

As you can see, the builders 'cheated' a bit with the first floor, by building bay windows!

Then we walked a little way up the street...

  And Ann led us to a delightful 'gem'; the Sun Yat Sen Gardens.

These gardens were built 1985-1986 and opened in time for Expo 86.

The gardens are so peaceful...you can read a bit more about them here.

Now, about that email that prompted all these memories and an eventual blog post...Ann wrote to tell us that the cruise ship that her and Ross will be sailing on, docks in Brisbane on EasterSunday. So now we have the opportunity to repay their kindness to us. Our sister in law and our nephew and his family will collect Ann and Ross from the ship and then do some 'touristy' stuff and then everyone will come to our place for an Aussie BBQ lunch!

The Van Dusen Botanical Gardens

During our stay in Vancouver, DH and I visited the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens. These are a completely different style to the more 'showy' Butchart Gardens but nevertheless still well worth a visit. And being free, very good value! Lol

The 55 acres of the gardens are divided into sections such as Mediterranean, Arctic Tundra, Southern Hemisphere, Sino-Himilayan were just some of th examples. Many of the flowering plants had obviously finished blooming but would have looked magnificent a few weeks ago due to the mass plantings. 

The day was hot but the Fern Dell was lovely and cool!

More ferns...there were so many varieties!

This shrub had almost finished flowering...it was a cardoon.

These plants are apparently related to the thistle family.

There were lots of plants that are able to survive with little water...

A number of the large trees had a large green bag at the base which provided water to the tree in an efficient way...

There was still lots of colour in the gardens despite many plants having finished flowering.

I liked the pineapple lily in the top right hand corner of the next collage...

Due to the drought the waterfall feature had been turned off but there were still a number of ponds etc, as well as some fountains. 

There were some art works spread around...

Lovely 'wild' areas...and we saw a squirrel run through here...

Near the entry to the gardens we had seen a warning sign...

But thankfully we didn't see any coyotes! As well as the squirrel though, we were very fortunate to see these two foraging in the undergrowth.

DH's camera was more up to the task than mine to take photos quickly and in the semi shade...

These raccoons were digging in the leaf litter and eating whatever it was they had found. We were absolutely chuffed to see some wildlife up close. 

There was also a veggie patch in the Gardens with some more of those giant tomatoes...

And an old tractor with metal rim wheels...I reckon it would have been a 'bone shaker' in its working life, but it wasn't going anywhere now...DH climbed up for a photo...that veggie patch is behind the tractor.

There was an orchard planted out...

Some fallen apples on the ground...

There were beehives...

And there was an English style maze. When my girls were little, I once got lost in such a maze in Mildura. Eventually DD1 had climbed the fence and hedge to come back and rescue me...so that has become a family legend...' Remember when mum got stuck in the maze' story. DH had heard this story so stayed close by me in this maze the other day...just as well! I kept going down the 'dead ends!'

Eventually we made our way back down to the main building and the exit...lots more formal gardens there...

And here we are, back at the main building and the exit.

We didn't cover the whole 55 acres in our visit but certainly got to see a lot of different plants and saw raccoons up close too! 

(A friend who was in Vancouver last December wrote and told me that these gardens are lit up with myriads of Christmas lights...she said that it all looked magnificent!)