Garden Nursery Visit - Brentwood Bay

Licens, mosses, grasses and red rock plants covering these rocks by the shore. I did not want to crawl around on the rocks as this appears to be a fairly fragile ecosytem, easily harmed by careless shoes or dogs.
Some of the picturesque driftwood and rocks with barnacles along the Songhees shoreline.
Another long shot of the painted dragon just a little bit along the walkway from Spinnakers Pub. I believe the little Harbour Ferry docks stops here. That arbutus tree is outstanding!
This is a telephoto view of West Bay Marina; taken from the walkway while shooting for the Victoria Grid Project.

Easter was a quiet day for us, with a duck for our Easter Sunday feast. It was a fine day.

Pat had a delivery of a door prize for the car club to make in the Brentwood Bay area. It was a lovely drive and we stopped at Brentwood Bay Nursery on our way home. This is my favourite nursery but I seldom get out here any more, as my garden is full. Also I get free delivery from Cannor with my membership (also 10% off all plants). Cannor is much closer also. But Brentwood Bay is a real treat to visit. They have many rare and specialty plants. I get alpine plants every year at the Club show and Sale, too, so have not had an urgent need to shop at Brentwood Bay. But, of course, I found a couple of little plants that I could not resist. A cyclamen coum (not really rare - but I could use one or two more of them) and a Daphne x rollsdorfi Wilhelm Schacht which had to come with me. The Daphne tag says: Dark green, thick foliage, dense growing evergreen shrub to 12". Very fragrant purple-pink flowers. A beautiful and choice selection. Zone 6. This time my Daphne is going in a pot, where I can take proper care of it and keep an eye on it. I must research its care, as I have managed to kill a few Daphnes already.
I found a good source of information on growing Daphnes. They need good drainage and yet do not let them dry out.

Just as I had found these two choice plants, the sleet and hail began bucketing down. It really got cold in a matter of minutes. The lady at the nursery was loading wagons with precious plants and getting them under cover in the green houses. This hail/sleet kept up until we were half way home and it turned to rain. We must have been a pocket of cold air. Freaky weather.

My big white phalenopsis is still in bloom. There are African violets in bloom also. Its all clean and looks good. I love my new room and the kitchen. Life is good! We are so very fortunate.

I read quite late last night, so am not very alive today. As well as reading 'Arminius" (which is pretty tough going at times) I am reading Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden. Its about Genghis Khan and the invasion of China. This history is not as old as I had thought it was. There is a date of 1211 AD on one of the chapters. It is a very good read. This author has done a Roman series of books as well as more of the Mongols.

I had some very exciting news from Cyrus about his new photo upload/sharing site. Two months, maybe!! I can hardly wait. All of the features and design look just terrific!

West Bay Marina

This is one stop from our drive about today. The West Bay Marina is a favourite spot to take visitors. Sometimes I get the impression they are not quite as enamoured with the area as we are.
Our Edmonton guests arrived on the 23 and are comfortably lodged at the Empress. Everyone must have the Empress experience at least once in a life time. Today we drove down and the four of us walked to our latest favourite lunch place for that East Indian soup. mmmm. Then Pat drove us about for a couple of hours. The streets are mostly clear on the more travelled areas. But the snow is piled at the sides of the streets. The sun came out and melted quite a lot of this white stuff away. All the snowmen were tipsy. Was a fine day.

Our carpet installation was finished on the 23 also. They only had to change the short piece. The stuff they brought out was a perfect match for the color and dye lot. Yippeeeeee. When they had just finished Karas came by to see about the job having been done. Well! that certainly is a change. Karas will also be co-ordinating our kitchen installation. Great! Nothing like good ol' Saskatchewan people to get a job done! I have the furniture moved back. Only need to reload the curio cabinet. It looks really good. Today, after our visit, I finished vacuuming. It looks really good. Can't wait to get the kitchen finished.

West Bay Marina, Light Gardening

Canon S3 IS, 1/1600 sec., F/5.0, focal length: 6.0mm, on Sept 25th, bright, sunny day. The West Bay Marina is home to the Victoria Harbor Ferries, to some fabulous house boats, as well as big yachts.

Blogger is very busy so I will load my other prepared photo later.

I cleaned up my light garden, fed and watered the plants. It took me 4 hours to do this. It looks better, for sure. I see that 3 of the dendrobiums have tiny buds, so they should appreciate the food.

A couple of days ago we drove to the Songees development and walked to the West Bay Marina to see the house boats. There was a big caravan meet in the camp site just above the Marina. Huge million dollar motorhomes. Its a different world down there in that little corner of town. We had lunch at the Fin and Gill (quite good) and walked back, past Spinnakers to our van, with waterfront all along the way. A lovely day.

I got a couple of okay photos. I am slowly getting more comfortable with my new camera. Love the long lens. On the same card I did a black and white and a sepia, also a vivid colors all in camera. The black and white is very nice. The sepia is not bad. I wonder if there is a way that I can make the sepia or black and white look like IR. Maybe in Photoshop. But that's for another day.