Last day in Victoria

Thursday was the warmest day of our stay, the late afternoon temperature in the garden around 20C. Chris and John took to the air again, John having an LPV approach flight-checking assignment in Penticton and Kamloops. This entailed nearly 5 hours of flying, with a stop for sandwiches at Kamloops. They climbed to 11,000ft over the snow covered mountains and used oxygen masks. Chris told us there was an awful lot of scenery on the way.

While they were away on these adventures, Jill and I walked down to Cadboro Bay, for another al fresco lunch--at Olive Olio's, popular with the locals (e.g. landscape gardeners and retired ladies groups)--and a walk on the beach. The tide was out so we could forage for oyster shells on the wet sand from which a steamy mist was rising. An old boat, that Jill guessed was being used as a house, was tied to a tree. Canoes perched in other trees, waiting for the high tide. In the bay were numerous sailing boats including a flotilla of small dinghies. The park by the beach has a playground where Caddie the long-tailed sea monster lives, children climbing in and out of its mouth and eyes and over its back.

To reach Cadboro Bay, we went through the flowery campus of UVIC and past large bungalows, their front gardens full of blooming trees and shrubs; some gardens include the rocky outcrops that are a natural feature of the landscape. Jill said she'd been warned that gardening in Victoria is a blood sport! On the way back to the house we followed a rather muddy path through a valley with a stream at its base, and tall mossy trees and ferns on its steep slopes, known as the Mystic Vale.

"This is a gentle place"

Jill tells me, "This is a gentle place" and she's right.

Yesterday, Tuesday, the men went flying to Nanaimo and back in John's Comanche. Before they arrived at the airport for takeoff they dropped Jill and me at the entrance to Butchart Gardens, probably the best known tourist attraction of the region. I had high expectations and thought I might be disappointed by it, but I wasn't. We saw it in the middle of the Spring season with all the Spring flowers in bloom, the weather neither too hot nor too cold and the sun breaking through the small clouds. Best of all, it was not too crowded there. The whole site is kept in immaculate condition and the flowerbeds and indoor plants and flowers are artistically arranged. It's a place that appeals to every generation--near the rose garden with its hooped arches children will find a carrousel with whimsically painted wooden animals to ride--and to all the senses. The hyacinths, narcissi and flowering shrubs give off a lovely fragrance and the birdsong and falling water creates peaceful background music. From the path above the Sunken Garden, we saw a rufous-sided towhee perched at the top of a weeping willow and on the hillside watched a yellow-bellied sapsucker pecking a hole in one of the totem poles. The moss on the shaded slopes and tree trunks was damp to the touch and the sunshine felt warm on our skin. There was an open fire in the coffee shop where every little table had a vase of freshly picked daffodils on it.

Back at the house afterwards I made a list of the flowers and plants I'd seen: flowering cherry, winter hazel with catkins, sequoia (giant redwoods), bamboo, forsythia, flowering currant, magnolia, camellia, tulips, forget-me-nots, beech trees, Japanese maples, mahonia, fritillaries, Pasqueflowers, Christmas roses, celandines with dark leaves, primulae, scyllas, crocuses, pansies, black grasses I couldn't identify, azaleas, quince, heather, wallflowers, trout lilies, aubrietia and two kinds of daisies. The beds were tastefully colour coordinated.

Next to the central buildings is an Italian formal garden with topiary, a climbing hydrangea and brightly coloured hyacinths lining the pond; what appealed to me more was the Japanese Garden, all winding paths, steps and pebble rivers, dotted with picturesque rocks and moss topped Japanese stone lanterns like the ones we saw at the temple in Nikko. This part of the Butchart Gardens had a scarlet gateway and a scarlet bridge, with a path of stepping stones leading to it. At the far end of the Japanese garden we came to the edge of Butchart Cove, off Saanich Inlet, with boats moored there. Jill said the trees on the far bank were arbutus.

The oldest part of the gardens is the Sunken Garden created by Mrs. Butchart with the help of ex-quarry labourers on the site of her husband's limestone quarry from 1904 onwards. Its fishpond is 40ft deep in places and a stream below a waterfall down the cliff face feeds into it. At the far end is a dancing fountain.

John and Chris returned to pick us up in the carpark and drove us home, then out again to the gym where I did four laps of the exercise trail, wood shavings underfoot, while the others used the equipment indoors. Chris is doing an unprecedented amount of exercise!

The harbour at Victoria, Empress Hotel in the distance

Today, he and I went out by ourselves, taking the No. 14 bus into the city and back (on the top deck). We also had a short, but eventful ride on a water taxi: the boatman had a misfortune with the mooring rope at one of the docks and fell into the water!  Luckily enough people were around to help fish him out and regain control of the drifting boat till he could get back in, but the poor man was extremely wet and probably very cold too. He said that hadn't happened to him for ten years. He handed the water taxi amd spare passengers to a co-worker. I hope that someone at the Empress Hotel found him something dry to wear.

Exploring Victoria

Cliffs between Clover Point and Ogden Point

Today we walked some 8 kilometres, mostly by the water. John drove to a parking spot on Dallas Road at the southern end of town and we skirted the shore through the Dog Park on the cliffs, covered with gorse in bloom, as far as Ogden Point. The weather was cloudy but dry, and once again cleared up by the afternoon. People were scrambling over the rocks on the beach and one man was in the water on a paddle board. Further out, container ships were sailing by. Ogden Point is a cruise ship terminal and heliport. We carried on round the headland into downtown Victoria, with a long pause at Fisherman's Wharf, a touristy place where genuine fishing boats were moored as well as many houseboats, painted in bright colours. A man was feeding fish to a family of seals and a sea otter--a "vicious looking thing like a ferret", said Chris, who doesn't like ferrets.

Fisherman's Wharf, Victoria

Across the road by the fish market we bought our own fish lunch from a fish 'n' chip wagon and ate at a picnic table. John and I shared smoked tuna tacos, surprisingly tasty. Then Jill led us past the posh hotels on Belleville Street, all fronted with flowering trees and colourful gardens, so lovely to see after black-and-white Ottawa (where it's still -10, apparently). I commented that flowery Victoria seemed to be gloating over the rest of Canada, and Jill said I was probably right there.

The inner harbour was crowded with boats, including tugs and little yellow water taxis, and seaplanes taxied in after landing from the mainland.

We passed the neoclassical Legislative Buildings and the renaissance Empress Hotel, the trees in front of them as impressive as the architecture, and went a few blocks up Government Street, the main drag, to an excellent bookshop called Munro's where I was tempted by several volumes of Pablo Neruda's poetry, but bought music CDs instead. I wish we had a shop like that in Ottawa. We saw numerous bookshops up the coast in Sidney yesterday, besides. 

To get back to the car, we took a direct route through Beacon Hill Park to Cook Street Village, past the cricket pitch, the bowls lawn, the Petting Zoo, the tennis courts and other such shades of Little Britain (7600 km distant). Many more wonderful blooms en route, a yellow magnolia, a fully flowering azalea, swathes of daffodils, and so on. Back at the house I had a peaceful siesta while Chris sat on the lawn in the Adirondack chair, and woke up to a view of the deer that was trespassing in the garden.

Chris and John went off for their workout at the gym, again, and tonight's supper was chilli with red wine garlic bread; we all dined with relish.