17 Saturday Oct 2026
Posted in garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, flowers, growing, mandevilla, moments, nature, transplanting, widow
the mandevilla is taking the transplanting and moving into the house very well…
there are still flowers blooming and the leaves remain green;-)…
15 Thursday Oct 2026
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
the lawn was mowed one last time on Sunday…
whatever leaves are left in the front yard will stay there for all the little creatures, although there aren’t very many leaves…
the garden is a different story… currently it is difficult to see the pond as the net is nearly completely covered with leaves… the elm tree next door still has a few leaves to fall so we will likely wait for them to come down before removing the net and putting the leaves in the flowerbed closest to it…
at that point we will probably bring the fish into their winter condo…
13 Tuesday Oct 2026
Posted in food, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
05 Monday Oct 2026
Posted in family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, garden, housemate, inside, moments, orchids, outdoor, plants, pots, switched, trimmed, widow
spent time a few days ago moving plants and rearranging furniture to make space for those coming in from the garden…
first up was getting the maples into the front window, and then I put a number of small plants into the second basket planter…
ferns came in and the divider was rearranged to make space for the grow lights…
my housemate built a shelf to go under the dining room window… it is just the right height and currently holds three of the bigger plants that have come in…
then I spent time with the orchids… they have been struggling and I have kind of ignored that 😳…
I realized that a few had been planted in moss and clearly they didn’t like it… roots and dead leaves were trimmed, and pots were switched…
all of them have gone onto the shelf in the den and they look much better…
we will see how each plant feels about its new spot in the house🙂…
03 Saturday Oct 2026
Posted in garden, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
baskets, big girl pants, blessed, garden, grow, Hilda the Gardener, mandevilla, moments, nature, transplanted, widow
the other day, Hilda the Gardener arrived for fall clean up…
instead we focussed on transplanting many of the plants that were coming into the house…
one of the best new pots we did was in the new basket planters that I recently had given to me…
it came out beautifully…
we cut the original mandevilla down by about half and then combined it with the new one I purchased on sale this summer…
excited to see how it grows…
02 Friday Oct 2026
Posted in business, family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, travel, Uncategorized
Tags
Abkhazi Garden, big girl pants, cane, family, garden, hummingbird, moments, nature, support, volunteers, widow
had a wonderful time at the Abkhazi Garden after we had our tea…
this garden is basically run by volunteers…
they had a few canes available and lent me one, as I forgot my monopole, which has worked out well as a bit of stabilization for me…
it is a lovely space and the highlight for me was sitting under a tree with my daughter while a hummingbird visited and sat in the tree above us… my daughter took both of the above pictures…
found a few ponds with turtles and goldfish…
I was also impressed with the methods they used to support the trees…
amazing what a group of volunteers can accomplish…
01 Thursday Oct 2026
Tags
Abkhazi High Tea, allergy, big girl pants, family, favourite, garden, moments, shade, wasp, weather, widow
we arrived at the Abkhazi Tea Room just in time for our reservation… our Uber driver had a little trouble finding it, lol…
which was fair as it looked like a house on the street…
it was my favourite high tea spot… more relaxed, but also set in the garden…
I wore my fancy hat, but it caused problems with taking pictures as it put my face in the shade…
the umbrella over our table had me in shade and sun, so I ended up moving my tea items into the sun for photos…
once again we had a wasp visitor, but not quite as serious as the one at the Butchart Gardens, lol…
our server was very attentive and quick to change out one of the items that could have caused an allergic reaction for my daughter…
a delicious and very relaxing tea😊…
27 Sunday Sep 2026
Posted in garden, health, life, moments, nature, retirement, Uncategorized, weather
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, flowers, garden, moments, moving, nature, partially, sunshine, weather, widow
what a delightful day…
I spent a good part of it in the garden, moving from one area to another…
at first it was because I was trying to stay partially in the sun… then out of the sunshine as it was very bright and a bit warm…
then, later it was to get into the sunshine to keep warm again, lol…
and I had some fun taking photos of various flowers…
what a lovely treat, particularly as the weather has been dull, overcast, and rainy for the last few days…
I am blessed…
26 Saturday Sep 2026
Posted in business, family, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, travel, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, blessed, Bonsai Garden, family, Japanese Garden, moments, nature, relaxed, serene, sleeping mermaid, The Gardens at HCP, widow
after spending time at the Butterfly Gardens, we Ubered to the Gardens at HCP…
these gardens seemed much more relaxed than the others we’d been to and the first few spots we walked through weren’t very exciting…
but then we found the Japanese Garden which had a creek flowing through it with light, shady areas, and ponds… it was quite large and was lovely with little surprises along the way, such as the sleeping mermaid…
the Bonsai Garden had a small building to rest in and was a lovely serene place…
it had close to twenty trees that ranged in age from a few years old to over 150…
it was a quiet place to stop for a few minutes before continuing on through the Japanese Garden area…
well worth the visit 😊…
25 Friday Sep 2026
Posted in business, garden, life, moments, nature, retirement, travel, Uncategorized
Tags
big girl pants, birds, Butterfly Gardens, moments, nature, plants, pond, stick bugs, turtles, variety, widow
after two days at the Butchart Gardens, we visited the Butterfly Gardens which were close by…
the first thing you see is an area focussed on stick bugs and poisonous frogs… there were a lot…
then we moved into the Butterfly area… just as we arrived a keeper was letting a box of maybe 50 butterflies out… there were all types inside and one landed on my daughter and climbed up her, lol… another one, a cracker (one of my favourites) landed on the front of a man who was beside us… it stayed on him the entire time he walked through the garden…
besides butterflies, there were a few types of fish, a variety of turtles and tortoises, a flamingo, many parrots and other birds… part of their mission is to take in injured creatures…
they also have some butterflies in all their stages… from eggs, to caterpillars, to the butterflies… that was exciting to see…
the space is very large and it can be difficult to spot the butterflies, although there seem to be more in the front area… but many types and also different ways to display them…
it was fun to see so many creatures in one spot😊…
