Ever wanted to be a part of a flash mob? The energy of being involved in the 2010 Olympic Flash Mob was unlike anything I can describe. There is really something special about dancing with a large group and here is your chance to give it a try.
To celebrate the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival the VCBF is putting on a Cherry Blossom Umbrella Flash Mob Dance complete with pink umbrellas! Part Bollywood and part Singing’ in the Rain, this upbeat flash mob is sure to be a blast for those who participate! Sign up at: www.vcbf.ca .
January 25 2012 | Flowers and Vancouver | 2 Comments »
Last week I visited the Pacific National Exhibition with my nephews. The kids had been wanting to visit a farm so I suggested we go to the PNE instead to see Safeway Farm Country, a set of indoor exhibits with farm animals, vegetable plants, honeybees and mushrooms. I’ve been going to the PNE for Farm Country (and the Superdogs) every year for the past 15 years but this year I found that the displays were much less populated (the petting zoo has been reduced to 3 animals, a bunny, a donkey, and a miniature horse, each being held/supervised by a PNE worker, and there were far fewer ducks, bunnies, pigs and hatching chicken eggs).
Until this year, the one area I had never been into was the Kidz Discovery Centre which, according to the website, “allows kids to become a farmer for an hour and learn about where their food comes from”. Here is a brief summary of our experience:
First, they gave the kids aprons and buckets to collect plastic farm produce from the displays on their discovery tour. The next stop was at a trough of soil where they gave the kids bean seeds to plant and told them they were tomato seeds. The staff broke the beans seeds in half and told them they were carrot seeds, and let them plant those as well. Next, they collected white plastic eggs from brown plastic chickens and vise versa before moving to more troughs of soil to harvested their fully grown plastic tomatoes and carrots. Here is a quick snap I took on the display that taught the kids how vegetables grow:
The kids continued around the displays collecting empty boxes of milk, perfect red plastic apples, little bags of wool and a few other things. At the end the staff took their kids’ harvest back and gave them a coupon to use at the mock store at the exit. The only thing available in to buy at the ‘store’ was chocolate milk Not vegetables, fruit or plain milk, just chocolate milk.
Apparently Safeway believes that hyper and miseducated children are our future.
I don’t. I feel that kids are smart and should be taught what a real tomato seed or carrot seed or bean seed looks like. That carrots are fun to pull out of the soil by their greens because they are totally hidden in the soil, that tomatoes grow on bushes and that they can be many colours, sizes, shapes, and flavours. That you get white eggs from white chickens and brown eggs from brown chickens. And that farmers don’t sell their harvest to buy chocolate milk at Safeway.
I had a few days to shake off the frustration but in the end I was so disappointed with the Safeway’s Kidz Discovery Centre that I invited my nephews (and their parents) to a few farms in Abbotsford. We spent the day feeding lettuce, apples, carrots and corn to all sorts of farm animals, picked real apples and learned to sort through the fallen, diseased and wormy ones, watched cows machine-milked on a conveyor belt, got lost in a corn field and climbed all over antique tractors. It was a great day and a much more honest representation of where food comes from.
We went to the Birchwood Dairy and the Apple Barn Pumkin Farm on the Abbotsford Circle Farm Tour. I’ve done all of the Circle Farm Tours available and have enjoyed them so much that I plan to do them all again. If you decide to do a tour yourself, bring a cooler to pack all your farm fresh goodies in, start early in the day, and pick up a tour brochure at your first destination. The kids will still end up with a sugar rush from fresh ice cream and a bushel of apples eaten while picking, but at least you can feel good about what’s going into their heads.
September 08 2010 | Growing Food and Vancouver | 8 Comments »
This past Saturday I attended the Wild Seafood Festival in Steveston Villiage. Salmon has been recently making headlines as the 2010 Sockeye run is the best it has been in 100 years, and that’s after many years on the decline. The fishing boats down at the docks were almost completely hidden behind the hoards of clamouring people trying to catch some fresh fish off the boats.
My first instict was to run back to my car and get the hell out of the craziness but the energy in the air was so intoxicating that I took the bait. I cued into the school of people who were all lured down to the docks, lined up, and hooked with some pretty fantastic bargains. I walked away an hour later with some of BC’s finest wild seafood: sablefish, sardines and sockeye.
Feel like a outcast since you didn’t get to go on this wild adventure? Well the “festival” part of this event was a couple of booths set up near the cannery, which were lovely but you didn’t miss much. The Gulf of Georgia Cannery National Historic Site is open every day February to December and the fishing boats are still reeling in fresh fish and selling it off the docks daily. I think the only thing you will have missed, was tackling the crowds and long lines.
September 03 2010 | Canning and Growing Food and Harvest and Vancouver | 6 Comments »
Today I dropped by my very favourite nursery in the Greater Vancouver area and the blooms on display simply blew my mind. So gorgeous it was worth a shout out.
Phoenix Perennials in Richmond features one of the largest selections of perennials in Canada with over 4,000 plants. Not only are the plants beautiful, rare, and impecably tended to by great staff, but right now the whole place looks like a plant carnival with so many rich colours of blooms and leaves and bracts.
It’s really the best show in town and the good news gets better: this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is The Summer Sizzle – 30% off plants, pots, and iron work. There are a series of free workshops this weekend as well - check out the e-newsletter for more details.
I’m hoping to steal a little of my time (which has been currently dedicated to the community garden) to get there myself and pick up a few show stoppers for my front yard garden. Hmmm, now where can I find some room….
July 07 2010 | Gardening and Vancouver | 9 Comments »
The VanDusen Plant Sale is an annual showstopper with more than 40,000 beautiful, unique and interesting plants for sale, master gardeners available to answer your every question, AND admission to the gardens is free for the day. The sale runs from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information check out their press release.
April 25 2010 | Gardening and Vancouver | 6 Comments »
Hey everyone, if you’re in Vancouver and have some seeds or need some seeds, the Environmental Youth Alliance is hosting Seedy Saturday at the Strathcona Community Gardens today from 10am-1 pm. Come on by!
April 17 2010 | Community Garden and Vancouver | 4 Comments »
I just bought my Birthday Blossoms Tree in support of the Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival. If you live in Vancouver or have visited in spring, you may have noticed the masses of pink blooms and sweet fragrance of the thousands of ornamental cherry trees that were gifted to the city by Japan in the 1930s. I have always loved this sure sign of Spring and so I was excited to learn that from now until early next year, Vancouverites can get their very own ornamental cherry tree with proceeds supporting an initiative to preserve the 36,000 cherry trees that help make our city unique and beautiful.
The Vancouver Cherry Blossom Festival and the David and Dorothy Lam Foundation are organizing this opportunity as part of Vancouver’s 125th birthday celebration on April 6, 2011. You can start by reserving your tree now for only $30, but be hasty as there is a limited supply of 3,000 available for the ‘Birthday Blossoms’ program. Once you reserve your tree it will be available for pick up from GardenWorks next April 2011. To order your tree go to the VCBF Website where you will find there are 3 types of Ornamental Cherry trees available:
Akebono
Prunus x yedoensis ‘Akebono’
The daybreak cherry is a medium sized tree with an upright spreading crown that flowers in March or April, usually following the purple-leafed plums. The shell pink to white flowers are produced abundantly. ‘Akebono’ is noted for its essentially rainproof flowers and freedom from disease. Autumn colour is pumpkin orange.
Kanzan
Prunus Sato Zakura Group ‘Kanzan’
‘Kanzan’ is a fast growing cherry with a large, upright spreading crown. The huge, double pink flowers are produced in incredible profusion in late April or May. The leaves emerge bronze green at the same time as the flower buds open. One of the Sato Zakura (village cherries) in cultivation in Japan since the 17th century. Autumn colour is yellow to orange.
Pendula
Prunus pendula ‘Yae-beni-shidare’
‘Yae-beni-shidare’ is a double-flowered form of the Japanese Ito-zakura (thread cherry), with flowers in March or April that resemble, as they open, tiny, pendulous pink roses. The habit of this tree is more umbrella-like than many other weeping cultivars and is easily recognized by the long lasting, soft pink, inflated blooms and small stature. Also known as Prunus x subhirtella ‘Pleno-rosea’. Autumn colour is yellow, orange and red.
Linda Poole, the Festival’s Director, says: “The festival is aware of the life cycle of many of the cherry trees gifted by Japan in the early 1930s and feels it is our responsibility to plant now for the next generation. This year our new ‘Birthday Blossoms’ initiative is a gift that doesn’t stop giving, because every spring we are showered with the soft pink beauty of cherry blossom petals. People are helping the environment too by planting a cherry tree. This event promotes both beauty and sustainability”.
In addition to ‘Birthday Blossoms’, there are a number of ways to celebrate. The 2010 Haiku Invitationalencourages both budding and seasoned poets to honour our awe-inspiring cherry trees by writing a haiku on the theme of cherry blossoms. Call for entries is now open today, with the deadline being 31st May, 2010. Winners will be announced in Fall and the top five poems will be featured on TransLink transportation throughout Metro Vancouver (for more information, please visit www.vcbf.ca/haiku/haiku-invitational-2010).
The grand finale is Bike the Blossomson April 17th, which celebrates its third year of providing a breathtaking tour of Vancouver by bike from Vanier Park to Commercial Drive, allowing cyclists to experience all of city’s unique areas; cultural, seasonal and urban. The length of the route will also be a celebration of the city and culture with music, performers and light refreshments. Register with the Vancouver Area Cycling Coalition at www.greatrides.ca
March 26 2010 | Flowers and Vancouver | 23 Comments »
