How green is my valley (or, I don’t think that’s ACTUALLY a road!)

The guy is a BIG fan of the back road, places with no cell coverage, in particular, places that don’t show up on Google maps. The girl has taken awhile to cotton on to the idea of being somewhere that her friends can’t text her, places that you could disappear and not be found for years, and in particular cliff edges, deep ridges and tree filled valleys with raging rivers at the bottom.

Somehow the guy has influenced the girl to his way of thinking (or rather he’s tricked her a time or two by saying “I’m just going to see what’s up here a ways.”) and she’s learned that sometimes the best roads are indeed the ones less travelled, and it’s always more fun without a map. It’s also quite easy to forget about the minutiae of life like property taxes, school deadlines and board meetings when you’re marvelling at just how many verdant shades of green exist in the world. This week’s drive brought new shades to the spectrum of early summer green.

She arrived Wednesday noonish and he jumped up and said “Come on, let’s go North”. She pretended she knew where north was (she’s clever like that, the girl) and off they went. Apparently Squamish is north and they were on freeway for as short a time as possible before slipping off onto Marine Drive, stopping only once enroute for provisions. If the girl had her way she’d bring a cooler filled with just in case food and drinks, but they’d finished their snacks before they even left paved roads. In the event of disaster they’d have to survive on nuts and berries.

Branching off at Squamish the guy opted for the road less travelled and they both began to decompress to the sounds of Dan Mangan’s Road Regrets. Ahhhhhh. A log bridge built sometime around the renaissance rumbles beneath the tires of Lola, the trusty 4X4 and while her fingers grip the door, the girl watches the river beneath them.

Uphill. Off they go along a creek that they won’t find out till they invoke Google Earth at home later is called Ashura Creek. Amazing waterfalls, incredible rolling creek swollen with the snowmelt that isn’t that far above them. Even a small hydro electric dam to stop and look down at, a chance to step out and relax in a sunbeam for awhile. And green. So very many shades of green. Lush summer foliage, butterflies flitting, leading the way, steep hills, sharp cliffs, deep abysses. No mortgage payments, no credit card bills, no alarm clocks. The true magnificence of a back road in all its summer glory.

Someday he’ll probably take her camping to a forestry campsite on a road just like this. She’ll pack lots of marshmallows and trashy novels. After a day like this such a jaunt sounds like bliss.

Planting a Rainbow

A few times each spring, we visit Western Independent Greenhouses in Burnaby to peruse and procure plants for balcony pots, hanging planters and community garden plots. The first trip is usually a surveillance trip to see what new colours of petunias and begonias have been developed since the year before.

This year our first trip is for some veggie bedding plants for the girls community garden plot (7’X10’ of organic vegetable goodness) a few days after the trip to West Coast Seeds. The garden plot will feature some old favourites (peas, pole beans) and some new varieties of carrots and beets (rainbow blend) as well as Gai Lan. He is the gardener guy that helps get things laid out properly and planted at the beginning of the season and she brings vegetables to him for summer flavour sensations.

The next trip to WIG is for a couple of nicotiana plants for her balcony pots. Interesting that the flowers of the tobacco plant could smell so very nice in contrast to the stinkiness of cigarettes! (Worth noting that he is 6 years 4 months smoke free. Hurray!)

This trip is to gather colours for his balcony garden and though he sometimes misses the huge garden of the yard on the London Street house, he never regrets sleeping in on weekend mornings and not having to worry about watering, weeding, mowing. WIG always has such an outstanding selection of annuals, perennials and succulents.

He’s a particular Guy and while some years he’s gone with a colour scheme, this year he opts for a true variety of colours. Almost crimson dianthuses, geraniums, white and pink double impatients, white, orange and yellow zinnias, and some heliotrope, the girls favourite, the lavender colours, heady sweet liquorice scented blossoms, a few marigolds for brilliance $50 or so later and off we go with two full flats of colour to keep him busy during off work weeks.

A Late Spring Day in Ladner and Westham Island - also known as "There's a lot of manure spread this time of year!"

A hop skip and a tunnel under the Fraser River (always remember to hold your breath as you go underwater!) is the village of Ladner (population 20,000) It is a pleasant community that makes it hard to believe you’re mere minutes from the big city. We like Ladner (and the bridge away Westham Island) for a number of stops on a spring and summer day. First stop is West Coast Seeds, because the girl has a small plot in a community garden in her neighbourhood and it’s high time to get planting underway. West Coast Seeds is a quaint little shop with everything needed for the gardener! A small basket of seeds later and we’re on the road again (one of our favourite ways to be!) in Lola, the trusty Chev with 335,000 km and still turning on the odometer.

The dyke along this arm of the river is home to fish packing plants and floating home communities, just before you get to the 101 year old wooden bridge that goes to Westham Island, most popularly known as the home of the Reifel Bird Sanctuary. Lesser known as the home of a little honey vendor down a side road that sells a number of kinds of flower honey, both creamed and clear (he likes clear, she likes creamed!)

The Westham Island Herb Farm is open from May to October and we were greeted by a glorious deep purple lilac bush as we parked the truck, both of us inhaling deeply to save and savour this heady scent of spring. A cat was eating a mouse as we arrived, reminding us just how far in the country we really were. A great local source of fresh garlic later in July, we picked up a couple of brussel sprout seedlings to add to the girls garden plot. Everything you could want for a herb and vegetable garden is here, as well as a little shop that features some local crafts and artisans work.



There are lots of interesting side roads, both on Westham Island and in Ladner that we explored, stopping to pick up some free fishing nets on the side of one of them (will make excellent garden netting!) and found lots of lovely flowering trees so fragrant we could smell them through the open windows as we cruised the back roads just that close to home.