13 June 2023 – “The Drive” being Commercial Drive, the traditional East-Van heart of the city’s Little Italy … and “the Dog-Leg” being my eventual route back west from The Drive out to Main Street and home.

I don’t know it when I hop off my bus at East Broadway, but all 14 blocks north to East Georgia are closed for a street party. I’ve chanced upon “Italian Day on the Drive” — the rebirth of this annual festa after a three-year pause for COVID.

It’s still morning, tents are still being erected, but the party is already strutting its stuff..

A storefront heart, in the red/white/green of the old homeland…

a kiosk sweatshirt, with the cruciform logo of the new neighbourhood…

mannequin attitude, in the street’s landmark Mintage Vintage shop…

street-corner food & people watching down by East 1st…

and one of the Bach cello suites, being played by sensitive fingers beneath the Death Mask gaze of the cellist (and to the utter indifference of a passing dog).

Ten thousand crows shadow the city in this nomadic alternatives mural at The Drive and Venables…

and, early in my Dog-Leg along bike route Adanac Street, a mere two crows fly away south in a mural bordering Woodland Park at McLean Drive.

Only two crows, but look, so much more: three monarch butterflies, one caterpillar & a whole riot of wildflowers. Plus, best of all, that erudite moose, reading his book and ignoring everything else.

A community garden in the park, with a wonderful diversity of participants. The Disabled Independent Gardeners Association cares for one of the raised beds…

and has as its immediate neighbour Le Chou, which identifies itself as an intergenerational garden. (And is not devoted exclusively to cabbage.)

I follow the bike route west.

It offers me the certainties and uncertainties of life and death, debated in few but fervent words on an East Georgia wall just east of Clark…

a maximalist van, on Adanac west of Clark…

a minimalist doorway, after Adanac feeds into Union Street near Glen Drive…

and a stealth gardener at Prior & Hawks.

She is paying tribute to a now-deceased neighbour by continuing their activity in Strathcona Linear Park — which, as its name suggests, is a narrow connector between two other local parks.

“No, I’m not an official City Parks gardening volunteer!” she tells me, as she weeds and plants. “An older neighbour and I — she used to work at the VanDusen Botanical Garden — we’d come here and care for the plants because the City doesn’t look after them well enough.”

Another weed-pull, another shift of knees on the knee pad. “She died of cancer during COVID, so now I do this as my secret garden for her.”

We talk for a while about her strategy of filling the space with common everyday plants, unlikely to be stolen, and then tucking a few beauties among them, kept safe from light fingers by camouflage. “I put in a lovely Bee Balm once? Gone in a day. Now I choose shorter specialty plants, and hide them.”

She grins. “But I know they’re there!”

She shows me a few of the hidden treasures. We share a conspiratorial smile. I go on my way.