4 April 2024 – How delightful, when an abstract noun — flung around so casually as to be meaningless — is given specific physical presence.

“Awesome,” it turns out, inhabits precisely 0.09 Ha of space at East 15th Av & Sophia Street, in Vancouver’s Mount Pleasant neighbourhood.

See? Spelled out on the fence that separates the 20 plots of Tea Swamp Community Garden from Tea Swamp Park itself.

And if you think I’m making up that name… I’m not.

And if you think some of the gardeners made up that name… they didn’t.

It’s official.

It commemorates the Labrador Tea plants that used to thrive in the bogs that once covered this area. It also helps explain buckled road surfaces and wonky house angles that are still a feature of the local urbanscape.

Wonky, and tiny, and pretty basic in amenities, but much-loved.

Winter-battered Buddhist prayer flags adorn the fence…

bright new tassels encircle a tree…

the street-corner arbour hasn’t yet leafed out, but its Little Free Library kiosk is full of books…

and a mum relaxes on a bench while her toddler whoops around the admittedly modest playground.

More community action next to the park, where the traffic circle is being prepped for summer by its volunteer gardener (under the City’s Green Streets Program).

A work in progress, but…

it already has its very own Blue Butterfly.