“Thank You”

9 July 2025 – You already know I’m a great fan of Vancouver’s Green Streets Program, the pilot project with 15 volunteers that now numbers hundreds of volunteers city-wide, tending traffic-circle and street-corner gardens.

So I always notice them, as I pass — including, earlier today, the one in the traffic circle at St. George and East 10th.

But even I, doting as I may be, have to acknowledge that this one is pretty scruffy.

It’s definitely a work in progress. “Shaggy” is the kindest word I can offer for the state of the foliage.

On the other hand! There’s a metal table and two chairs, and flagstone pathways that invite pedestrians to step out of the city and enjoy a quiet moment in the garden.

The furniture is graceful, a pretty ceramic mug rests on the chequered table-top, and, look, flowers bloom in a ceramic plant pot hanging on the back of that directional sign.

Even so, I would not bother to show you any of this…

but for the words written on the back of the opposite directional sign.

“To the people who have been taking care of my traffic circle, Thank You. I’ve been too busy so far this year. Love your work!!! Hope to meet you”

Pretty terrific, eh?

The Anatomy of Awesome

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.

  • WALKING… & SEEING

    "Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)

    "The voyage of discovery is not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes" -- Marcel Proust (1871-1922)

    "A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities" -- Rebecca Solnit, "Wanderlust: A History of Walking"

  • Recent Posts

  • Walk, Talk, Rock… B.C.-style

  • Post Categories

  • Archives

  • Blog Stats

    • 130,595 hits
  • Since 14 August 2014

    Flag Counter
  • Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

    Join 2,048 other subscribers