Space for Our Kale This Summer?

We've admired the plants grown in the New Westminster Community Garden projects for years. 

Downtown New Westminster is completely urban yet has three main sites at the present time.  The garden plots near the former site of St Mary's Hospital are just a few blocks from the apartment. More, at the New West City Hall, are not a great deal farther up the hill. We discovered the ones at Simcoe Park just last summer. 

Jay likes to grow food plants. That interest is related to the ease at which plants thrive in his native Sri Lanka. The house in Minuwangoda sits on only an acre or less of land, but it is a jungle!

I don't expect that a community garden plot in British Columbia will support coconut or banana trees, but having one for summer would offer much more potential than the few balcony pots he's been using in recent years.

 

Jay stands in Simcoe Park Community Gardens.

This is my drone shot of the City Hall plots.

St. Mary's gardens are the closest to our downtown apartment. 

The garden plots are administered through a gardening society. In the autumn, I bought a membership so he can be put on a waiting list for space.  Rumours abound that the COVID-19 situation has brought out the 'inner-gardener' in many folks.  The plots can be renewed by those who currently tend them.

This week, I exchanged emails with the society and learned that Jay is ninth in line for an available summer garden plot.  After the NWCS AGM at the end of February, we should hear whether space will open up.  Fingers crossed for good luck.

A Vegetable Patch

We did a few errands this morning. They included stopping by the return-it place for the bottle deposits. During the time out, I had to show Jay the close-by park I discovered just this week. The other day, I used the area for a drone flight. Today, we walked around the parameter of the entire area and also amongst the plots in the community garden. People are keeping their spaces looking good. I now appreciate why Brussel sprouts are so expensive. Those plants surely took up a lot of space for a rather small harvesting potential.

It May Be Cold But It's Really Sunny!

If I park for a couple of hours at New Westminster City Hall for the EV chargers, I can walk to our apartment in six minutes. When going down across the front lawn, we pass several community garden plots. Today, some folks were doing a bit of their initial work mucking about.



New Westminster apparently has three main community garden sites which are administered through the New Westminster Community Gardening Society. We have one near a school just a few blocks away. I just looked up their website to see how easy it'd be to get one yearly plot. I'm assuming they're scarce but Jayantha does have quite a green thumb. He could make good use of more space than our balcony affords.

It seems as if a $25 fee is required to obtain membership. That is a bit steep, I think.

Plotting a New Course

We saw various community gardens in Vancouver's West End on the weekend and the little ones at St. Mary's Park here in New Westminster yesterday.



It seemed fitting to snap a photo showing some greenery already growing out in front of New Westminster City Hall. I cannot say I'm enamored by the addition of a tarred shortcut walkway, but it is nice to see a large portion of the formerly grassy area a bit more approachable.

Veggies in the 'Hood

We've been noticing posters for a neighbourhood party. How I love summertime in the Lower Mainland! It looks like at least a month of fine weather is locked in due to the current high-pressure system overhead. The advertising information relayed that the event was taking place this Saturday at St. Mary's Park. We seldom have reason to walk though that area even though it is only a few blocks from here. We weren't even aware there was a new park. On the way uptown today, we stopped on Agnes Street.



The land was the former site of St. Mary's Hospital. The building was removed years ago but we remember it. A new school and playing field have been built on the grounds. It seems as if on the lower slope there was also room for some playground equipment and a small, new park area. Interestingly, we noted luxurious plants already growing in a number of community garden plots too.

Oops, We Did It Again!

We'd known about this duck gathering date since the most recent dinner in Richmond. Jay and I headed to the Vancouver Waterfront for the second time in as many days. The Canada 150 celebrations turned into a two-day affair this year. We went primarily to get a glimpse of the MS Noordam as she was parked at Canada Place today. Now that we know the ship is going to be home for six weeks later in the fall, we wanted to take a look at least from the exterior.

We eventually got to the West End although TransLink has apparently chopped services to the Davie Street corridor. It was a great day to check out the locations where the hosts are managing urban community plots.






We loitered around Nelson Park for a bit before returning to dinner and a nice conversation at the apartment on Harwood Street.





We, of course, managed the eventual duck swap before heading home.

Grass is Nice. Gardens are Better!

I remember reading about an interest in having community gardens on the lawn of the city hall in New Westminster. That talk of long ago, now appears to be rapidly progressing towards reality.





I walked uptown while Jay was visiting with a hospital-sponsored dietitian for a two-hour class. The Burnaby Hospital booked him last month as a part of his post-bypass surgery in the Healthy Heart Program. He knew that there'd not be a great deal to learn but, as long as it was a free service provided to former surgical patients, he figured, "Why not?" He had a lot of individual attention as only two others were attending.

So, I took the time for a little walk. Going uptown is not far but our city is on quite a hill. It is very good exercise and now that the weather has improved, I should probably make this effort frequently. I walked up Fourth Street through the most beautiful part of New Westminster, between Queen's Park and Sixth Street. That area is mostly heritage housing and owners put a lot of effort in keeping up their lawns and gardens. I put today's pictures of the walk on my Flickr account. Perhaps someday, I can create a few blog entries just to show off an amazing, little-seen area of New Westminster.

The Day's Events

Today was a full one. It started quite ordinarily with a Saturday morning trip to the Superstore. The only unusual thing about that was I bought a new cooler with the PC Points accumulated on my credit card. We tossed the old cooler, which we may have bought in the 90's, into the recycling bin. Oh, and I purchased a Coleman 5-person dome tent. They were having a sale at the department store that is across the street. We had lunch at home but plans for the afternoon.


We went to downtown Vancouver to meet up with friends. This is such a fantastic place at this time of year! Of course we hopped on the SkyTrain to get downtown and then a bus to get to closer to Harwood Street.




First, we stopped at the apartment for a while and chatted. Later, we went for an afternoon walk to English Bay and then along the north side of False Creek.








From there, we went back up from the end of Davie into the community gardens, so we could see the plots that our friends take care of.






A pub was next and then we had dinner at the New Peace Chinese Restaurant. It was a great place for fiery Schezwan Chinese! By the time we'd walked down to Waterfront, it was after 9:00 pm. I remember this as we heard the loud, Stanley Park canon.






We SkyTrained back to New Westminster from there. It was a very pleasant afternoon and evening.