Garden tour

Wowie-zowie, perhaps she can be taught…. This post is basically fluff, I’m trying to learn how to use iPhoto on my iBook to put pictures into my blog. So far, I have only succeeded in putting in giant sized links that destroy the format of my pages, but I think I’ve got it now. Ok, these pictures are from a Garden Tour we did today, in particular of one spectacular estate on Beach Drive in the heart of Oak Bay, which is a separate municipality, but really part of Victoria, just on the east coast of our pretty peninsula. (The joke is that Oak Bay, generally very affluent, is “behind the Tweed curtain.” Very stiff upper lip, don’t you know. Sort of like Beverly Farms, without the Yankee flavour.) You would never know from looking at these pictures that Oak Bay is fairly urban and not at all, but really not at all rural. (Beverly Farms is suburban-rural, but Oak Bay isn’t.) But then, this estate is on 2 acres, right on the ocean, looking east toward Mount Baker in Washington State, and you can’t see the more urban density of apartment buildings, hotels, and marinas until you are on the beach itself, looking to the right. The garden was fabulous, but the niftiest thing was the tee-ing off platform that the owner had built in a corner of the garden, up high, with a view to the granite rock-face fronting the beach below: In this picture, you can see the actual putting green at the beach below, which the golfer aimed for from his platform up high: And finally, a picture of the garden starting to reveal itself, as you enter it from the side: I’m leaving the still larger picture of the Gunnera, below, for comparison. I think the slightly larger size is better since the other three are now so tiny that it’s hard to make out details: