Canada Blooms

Last weekend, we made our annual pilgrimmage to Canada Blooms, Canada's largest garden show. It's draw is a strange thing to me.

Is it the new ideas in gardening? the forced blooms giving hope for spring? The chance to stay in our favourite hotel - the Cosmopolitian? To photograph the city?

Forced tulips....



Water feature.... I love 'em, but I don't have the energy to maintain them in our yard.



I love calla lillies, but this picture is actually about me discovering another feature of the camera - being able to change the ISO to accommodate the low lighting on the show floor. I hate using the flash. I think it's rude to the people around me and I never like the results anyway.



Photographing the city.... usually it's the CN tower for me - either up from the ground or down from it's observation platform. But this time, it was the Royal Bank Plaza. On bright sunny clear days, it really comes into it's own.



The Cosmopolitian - delightful as always, but the food in it's companion restaurant is becoming more.... normal. We have another unexpected opportunity to be in Toronto in mid-May - could anyone recommend some high-end eating? I'm interested in a quiet peaceful atmosphere, in which the food is utterly divine. The ethncity of the food is completely unimportant to me - I want to try new things!

Spring!

Spring is finally finally really.... almost here.

Forward Into the Past is almost upon us on April 4th. Go.... check out the website at http://www.treheima.ca/fitp
and if you're local enough, come on out and join us for the day.

We had a high of 12 degrees celsius here and I got some yard work done. I burned a bunch of wood. You have to see the yard to know why that made such a little dent but still made me feel good.

And there are buds on the cherry tree.

Birds and Spring

Neil and I are having a light debate about two photos - perhaps you can help us.

I like this one better - I've lightened the colour balance, although it does seem to flatten the depth in the picture a bit. I like the compositional balance - birds, clematis and fence all seem to be in good space to each other.



Neil likes this one the best - he likes the profile of the birds and feels that the clematis detracts from the simplicity of the birds. I tried lightening this one, but it seemed to make it too light in some spots. Although the depth of field is better in this one, I feel that the third bird being right on the edge of the photo ruins the compositional balance.



Which one do you like better?

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We went to the Stratford Garden Festival on the weekend with my folks. I don't know what everyone else's reasons were - it was very crowded - but I desperately needed a hint of spring.

Usually I can manage to hold out til the Canada Blooms weekend (that's in two weeks) but this year, the yard is a horrible mess and winter seems to be just dragging on.

If we had geothermal energies all over the place like in Iceland, maybe we'd have more recreational greenhouses to get people through winter.

This wild exhuberance of blooms was almost enough.



But these darling little things in my own garden the next morning are tipping over my sense of hope. :)

Another week, another post

Just in case any of you are wondering why I'm posting more frequently, almost predictably, and the photos have been relatively inane of topic....

I'm trying a new thing, suggested by the hubby, to aim for taking and posting one new photo a week - just to work on my photography. Posting to the blog and increasing the readership is just gravy. I hope.

So....this week's topic is my workplace. I don't talk about it much. It seems somehow.... like a bad idea. But I've got a few pictures to show you. :)

We're planning on some renovations (mostly just moving people around into new space) and wonders of all wonders.... I'm told that I will finally get a window! I could have plants! This is the view a few days ago when there was still snow on the ground.



It's important to make sure that this fellow comes along for the ride. It's the gift of a former student - he's been on our whiteboard for 3 years. What's in the thought bubble keeps changing. "Goðin Dag" apparently means "Good day" in Icelandic. I'm a closet Icelandophile.



And should the view not pan out, and the turtle needs to go away.... as long as they don't change this nearby feature.... I'll be okay. His name is Porcellino.