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!

Coming around again

Neil's been to California and has returned safe, and sound.

We've been to Canada Blooms, and it's now done for another year (and it's still not spring yet).



We stayed in our favourite hotel, the Cosmopolitian, and walked to the convention centre for the show. The restaurant that we planned for that evening was just around the corner as well. Iceland Naturally and the Icelandic Community Club of Toronto collaborated with several places throughout Toronto to present "A taste of Iceland". One of Iceland's foremost chefs was trucked in to create special Icelandic dishes in two different restaurants in Toronto. We went to the Biere Market on the Esplande. I had the duck - delicious!

But the real gem of the weekend (for me anyway), was the meal we had in the new restaurant at the Cosmopolitian. It's called Eight, and it's billed as a wine bar. I'm sure the wine is lovely, but I didn't have any. I had the lamb. Oh my gosh, I have never tasted a better lamb in my life.

Now, the only disappointment was the invasion of the NYPD helicopters. Yup, that's right - NYPD helicopters. They were filming in the area of the hotel and were a bit....noisy.

Does this seriously look like New York to you? That's the CN tower in bottom of the picture.



Karen

Small bits of news

Neil's going to California again soon. *pout*

Vandy, aka Anti-V, has just (finally) started writing in a new blog, specifically about historical food, called Dagda's Cauldron.

Elliptical machine exercising - good, slowly working my way up to a half hour a day. Lots of sweat and feeling like I'm gonna die, followed by really cool endorphin rushes. Love those endorphins! Health, smealth.....

Canada Blooms is on the horizon in March.

I've just started doing my boss's job for a year while she's on Mat leave and my head feels like it's gonna explode by the end of every day so far this week. Life is fun.

Still lots of snow here, I'm getting impatient for spring. Sunshine, fresh air, warmth, pretty growing things in the garden. Let's look at something from last year, shall we?

Canada Blooms, Taranna, and the Potatoes

Last weekend, we went a'travelling. Just down the road a bit to Taranna, also known as Toronto, for those who prefer the correct spelling and not the accented phonetic version.

The delightful husband took me to see The Phantom of the Opera, and we stayed in this really gorgeous hotel, called the Cosmopolitian. We ate in the hotel's restaurant - Doku 15. Careful with that last link, it takes a long time to load and doesn't like all browsers. But it's the best meal I've had in years, and the service was fantastic.

And the next day, we made our annual pilgrimage to Canada Blooms. Sometimes it's disappointing, sometimes it's not, but it's the earliest touch of spring we can get up here in the great white north.

And it's right next to this favourite landmark. You would think after 30 years, I'd get tired of trying to photograph it, but apparently not. This is the world's tallest freestanding structure - the CN Tower.


Another landmark near the convention centre is the Skydome (currently known as the Rogers Centre - I frown at the change of name), which hosts these modern gargoyles - sports fans.


The convention centre itself pretty non-descript, architecturally. It's the things inside that usually get my attention.

Like these pretty flowers....


Or this interesting collection of standing stone waterfalls...


Can you imagine that in your backyard?

The theme of the show this year was "Earth, Air, Fire and Water". It looks like this landscape designer was trying to do something sort of Stonehenge-like, with water. Ambitious, for sure.

On a more personal front... the potatoes fall over over, go boom. Many of the stalks broke in the process. I completely fail to understand.



But ya know, I'm still encouraging them to grow - gotta see what happens next.

Karen

Don't know what it is...

I don't know what's going on exactly, but it seems I've got some kind of weird blog block. Apparently, I'd rather move all the images around in my home directory, and fix all the links (by hand, individually) in the last year of blogs then write a new one.

Weird.

Anyway... the weather is depressing. It's still too cold to work in the garden, and while the snow build-up melted a week ago, and got me all excited - it's snowed again since. *sigh*

Last weekend (the one before this) we were at CANADA BLOOMS and got a few pics.


Masses of tulips, forced early and alive only for the weekend at Canada Blooms.


Art, which while very pretty, I can't imagine ever wanting to put in my garden.


Jack in the Pulpit - I'm going to have to consider adding these... what a great shape to the bloom.


Trellis / arch / art by a friend of ours - Darrell Markewitz at Wareham Forge.


Here's a close-up...


And the obligatory tourist shot of Toronto - the CN tower. The Metro Toronto Convention Centre is right at the base of the tower.

Karen