If I were asked what one thing a visitor to Victoria should do, I would reply without hesitation “see Butchart Gardens“. It’s one of the world’s most beautiful properties and you would look long and far before you found better return for your dollar. Saturdays in summer represent particlularly good value — go for the day, take a picnic basket, stay for the spectacular fireworks show (worth the price of admission in itself!), and stay at its conclusion for a late-night look at the Sunken Gardens while the traffic dissipates. It’s a ‘must do’ Victoria thing that’s bound to please even the most demanding visitor. High marks!
March 5th, 2007
I had been anticipating her call for some days now. After several lengthy discussions with her and her family I had sensed they were close to making a decision, and so it was no surprise to hear her voice on the phone.
The strain evident in her tone was unexpected, however.
“Well, we’re ready,” she sighed. “We’ve thought it through and have finally decided. We’re moving. So tell me, what can we expect now that we’re faced with both buying and selling? It’s been some years now and we are more than a bit…well, bothered.”
Moving is never an easy task no matter how favourable the circumstances, but it wasn’t difficult to sense that her concern went beyond a financial one, or even the daunting prospect of uprooting after a good many years.
As her Realtor, I was glad to have some reassuring answers.
Continue Reading April 13th, 2007
I took down a series of birdhouses last fall and left them in the atrium of our house over the winter. I overlooked one as I erected them this past May, a ‘down market’ straw coconut-like thing that no previous birds had ever bothered with. Over the winter it had fallen from wherever I had left it the previous autumn and wedged itself behind a set of stacking lawn chairs, and that’s where it was this spring when a family of Berwick wrens, renowned for their unorthodox nesting sites, found it and set up housekeeping inside.
They soon had a nest underway and from inside my wife and I watched them come and go…and it wasn’t long before it was apparent that young chicks had hatched.
Early one morning soon thereafter I looked out only to see a half-fledged baby on the atrium floor. It had either fallen out or, perhaps, pushed in some Darwinian application that sets in when food is scarce and needs competing for. One for the cat. It lay there all morning, its heart beating almost imperceptably, obviously not long for this world. The ‘tough love’ parents came and went with assorted insects for the siblings destined to survive, but paid this one no heed.
“Leave it be”, my wife counseled. “It’s obviously not meant to live. Even the parents have given up on it.”
I took a spade and prepared a small hole in the garden for the inevitable.
So imagine my surprise and amazement later that day when I noticed it had somehow not expired; instead, it was making an attempt at movement. And life. It reminded me in a small way of Jon Krakauer’s account of survival in his riveting book ‘Into Thin Air’ wherein he describes the disastrous climb up Mt. Everest and both the death and heroics that ensued. Its half-fledged wings attempted first flight but its legs, now caught in the gaps thoughtfully provided by the floorboards, ruled out any real mobility — and certainly precluded any return to the nest.
The parents remained indifferent to its struggle and continued to service the nest with no offer of sustenance to their fallen offspring.
“Should we pick it up and put it back in the nest?” my wife asked.
“Leave it be” I rejoined. “It’s obviously not meant to live. Even the parents have given up on it.”
But live it did, and I couldn’t but intervene. With the help of a Popsicle stick and rubber gloves so as not to impart human scent, I picked the wretch up off the floor and gently slipped it back into the company of its siblings. Whether they were pleased to see him I can’t say (see ’competition for food’ above), but when I took the nest down a week or so later it was, to my happy surprise, empty. No maggoty carcass bearing testimony to its demise as I had expected to find.
It’s Darwinian. As with the marketplace, the strong survive.
It’s just that some of us need a boost now and again.
July 5th, 2007
You may have seen the item in the local paper recently having to do with a home owner and her house which is, in her words “…a plain little box in disrepair ”.
Trouble is, City Hall sees it as an ‘Edwardian Classical bungalow’ with heritage value, and has conferred heritage status on it. That means it’s subject to quite strict guidelines governing changes able to be made to it, particularly so with respect to the exterior — and all changes must be approved by Council.
The City was concerned about rapid change in that particular municipality, and peremptorily put it on the heritage list. The owner was never consulted and learned about it some ten years after she bought it. She now wants to conduct needed repairs, and claims to have neither the resources nor the energy to turn it into the architectural gem its unbidden status now demands.
Being on the Heritage Registry is a double edged sword. Examples of architecturally or culturally valuable properties deserve preservation, but owners need to be aware of all the ramifications of that designation before taking that irrevocable step. An owner cannot demolish, add on, or substantially alter its appearance without Council consent, and that has resale implications among other things. True, grants are in place to assist owners in conducting approved alterations, and more details are at www.victoriaheritagefoundation.ca, but you need to look before you leap.
No doubt this owner wishes she had been given that option.
July 17th, 2007
Divorces are - presumably - always painful, but as with most of life’s experiences, some moreso than others.
A man undergoing a divorce in Sonneberg, Germany, was determined to split things right down the middle. Accordingly, he took a chainsaw and carved their house in two and took his half away on a forklift truck.
Reports aren’t clear as to how his wife reacted, but she was heard to say something about ‘…less to clean and paint.’
And if she took him to court, could he plead that he comes from a broken home?
July 18th, 2007
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