Milo's (age 5 1/2) Recycled Leaf Building
Originally uploaded by spicynoodle888

We picked up some leaves at the park today and come home to make buildings with materials from our recycling bin. This is Milo's creation. Minimal, stark with one window and leaves lining the ground.

Theo's (age 3) Recycled Leaf Building
Originally uploaded by spicynoodle888

Here is Theo's version. He got scuptural with the tape and used the leaf as part of his roof.

The Garden Lives On

Our community garden had a little bit of a celebration and the family got to be in the spot light - check out the clip for the full story.

Sunday was good, gardening with the boys, a bit of BBQ, meeting some neighbours and chomping down on some carrots that we grew from seeds. Next year we're gonna' do potatoes.

Happy Mother's Day

Hope all the moms out there had a great Mother's Day. Ours was super chill. I took the boys to our favourite flower shop where they each picked out their own arrangements for Angela. They were pretty excited about it all and carried them all the way home from the store. We ended the day with one of my infamous one off meals which I can never recreate because there's no real recipe. I call it made up on the spot cooking which I learned from my mom. Basically, the theory is you use what's in the fridge. We had gone to T&T to get rice noodles and BBQ pork - so I had a base, but no sauce. Stealing a flavour from our beloved Next Noodle Bar take out, I wanted a sweet Thai chilli sauce and had to improvise. Solution - a scoop of Heinz Chilli Sauce with a little water to thin it out added as the last ingredient. Angela loved it - it hit the spot and Milo remarked, "It's like it was made by a Chinese guy!" Thanks kid.

Looking Back on April

It's been a while since I've posted - life's just been hectic I guess. But I'm happy to report that the month of April turned out great after all - even with the frosty weather and taxes. Revenue Canada and mother nature may have screwed us, but having Gord, Kimberley and Benjamin in town made the month a memorable one. The boys all got along fine which was great to see and who would have known that Auntie Kimberley is a game monster! Board games, card games, building competitions you name it - her and Milo just clicked. Good to see the tradition of playing games the old fashion way without a joystick lives on in the Kwan family gene pool. I'll have to make sure to teach them both Euchre and German Bridge. Here's a desktop of the boys for the family and some other pics. Enjoy.

What's in Our Garden

Well it's been a busy week with Gord, Kimberley and Benjamin in town, but we still managed to get some of our flowers and veggies planted. However, the weather doesn't seem to be cooperating. Even though we're well into April the temperature has been insanely cold and we even got snow again on Friday night. The tomatoes didn't like that much - we went and checked on them today and they didn't look impressed - hopefully they'll bounce back. Milo is pretty keen on the rain gage and was happy to see some water in it today - 10 mm in total.

A Very Special Day

The End of March

The Garden has Sponsorship

Onni, who owns the land of our community garden, decided to put up an ad for a new condo project in Strathcona, the V6A. Formerly thought of as the bad side of town it's quickly becoming the new cool address as land values keep driving up and space downtown evaporates. Milo's response to the sign is illustrated in his drawing. "The sign is blocking out the sunlight, " he exclaimed. Well, it is their land - they donated it so they do have the right to do whatever they want. But who can fault the logic of a five year old, it is after all a garden. I'm not the least bit surprised, corporate sponsorship comes at a price. I'm just disappointment they couldn't gloss up the mo-fo ad with some pretty people having fun or a cool artsy name like The van Gogh. Perhaps something with more street cred to match it's former life like The 'Hood or The E-Side. The V6A? What is this 90210? I guess Vancouverites have bought into the over hyped real estate game so deep that developers don't even have to try and dazzle us with fancy lifestyle ads anymore. Look out marketers your days may be numbered. Maybe they'll reinvest the marketing money into intelligent earth friendly designs. Or maybe guys like Bob Rennie will just get richer now that they have to put less effort into selling us sloppy and poorly built shoe boxes. I'll put my money on the later.

Container Designs

On our way to Science World (or is that Telus World?) we dropped by the Cambie playground and happily found that a drawing we had created a few weeks ago was still up. It's a sectional view of our cargo container designs. I keep joking about putting a container in our backyard someday and converting it into a studio. I'd have an edit suite on one end and a small table set up on the other with lights for photographing models and doing some stop motion. While Gram and Grampy were here on their visit, Milo started to explain about how his would be white and how it would sit next to mine, but not be connected of course. "They would be separate," he said.

In the photo he's adding his button shelf for his new button collection. He's already got plans for the button shelf (seriously, it's on paper) and he's trying to figure out which uncle would be able to offer him the best advice in terms of fabrication. Uncle Gord (the engineer) or Uncle Todd (the carpenter/paramedic). I told him to ask Uncle Todd about the shelf and to ask Uncle Gord about the container conversion.

Gord, I hope you're ready to offer up some structural engineering advice while in town. The snaps of the containers were taken on the same day during our walk.

I can't wait to set mine up - it's gonna' have solar panels and just be rad.

Cherry Blossoms Desktop

Spring is in the air and even in the downtown core there are trees blooming with beautiful colours. Angela's favourite is the Sakura, cherry blossom, which she has been asking me to get photos of. The blossoms are only around for a short period in the spring and I thought surely I would miss them. Thankfully today the weather and the boys health, they're sporting runny noses, were good enough for a little urban picnic. We opted for one of her favourite spots in the heart of the business district, which conveniently for me, is populated with cherry blossoms. Here's a snap which I've prepared at a standard desktop resolution (1280x1024) for you to download as a desktop. Enjoy.

Sprouts

Little bok choy sprouts - hurray! Looks like our little experiment is taking life. I've been away from the blog for the last while so I'm hoping to get back on track with this sucker. I've added a slide show to the side - the theme right now is the changing landscape around urban bok choy. Hope you enjoy!

Stepping Stones

Now that the bok choy is sprouting we need a way for the kids to access the middle of the plot without stepping on the plants so Angela picked up some recycled bricks to use as stepping stones. Rather than to just throw them in (which is the lazy man option I would have opted for) Angela decided it would be fun to paint them up. She picked up four bricks - one for each member of the family to decorate however they wanted. Theo's brick is an assemblage of colours mashed together to form brown representing earth. Milo chose to brand his through his signature tiger stripes while Angela painted a scene of pastel flowers, a symbol for happy times. As for myself, I opted for a soothing purple for my background to which Milo quickly snagged and added the letter H for 'home'. Leave it to the number one son to put emphasis on what's most important. Way to go kid!

Congee for Breakfast

Tonight Theo made a request for congee, one of his favourite foods which makes the Chinese papa in me proud. It's a dish that takes a good hour and half to prepare, so it's not exactly a 30 minute meal. Fortunately for him I can't resist his ever so polite and cute way of buttering me up so I promised I'd make him some which he could have for breakfast in the morning. Congee for breakfast - damn that's hardcore Chinese in my books!

Hope you like it kid. Time for daddy to go to bed now.

Just Some Snaps

Urban Gardening - Chineesy Stylo

Well it's been a week now and the kids are diggin' the garden. We've been planting flowers, using the compost and planning new vegetables for the future. I wanted to go Chinese in our plot so Angela and the kids picked up some bok choy seeds which they planted and marked out with stick and string. Hopefully, we'll see some bok choy sprout from the ground in the near future. In order to be totally enviro in our house (because it's so fuckin' cool to be enviro now) I've brought back the old family tradition of organic liquid fertilizer, a special Chinese blend of fresh and readily available nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

Growing up my father instilled in us a sense of responsibility and connection to our planet through the food we ate, which he dedicated himself to growing and harvesting in our concrete pad of a backyard in downtown Toronto. I was most aware of this connection during the growing season when we were forced to practice the thousand year old tradition of peeing in a bucket. Every morning, as I awoke and stumbled into the bathroom the sharp smell of urine would remind me of my duty as a loyal son to pee in the red bucket beside the toilet, you know, the one with the recycled wood plank for a cover. Yes that's right folks, the family pee was the secret behind our liquid fertilizer. A farming tradition passed on from generation to generation, which as far as I was concerned, put us in the F.O.B category of immigrants.

The end results, however, were proof that our ancestors knew what they were doing . The vegetables that came out of that garden were the best darn vegetables I've ever eaten. Back then there were no Asian aisles at the local super market so Dad grew everything - bitter melons, winter melons, peas and a variety of Chinese cabbages; my favourite a red version of the bok choy, which mom would cook in a soup. All these tasty treats thanks to our ancestors simple approach of not over thinking things, being resourceful and reusing everything.

Taoist believe that the harmonious flow of Qi, life energy, between people and nature is vital to our health and well being. Our connection as children to my father's urban vegetable garden was as harmonious as it could be, connecting our Qi (or is that pee) with the earth and thus, making the circle life complete.

Thanks Dad for instilling in us a true grassroots eco-Taoist lifestyle - Doh je ah Ba!

Boys let the peeing begin. Honey, did you hide my bucket?

Day One - The Compost

Today was our first family outing to the community garden. The boys were stoked to get out, jump around in the dirt, dig some holes and plant their flowers. While Angela entertained the kids I sat in on a composting workshop put on by the organizers of the community garden. There was some discussion over the type of paper we would be using in the compost and like good little Canadians we all debated in a polite fashion. I could see we had some true environmentalists amongst us as the man to my left was curious to know if the ink and chemicals from office paper would be counter to the organic initiative of the garden. He then wondered what would be worst - the chemicals from the paper breaking down into the compost versus the amount of energy it would take to actually recycle it. One thing is for sure, it's good to see people being concerned about our planet again and thinking about the impact that their actions have - it's about time. Good on you mate!

As for me, I'll be happy if no one swipes the thing.

Garden Lot 4

Here's a shot of our garden lot at the community gardens in our hood. It doesn't get any more urban than this. Located beside the Granville Street bridge, the site was the former home of lunch spot and sometimes drinking hole, Carlos and Buds. I think I've gotten drunk on this very spot which is to be the future home of our veggie and flower garden. Hopefully, we won't be cursed by the number 4 (four in Cantonese sounds the same as 'death' - so for us suspicious (and sometimes paranoid) Chinese minded, it's not a good thing). I think we need to get a Feng Shui master over here to get our Qi aligned. Damn Qi!