Thursday, March 27, 2008

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.

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

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.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

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.

Wednesday, March 19, 2008

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!

Tuesday, March 11, 2008

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.

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Monday, March 3, 2008

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?