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.