Jojo à Vancouver

These pictures are of the current state of the garden. As you can see, I have a higher than 50% germination rate, which I reckon is quite good for my very first foray into vegetable gardening. The winter squash and the sunflowers grow like crazy, you really see them change from day to day. The herbs are much slower, and the tiny one-leaf coriander plant actually died over a 2-day sunny spell when we were away camping. For our upcoming two-and-a-half weeks in Europe, I have asked neighbours to water the garden, so hopefully most of it will still be alive when I'm back. Oh, and the very first harvest: two rucola and two spinach leaves, they were super tasty in my tomato salad for lunch yesterday.

For the first time in my adult life I have a back yard -- and somehow, that motivates me much more than the balconies I had in almost all my Parisian apartments. So here I go, inspired by the vegetable gardens of new friends here in Vancouver, I set out to read up on the "howto". Pretty soon, somebody mentioned square foot gardening, and the book really made it sound all so logical and methodical, very appealing to my engineering and planning side. I really loved the process: deciding where to put the beds, how to build them, buying supplies, building them, filling them, putting the little grains in the earth, and since then waiting and moistening the top layer every day. So even though it took me forever (say three months?) from first thinking/talking to now seeing the first little green leaves poke through the soil, I love to do it this way, my way. So what, if this year's harvest is going to be smaller than had I started the easy way right away rather than building an...

Leaving Vancouver early on a Saturday morning, well sort of --- we left home at 9 am, not bad, considering I had aimed at 8h30am ;) Our chosen destination: Cheakamus Lake turned out to be not possible: too much snow on the access road, the photo shows how the snow plows had pushed a little hill at the entrance of the forest service road. When Little Jo said how disappointed he was, because he really wanted to do his first backpacking trip, I explained that this was just a great way to get some exercise at being flexible and changing your plans. So we drove on to our alternate: Birkenhead Lake Provincial Park. Lots of snow here, too -- so we left the car in front of the closed park gates, and walked in without our packs first, to see how far it would be to some fresh water and a level spot on gravel (I actually only had a 1:150.000 map of the area, which showed the park gate at the wrong location, so I thought it was only about 10 minutes. Well, turned out it was 1km on snow, so a bit ...

Endlich wieder wandern! Und was fuer ein toller Tag dafuer! Nach dem ich diesen Winter mir mein linkes Knie mindestens dreimal ordentlich verdreht hatte, war das Skifahren nicht so toll, wie ich mir das fuer unseren ersten Winter in Vancouver ausgemalt hatte. Aber jetzt mag das Knie wieder, und hat auch waehrend der 600 Hoehenmeter hoch und runter nur einmal leise gemuckt. Stawamus Chief, unser Ziel, und Klettermekka mit 10-12 Seillaengen Granit -- ein bisschen Plattenschleichen gibts auch fuer die Wanderer oben kurz vor dem Gipfel Treppen hoch und runter: wenn das nicht ein Knietest ist? kurz vor dem Gipfel gab's dann noch zwei Leitern und ein paar Ketten, sehr hilfreich, ich weiss nciht, ob ich ohne J da hochgekriegt haette. ---- oh, and: totally doable for a seven-year-old. It was ever so busy, but what a beautiful day for the hike, too. Friends of yours were up in a single-engine plane flying around Squamish yesterday, too: our views were very similar. Not so fun: some of the l...

Who would have thought that soccer can be a) so serious b) so difficult to find information about? -- Image from Clappstar via a Flickr search for Creative common licensed content http://www.flickr.com/photos/clappstar/857300714/ Hm. When I was seven years old, I played in the local soccer club. There were two in our village, one for each end of the streeeetched out settlement in the foothills of the Black Forest. Here? Well, you can sort of enroll your kid wherever you like -- as long as there is space. And: but don't make the mistake to enroll him into soccer clinics at the community centre: nowhere near the actual soccer fun, where they have games. Ah yes, do say goodbye to weekends in the process. Soccer games for young ones are early on Saturday morning. Is there a way of finding out which day of the week he will be practicing? Not sure. Maybe? Will you believe I've spent over an hour now on the PC, trying to google all this? Found an interactive map to the soccer clubs, ...

What a great way to spend a Sunday. With horses. And little Jo just loooves horses, always has. And so does big Jo. So there. It's really a great thing to have young French women and men work for the school -- First of all, they are excellent babysitters (several to choose from, all of them know little Jo, and they risk a lot more than just the babysitting job with me, should anything go wrong). And then, they are, just like the two Jos, into exploring Vancouver and BC in general. And they come from a similar background. So sharing tips on where to go and what to do is just great. Even if sometimes, I feel slightly old chatting along with them -- but they are great and don't seem to mind. So thanks to two girls from school, I knew the Cloverdale Rodeo was on this weekend. We had other plans for yesterday (went to a Capoeira show at the Children's festival, which was great, too), and today we went, I decided we might in the morning, and off we went after service. Rather spo...

Oh did I say we have a French bakery in our building? It's really good, albeit a bit pricier than in Paris. On the other hand, everything here is more expensive than in Paris, with the exception maybe of household appliances and gas. -- Back to the bakery: what a funny surprise the first morning here, when we walked out onto the street in quest for food, and before even walking ten steps, walked in to be greeted with "Bonjour Madame", to which I replied, much to the baker's surprise with "Bonjour Monsieur". Oh, and he even has a play area for kids, and makes coffee, and has tables to sit down at. Speaking French, talking with a fellow immigrant, but one who's been in Canada for over twenty years, good bread, viennoiseries, and patisseries: not much could have been better on our first morning here. Little Jo loves to check in with the baker every morning -- and I must say I value both the products as well as the advice and the pleasantries we exchange. Gl...

All's well with J and me, -- the photo is from last summer on Galliano Island, between Vancouver and Vancouver Island. Why am I about to move to Vancouver, Canada? I decided that I wanted to live with more hiking, climbing, kayaking, skiing and camping in my life, and started looking into moving to Vancouver five years ago. I will move in three weeks, and have everything but a job, but have several leads for that, too. Just hope that the job will pan out before my money runs out. I am quite confident, because I have done lots of research into the market -- started to build up my network, both with potential employers and with recruiting agencies. After a year of that, I found that I needed to actually move to find something, so that's what I'm doing. J still in Paris for a couple of days