I may have already linked to this inspiring blog, but I'll do it again. Take a couple minutes to view her vacation slideshow and tell me you don't want to also go driving around Europe and eat luscious chocolate cake and sip cappucino by the ocean. Wow.

I've just discovered the radio feature on itunes. How fun and so many stations to choose from. Just when I was trying to not spend much time on the computer.
I did some weeding and turning over soil in the garden tonight while the sun was going down. Farley helped me by dancing around on the soil whenever people walked by. Got a compost too and it is set up now.

This plant appeared suddenly the other day. No, sorry, the plant didn't, only the flowers. I don't know what it is, but this picture was taken a few days ago and today the flower has become quite big. Doesn't smell though.

Not the best picture, but there's a lot of lavender here. A big bush of it. It smells nice and I should probably do something with it before it dies off.

Ok, next plant:
This is the little tomato plant that could. We bought it when it was all scraggly and small, and now a few weeks later look at it! Its huge! Just waiting patiently for it to make me some tomatoes. The plant actually smells strongly of tomatoes, so I don't know if this is a good sign or not. You may be able to just make out a tiny basil plant poking it's head out underneath. It has been dwarfed by mister tomato.

There's a lovely lily plant in our backyard which in the last week has started blossoming. Ed and I came home one evening and there were a bunch of buds in the midst of starting to open, in the morning many of them had fully opened. The flowers smell sweet and like Hawaii. I love how plants are sneaky and just when you think a plant has nothing to offer and wonder why someone had planted it in the first place, all of a sudden it says "hey, look at me!"

Aya Kato. I spent quite a while looking at this artist's site. Her images are disturbing and beautiful. Very unusual. Click through the illustrations, you'll be amazed.

I love the artwork of Junko Mizuno-lots of skulls, weird animals. She's put out a collection of Japanese manga style renditions of fairy tales, one is called Cinderalla, another is Hansel and Gretel.

Ed and I went to see Batman Begins in the Imax theatre last night in Langley. It was a neat experience to see a feature film on that big of a screen. I'd only ever seen short space and shark movies in Imax. We passed the Walnut Grove Community centre on the way. I'm always on the hunt for good community centres and when I searched online for this one, here's what I found (click through the other pictures too). Pretty nice hey? It looks really open and bright and what could be nicer than swimming while watching the sunset. The great thing is that it is only a 15 minute drive from our house. I'll give a full report when I've actually visited the place.

I've taken advantage of what little sun we've been offered lately. Ed and I ventured out to Whonnock Lake today (take the virtual tour!), a 15 minute drive from our house. This is a smaller lake with some boggy bits at the edge, but far warmer than the water at Allouette Lake where we went last weekend and almost froze to death under the threatening rain clouds. Anyway, we had a nice swim, I enjoyed a Drumstick ice cream and then we headed home.
I am astounded at the amount of forested areas and outdoor recreation options that Maple Ridge has.