Evergreen Brick Works community greenspace: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 30, 2015 For nearly 100 years, Don Valley Brick Works supplied Toronto with masonry bricks and helped the city rebuild and grow after a devastating fire. By 1984, however, the kilns were closed down, and the factory buildings languished. Urban explorers and partying teens found their way in, and ...
Cabbagetown garden art and Hugh Garner Co-Op Green Roof: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 29, 2015 The teeny tiny gardens of Toronto’s Cabbagetown neighborhood of Victorian homes kicked off our final day of Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling in early June. Due to the tight quarters, pictures of artful vignettes were easier to take than overview photos, and I’m sharing my favorites here. Cabbagetown ...
Golden brocade garden of Marion Jarvie: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 28, 2015 All that is gold does not glitter, especially in the Toronto, Ontario, garden of designer and speaker Marion Jarvie. Her home garden was our midday stop on the 2nd day of touring at Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling. High and bright, the sun flattened and shadowed my photos ...
Simple lines, big impact in Forest Hill contemporary garden: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 26, 2015 One of my favorite gardens on the recent Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling was a contemporary garden of massed grasses and alliums in the upscale Forest Hill neighborhood. Nearly all of the gardening space is located in front of the house (the back and side gardens are very ...
Storybook garden on Algonquin Island: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 25, 2015 Tell me this doesn’t look like a Thomas Kinkade painting, but in the best sense — light gleaming in the window of a picturesque cottage — without the kitsch. With rain clouds darkening the sky, this was the last island garden I visited (see my Toronto Islands ...
Garden is But-A-Dream on Algonquin Island: Toronto Garden Blogger Fling
June 24, 2015 While exploring the Toronto Islands (click for an overview tour) during Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling, I happened upon a cheery yellow cottage near the Algonquin Island harbor. Adorned with a black unicorn and a sign proclaiming the garden’s name — But-a-Dream — it was irresistibly charming. You ...
Island hopping, Toronto-style: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 23, 2015 Seventy garden bloggers boarded a ferry earlier this month and were transported from bustling downtown Toronto (pictured above) to the idyllic lanes of the Toronto Islands (below), a mere 15 minutes across Lake Ontario but seemingly a world away. This was the last tour on our first ...
Floral design demo with urban farmer Sarah Nixon: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 21, 2015 Floral designer and urban farmer Sarah Nixon welcomed approximately 70 bloggers (in two shifts) into her tiny back garden during our first day at Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling earlier this month. Sarah, a gardener and floral designer who operates My Luscious Backyard, explained her business to us ...
Hillside Swansea gardens: Toronto Garden Bloggers Fling
June 20, 2015For 8 years I’ve been fortunate to attend the annual Garden Bloggers Fling, a 3-day international garden blogger meet-up and city-wide garden tour, organized each year by volunteer bloggers from the host city. This year, in early June, Toronto’s garden bloggers hosted the Fling, led by sisters Helen ...
Tanzanian safari: Tent camp on the Serengeti, crocodiles, and soaring over volcanoes
January 14, 2014 We made several more game drives while visiting the western corridor of Serengeti National Park (June 2007), seeing many, many elephants — and I took so many photos of them that my family got elephant-fatigue when viewing them later. I’ll only show you a few, and not ...
Tanzanian safari: Serengeti National Park and sunrise hot-air balloon ride
January 13, 2014 We left the Maasai village (June 2007 trip to Tanzania) and got back on the dirt road heading to Serengeti National Park. The drive in our open-roofed cars was long, dusty, and jolting. Open grasslands gave way to a savanna with flat-topped acacias and occasional spring-fed watering ...
Tanzanian safari: A visit to a Maasai village
January 13, 2014 The next day, on the way to Olduvai Gorge, where we enjoyed a short natural-history talk (and I inexplicably took no photos), we stopped to visit a Maasai village. The chief greeted us warmly by the road. An incessant wind prompted us to shield our eyes from ...
Tanzanian safari: Ngorongoro Crater
January 12, 2014 After our visit to Mto wa Mbu (June 2007 trip to Tanzania), we returned to the lodge for lunch and then hopped back in the vehicles for the drive to Ngorongoro Conservation Area. The road climbed, the air cooled, and when we stopped at an overlook to ...
Tanzanian safari: Mto Wa Mbu village
January 12, 2014 After the nature walk at the hotel, we drove down to the village of Mto wa Mbu, at the foot of the Rift Valley, for a guided tour (June 2007). Our guide told us that out of 120 tribal groups in Tanzania, 110 are represented by people ...
Tanzanian safari: Maasai school and Lake Manyara National Park
January 12, 2014 On our fourth day in Tanzania (June 2007) we visited a local school on the way to Lake Manyara. An English-language world map was painted on the school building. The only city noted on it is New York, which is of course how New Yorkers see the ...
Tanzanian safari: Elephants, lions, and baobabs in Tarangire National Park
January 10, 2014 On our second full day in Tanzania (June 2007), we drove to Tarangire National Park, a 1,000-square-mile preserve located 75 miles away from Arusha. On the drive there, my face was pressed to the window, and I grew increasingly excited to see zebras and gazelles grazing in ...
