Briana and I have started with the gardening. We have long wanted to take an active interest in growing our own food and we did grow a passel of herbs in the old condo but there was no space and when the real-estate bug hit, the nascent flora hit the bricks.

I our new place, in the West End of New Westminster, we have more space and we have tried some first steps. We aim for a true Victory Garden and we plan to be exemplars of sub-urban self sufficiency in some way or other. So far we have some kitchen herbs, tomatoes planted, squashes and zucchini, onions and chives and a few other tid-bits. There seems to be a massive movement gaining speed towards self sufficient urban farming but it could be the “hey, there sure are a lot of Honda Odysseys on the road” phenomenon, they day after you buy one.

So I have been reading some cool blogs and other blogs and wikipedias. And Briana has read a slew of super books including The 20 Minute Vegetable Gardener and Michail Pollan’s In Defence of Food.

Recently we attended a meeting with the New Westminster Parks horticulturalist and management staff and a super group of interested gardeners with the aim of establishing a community garden in the city for the benefit of all city gardeners. My first plan is to use the two vacant lost close to my house. In the satellite photo below, the houses still exist but the two houses closest to the south-east corner of Grimston Park.

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The space is not really suitable for much other than a parking lot or a community garden, and we all know what Joni Mitchel thinks about parking lots.

More to come.

Well we have done it. Photos are still to come but I can say now that we have moved in to our new family home. It feels so great to have this place. It has space, potential, wow, just everything we were looking for. Briana and I have been pinching ourselves and giving each other amazed looks over the last two days, as if to say “Can this be happening? We live here! Is that not great? I know, right?”

We dove in and got to work right away. The move in was smooth and uneventful except for a stream of dirty jokes from the movers and tales of younger days as a free lovin’ hippie back in Hawaii. Since then we have rolled around in home ownership like chickens in a dust pile (with extra clucking). We have had the obligatory trips to Canadian Tire, Home Depot and Ikea, with the promise of more to come. I have cut my own grass ( MY OWN GRASS) for the first time ever and improved my domestic drainage with the addition of a downspout extension, some 3/8 pebbles and a spade.

Briana has planted some tomatoes and herbs and generally done a million and one things to make this house our home. Wesley loves the place, everything about it seems perfect to him so he just toddles around the absurdly expansive rooms cackling to himself. Wagner, the dog, thinks that we are on vacation and at any moment he will be able to finally go home. Poor puppy, he doesn’t yet know that the space is his too. Not being on the New West Quay has really cut down the number of other dog he sees in a day so maybe he is just missing the domination of like creatures.

It is fabulous and exhausting. More and much more to do, a suite to rent and a life to lead. Check here again soon.

Papa’s got a brand new bag! The early and effortless sale of Blue Thunder (see preceding post) left us with no car. Tell me how am I to move house and take care of my darling with no wheels? (I am not listening to your eco suggestions, I can’t hear youuuu. La la la).

We had a ’suspect’ 2001 Honda Odyssey lined up with a broken, then repaired odometer, ostensibly 95,000KM and a rather beat up interior. It was a good price but I would have 12% in taxes to pay and a niggling suggestion that something was not quite right. After a little more research I found another one, in a colour more happy making to the wifie wife. Private sale, less tax, less cash up front. I had to get the deal done so I dashed onto skytrain (woah, culture shock) and zipped to Oakridge Mall to find the cleanest, shiniest little 2001 Honda there ever did was.

Out of my pocket came a sweet roll of $100s and the Honda was the newest member of the Tomkinclan. It has no name yet but I am sure my family will latch on to one soon. One possibility so far is “Penelope“, in honor of the connection to Odysseus. My seven year-old might just suggest “Golden Thunder“! He is resistant to change.

What about you? Any suggestions?

A little more than two years ago, I bought a 2000 Toyota Corolla VE. My older son, used to naming the cars in his life; the last one was Silverbird (a Ford Taurus SHO); thought up the perfect (read ironic) name for the family sedan : Blue Thunder”.

It has overtones of Greased Lightning or The Batmobile, so we went with it. The car has served us very well over the last couple of years, flawlessly in fact but with two kids and a new law mandating carseats for older children (12 years is it) we had to get a bigger car.

Today, I sold the Corolla. It is a clean little car and I got $750.0 less than I paid for it almost three years ago. I am pretty pleased. It took one day to sell and was one of the higher priced listings on Craigslist for that year. Ode to Corolla. May your tires never flatten and your AC never discharge. May the roads before you open up and may iced cream never be pushed into your fabrics. BANZAI!