Gardens, Gardens, Gardens

O.K., so I apologize for sending pictures of gardens and flowers but this gets my heart beating fast. Truly beautiful gardens we saw on Monday just driving the little towns toward Victoria. We happened upon an Estate called Hatley Mansion and gardens from the early 1900's. Spectacular Larkspur, Dahlias, Crocosmia, Lilies, Lavender and Fuschia. The Fuschias grow like small trees here about the size of our garden hydrangeas. The City of Victoria is as beautiful a city as we have seen anywhere. It has the British and European feel but is so clean and picturesque with every corner planted and over 900 hanging baskets. As soon as we arrived in Victoria Sharon had her "high tea". Actually we shared it as one person couldn't eat the whole tray of crumpets , schones, tea biscuites, fruit, cookies, quiche, sandwiches and 2 desserts, not tomention a large pot of tea. Yes, I now know the difference between a crumpet and a tea biscuit. We decided that the Duchess of whatever who came up with the tradition because she got hungry between luch and dinner couldn't have weighed an ounce under 225 pounds. She supposedly was married to the "Earl of Sandwich" who put two slabs of bread together........ They would have made it big on the Food Network.

We are staying in a hotel overlooking the inner harbour which makes an interesting view with floatplanes, ferries, whale watching boats, yachts and sailboats coming in and out. The Parliament building in the center of the city is lit at night giving everything else a glow. We sat out on the plaza watching street performers until 10:00P.M. and it just was getting dark.

Today we head out to Butchart gardens. Sorry, there will be yet MORE pictures of gardens. Wish I could share them all with you.