Clover is finished .... 6.5 inches tall.. softest, fluffy, hand dyed sort of sparse, pinkish/purple mohair that I bought while in England a couple of summers ago. I gave her some black velvet footpads. For Catherine....this is her with foot pads turned......

It is definitely summer here now .... although we are not quite as sweltering hot as our neighbouring province. Today it is climbing to only +31C here .... poor old Victoria on "the island" as they refer to Vancouver Island ... was up to +36.3C yesterday! Broke all the old records. With the humidity? ... whoa !! ...can't even imagine how all of those seniors managed.

It is a beautiful island where many seniors choose to retire because of the mild climate ... a lot of them British and so it has become a small version of England in some areas. A lot of the seniors in the Oak Bay area are quite fit... and walk to the ocean and also up to the village daily.... I hope they waited 'til after sunset yesterday! Some days they just walk up to buy a little bouquet of flowers from the grocery and flower shop, sit for an ice cream... say hello to friends... It really is a wonderful place to live.
Can you tell I love Oak Bay?? ... Mom used to live there and I visited as often as I could. For a landlocked Albertan... it was paradise.
Here is me "flying in" as we used to say. You can see the bus driver thinks I am crazy .. although he is laughing ... so it is all good!
Mom had a little camera that she loved to take a million pics with .... so most of the pics are of me!

Me, having a conversation with John Bull ....








Here she is by her beloved ocean. She loved the sea. As a matter of fact... her fav poem was Sea Fever.







We spent countless hours just wandering along the oceanfront; checking out the boats ... looking for whales ... had lunch at the Marina ....wrote notes and tossed bottles in the ocean regularly ...... tea at the Blethering Place Tearoom ....supper at the ...well, you get the idea ...we were hardly ever indoors .... except to eat!







A Life size doll waiting by the"wait to be seated "sign... had to ask how long the poor old gent had been waiting didn't I? some of the pics look a bit horizontally stretched because they are digi pics of snapshots, but they still look decent.

Sure do miss those days.... guess nobody ever found our bottles. No letters of reply...yet... and it has now been almost 10 years ....

I often say I should go back to visit...but without Mum it just wouldn't be the same and somehow I just never get around to it.

See, I told you we were crazy ...... she used to get such a kick out of so many silly signs and then we had to take a pic with a pose!










Indiginous people's totems near the Victoria museum.


Look at this ... House of Verona ... all that is missing is the "ic"... oh... sorry.....











Anne Hathaway's cottage.





whoops! went too far.... or something....

Well, that was lovely... just had a mini vacation in Victoria myself! I can almost smell the ocean!