Well, here I am in Sidney-by-the-Sea, a little town near Victoria, B.C. The place is quaint and charming, with lots of neat little shops and a summer twilight street festival (full of fresh produce and earrings, lots and LOTS of earrings) for sale. It's a great place to while away a week in summer, and that's just what I've been doing.
The most amazing thing about this part of Canada is the huge amount of produce and agriculture they do here. In spring and summer there are immense fields full of daffodils, tulips and gladiolas. (Pictured here are daffodils.) In fall, you can see fields of pumpkins as far as the eye can see.
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| Tayberries on the vine |
In this season the item on offer EVERYWHERE is berries, all kinds of berries. Red and black raspberries. You can stop your car along the side of the road and pick blackberries, which are essentially black raspberries. The plants themselves are considered quite pesky and they'll take over a home garden in no time. In Penang or Japan, just one small pack of those blackberries would cost an arm and a leg, if you could find them at all.
Then there are odd ones called tayberries and loganberries, both of which are variants of raspberries, I gather. Blueberries are sold in 5-pound boxes for under $10.00. When asked if he had any more, the produce manager at the store said, "I have 200 pounds more. How many would you like?" I read somewhere that 98% of all the blueberries consumed in Canada are grown right here in British Columbia. And this area is the third-largest producer of "blues" in the world!
Sweet, sweet sweet corn grows here, too. Eight ears for under two bucks! I could live on the stuff all summer long. Back in Japan, even bad corn on the cob was about two dollars for one ear, or two if you were lucky. It's no better in Penang, where field corn is labeled sweet corn and is close to inedible, at least for a person who has experienced real sweet corn from the American Midwest or this region of Canada. Folks around here just have no idea how lucky they are to have this bountiful variety of beautiful produce in fields all around them. How I envy them!
Just like in Hokkaido, there are lavendar fields all around B.C., and there are so many different kinds! There's English, French and Spanish lavendar growing right outside our window here. They sell it in huge bunches at the street market. People make sachets and pot pourri with it, and they cook with it as well--lavendar cake, whipped cream, tea and more. Evidently it can be used somewhat like thyme. Who knew?
A lot of the local farms will allow visitors to come and do "you-pick." What could be more fun than picking your own daffodils, strawberries or pumpkins? But you have to be a bit careful because of crop rotation. The other day my friend and I went off in search of a farm where they let you pick your own gladiolus flowers. But where they used to grow, there were cabbages as far as the eye could see. Evidently after three years, the flower bulbs get exhausted and that field now has a different vegetable growing in it. A smiling, friendly young man whose family owns the countryside for miles around assured us that "The glads will be back next year, better than ever!" And so will I!
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