Butchart Gardens & The Blue Bayou Cafe

 By Maryanna Gabriel 

After Tod Inlet we just had to go to the Butchart Gardens. It was right there after all. The Butchart Gardens were developed by Jenny Butchart to compensate for the mess left the family company from quarrying limestone. 

The garden has been continuously developed for over a hundred years and has close to a million visitors annually. My daughter and I were herded into the parking lot by a bevvy of attendents and then left to our own devices with a map as we explored. She decided formal gardens were not for her, too manicured, too proper, too inaccessible with lawns one could not scamper across and benches that were hard to procure amid the crowds. She peferred the natural gardens of the forest. Still, it is an impressive legacy to leave the world and much better than the mess it once was. 

Afterwards we decided to go out for dinner as it was her birthday. We went to The Blue Bayou Cafe which was on the water in nearby Brentwood Bay. To the strains of Louis Armstrong's nostaligic s trumpet we munched on Fried Green Tomatoes and Jambalaya while a stuffed crocodile lay on the roof surveying the scene.

All perfectly wonderful. 

Magical Tod Inlet

 By Maryanna Gabriel

I felt blessed with a visit from my daughter and we traipsed into a most magical place, Tod Inlet. I packed a picnic. Todd Inlet is located on the outskirts of Victoria, adjacent Butchart Gardens. The entire area was exploited for the limestone and so were the workers - the Chinese and Sikhs who laboured in horrendous conditions for the cement that was produced.

The trees seemed of the nicer sort, rather forgiving I thought, given the artifacts of an unkind industry that was once pervasive. Concrete and metal protruded out of mossy and leafy hillocks as the maples turned golden and the water sparkled beyond. Such is the legacy of a buried and forgotten industry.

We stopped and listened as a raccoon snuffled along a ravine then watched a crab make its way along the shore. It was splendid as only time with a daughter who lives too far away can be. 

Aqua Cotta Donuts

 By Maryanna Gabriel

I am all in a tizzy. With all of the choices of wonderful bakeries, parks, oceanside walks, and eateries, my head is spinning. Not far from the log cabin where I am staying is an intriguing place called Aqua Cotta. I mosied down for what seemed like an interesting choice, Italian donuts and any coffee for $9. I was given an unexpected surprise. It came with a creamy, salty-sweet caramel butter which surely had no calories. Oh well - you only live once! The latte had a shot of vanilla. I think my heart rate zoomed up dangerously after I was through. 

I wanted to explore Francis-King Park, named after Scout masters or something (I forgot my glasses) and was refreshed by a forest bath of Garry Oak and Arbutus trees as I walked off the sugar. Saanich is a very special part of Vancouver Island and I look forward to exploring more of it. 

The Fantastic Tale Of Frances Rattenbury

 By Maryanna Gabriel

Speaking of frozen in time, here in the log house, I have been sitting back with a book about the more famous characters in historic Victoria.

There is the story of a wealthy woman who never went outside and left a fortune to her parrot, a ghost that haunts the golf course - her shoes found stuffed into the pockets of her husband rolling dead in the surf, and then there is the strange tale of Francis Rattenbury. He was swashbucklingly handsome, and I suspect debonair, and his life was charmed, a British architect who was given fantastic commissions, for one, the famous landmark that is the Victoria Parliament. He was renowned and respected and lived in a handsome mansion on the waterfront of Oak Bay. But here we go - his marriage was dull and it was not enough. He wanted more.

Debonair Frances Rattenbury

 

Alma, a beauty. 

He pursued Alma, a beautiful concert pianist. They moved into the marital home, his horrified wife and children huddled on the upper floor.  Much to his surprise, the new couple were reviled by Victorian society and life became difficult.

When a business partner drowned on the Titanic, a speculative venture was sunk and more bad decisions around money with investments in the Klondike gold-rush that went awry left Rattenbury crippled. Already prone to depression, he turned increasingly to drink. 

With a move to England, Alma, who perhaps found this all very trying, took up with the gardener, a much younger man. In a fit of jealous rage the gardener killed Francis Rattenbury. The concert pianist stabbed herself six times in the breast and threw herself into the River Stour. The gardener served time in jail and was freed years later. 

So there you have it. A big mess when all should have been perfectily splendid, lemonade with cucumber sandwiches, and cricket with white gloves.

Victoria Parliament designed by Rattenbury. 

Victoria Art Gallery - Maud

 By Maryanna Gabriel

I think I must be starved for the arts and culture. I could not wait to join the Victoria Art Gallery and rush in to see the show of the artist, Maud's work. The thing about this gallery is that it is housed in an old manor with gracious curving stairways, interesting inlaid wood, and fireplaces not lit for decades. In 1889, it was built for under $30,000, a fortune in its day. One is not only taking in the shows, of which there were several, but also entranced by the setting which faces an inner courtyard with a strong Japanese garden component just to mix eras and cultures even more. 

Maud Lewis died in 1970 in Digby, Nova Scotia, and painted in a folk-art style. Seeing so many pieces

convey a childish exuberance with colour, one that plays with the senses and uplifts the heart. She had a hard life marked by poverty and disability, but somehow her love of art carried her. She captures life and Nova Scotian landscape, in primary colours and a "naive" style.

It made me feel sheepish for I get twisted in my own work into such a bungled knot - it seemed to me she painted without caring a hoot. The presentation was a testemony to joy. Sometimes art carries us to where we need to be. 

Whiffen Spit & Other Thoughts

 By Maryanna Gabriel

So like her. She swore in Liz Truss and knew her job was done. The death of Queen Elizabeth has been a shock. Maybe because she was just photographed standing with the new British prime minister. 

I have been feeling Henry David Thoreauish in my log cabin. Or Annie Dilardish (without too much of the writing part). Some days I go down a wooded path to the lake below and have a delicious swim, the morning mists rising along with the trout. A squirrel torn in half lay on the path. The work of an owl? If I go too early I run into fishermen which I don't mind, fishermen being prone to silence as a general rule. I watched a mink slink through the underbrush along the shore and wondered if it was he who ate up the salmon somebody had trimmed and dumped ten feet out. We humans are such busy creatures. My hostess says there is sometimes a bear around but I have been brave and generally I come back from these expeditions feeling refreshed and happy. I have needed to be. My brain is very busy. Upon my return, the half body of the squirrel was gone. In an instant, everything can change. 

I drove north to Whiffen Spit on Vancouver Island. It is a beautiful natural break in the Sooke Basin that historically was abundant with food for the T'Souke nation and later home to sawmills, fish-trap pilings, and other fishy type enterprises. Today, fortunately, it is a park. It was stunningly beautiful. I was trying to decide if I wanted to stay for a longer period in Sooke and if it could be home.

I did not get the call. 

Abkhazi Gardens

By Maryanna Gabriel

Have been needing a rest. It was a fun farewell party with tributes, champagne, touching speeches, cake and laughter with dear friends, then breaking camp, and a final pulling up of stakes. (I know I just breezed through something huge with that sentence but one story at a time.)

A writer friend and I went for High Tea; it seemed a very Victoria thing to do. The Abkhazi Gardens was built by a Russian princess and wealthy heiress, Princess Peggy, who found her prince after much trial through World War ll.  Prince Nicolas remembered being a boy in Georgia, and Lenin coming to the house, for Lenin's mother was the laundress. Later, the Bolshevik Revoloution came along and the family lost everything. His father was shot by the Bolsheviks. 

Their home in Victoria house was once described. "Walking inside used to be like walking into a big, golden, jewel-box," said one friend. Together, Peggy and Nicolas built a beautiful garden beneath their hilltop idyll which is a tribute to their love. 

We had the loveliest sandwiches and scones after traipsing through the shrubberies trying to identify varying species. We felt the house alluded to an era of bygone glamour, one in which Greta Garbo lived, as though frozen in time. My friend said much of the city of Victoria was like this, that is to say, frozen in time, where stories about historic presences seem to linger. 

Peggy Abkhazi, it is rumoured, traipsed through the gardens, martini in hand, wearing designer dresses, here captured by sculptor, Bev Petow. After reading her biography, "A Curious Life" by Katherine Gordon it would seem she liked to wear overalls and work in the garden in her later years. Perhaps she is there now.