Sunday, July 15, 2007 – Summerland, BC

Sometimes when you plan your outings, they often don’t live up to expectations. Other days, you don’t plan and wonderful things happen. Is there a truism for life in that observation? Anyway, we arose today with thoughts about lying low and preparing for our drive south tomorrow. But then we decided that it would be foolish to sit in the camper with the wonderful world around us – so out we went. What a great decision!

Driving south to Penticton on early days, we had seen a sign for Ornamental Gardens “experiment” station. Intrigued, we went there first. What a delight! I am not a gardener – I admit it; the genes for that talent are all with Margaret – but it was lovely. Perched atop one of the local hills, there was something to entrance the senses – ranging from riots of color and texture, to yawning chasms (totally unexpected – good thing they had fences up!), wonderfully mature trees of all descriptions: sequoia, magnolia (like none we’ve ever seen), ginkgos, Douglas firs, and many others I can’t name. My one disappointment was they didn’t have EVERYTHING named.

Naturally, as you would expect, we both took lots and lots of flower pictures. There is an art to taking photos of flowers and I’m not here to demonstrate the right way or the wrong way to do it. But there were so many gorgeous colors, it was hard not to point and shoot. Margaret managed to capture the rare, elusive Monarch dining collecting nectar.

When not enjoying the flower beds, the expanse of green lawns under the lofty trees was an experience in itself. What a great place to spend the day relaxing amidst Mother Nature’s beauty. There were nooks beneath trees for viewing the vistas, picnic benches in the shade for lunching, and winding paths to wander. One could easily spend the day there, relaxing with Mother Nature. There was a trellised area for weddings and a covered area for music. I may throw in some other photos later (when things are slow) because the gardens and environs were breath-taking.

After a couple of hours when the sun began to bear down, we decided to move on. Instead of heading directly back, we elected to hit just one more (or two) wineries. The first, Silk Scarf, was operated by a retired Israeli Air Force pilot / officer. He immigrated to Canada from Israel three years ago. His choice of Canada (specifically the Okanagan Valley) came after considering Napa, Argentina, Chile, and other wine growing regions of the world. He is very happy here in British Columbia. (When I asked him why he chose Canada instead of the USA, he looked at me like I was quite slow, and announced Canada was by far the better place to live.)

I attempted to recall the names of those Israeli Air Force officers I had worked with for so long, but age and time caught up with me. I could only remember the names of two folks in Israel; he didn’t know any of them. Sigh…

Our next stop was the Dirty Laundry Winery. We stopped there just to prove to ourselves such a place existed – it did. The owner said they had sold out of their inventory last July (early in the season) – they were very pleased.

An interesting tidbit of local lore: the native Indian name for this valley meant “A place to live”. And surely it is. Not sure I could stand the -17 degree Celsius winters, but they do have a great climate to be so far north. The golfing brochures claim you can play 10 months of the year – more if they don’t get snow. To keep things in perspective however: the sign at the entrance to the gardens today said: an average of 176 frost free days per year! (That means they have 189 days a year where the temperature drops below 0 degrees C – 32 degrees F. That’s a lot of cold days in my book!)

Tomorrow we’ll be back in the US of A – with all its warts and problems. But it’s still home.