Late last week, Jennifer showed me around the place in Tsawwassen where she’s the Head Gardener, or ‘Executive Plant Manager’, or ‘Chief Natural Species Growing Babe’, or whatever her title is. It’s a beautiful place consisting of 1.8 acres of growing area that’s pretty much gone from zero to gorgeous in only two years.

As far as I understand it, The Delta Earthwise Demonstration Garden (which also sells fresh vegetables) was a dairy farm in its previous life, with some fruit and vegetables being also grown, and was recently generously leased to the area’s people through a non-funded non-profit society (essentially, they go scrounging for funds as much as they can). All of the flowers you see in the images have been planted in beds established last year from scratch (although there were some tended plants there before), and half of the ground used was un-touched entirely.

The yellow home you see in the images is the original farm house and is on the Heritage Building list. It was a museum of a sort for awhile, but is now used as a dorm for a local language school for visiting Japanese girls. This permits the house to have funding for on-going maintenance, and also makes the house be alive for the purpose it was built: to be a home.

There’s a fair number of pictures, but the ‘auto-play’ slide show moves quick-ish. Give it five minutes, probably, about the length of time the hourly radio news runs. Looking at flowers and nature for five minutes is probably a better thing to do than listening to the news anyway.

Here’s the images: Here are the images:

For those of you in the Metro Vancouver area interested in visiting, they’re located at the corner of Boundary Bay Road and 3^rd Avenue in South Delta. It’s open seven days a week for self-guided tours, plus a number of events, tours, and workshops. You can even get an allotment plot if you’re lucky. Head to their site below for details about programmes, times, and so on.

To learn more about the Delta Earthwise Society, head here: earthwisesociety.bc.ca
To learn more about the garden itself, head here: earthwisesociety.bc.ca/garden.htm
To learn more about the farm itself, head here: earthwisesociety.bc.ca/earthwisefarm.htm
Transit service involves joining with a 601 “SOUTH DELTA” to the “SOUTH DELTA EXCHANGE BAY 2″, then taking the cute little C89 “BOUNDARY BAY” bus to the stop nearest the entrance. Best to consult TransLink for details.

Because some of you live in the Metro Vancouver area, but don’t necessarily check the Atomic Fez web-site, here’s a duplication of the event announcement over there.

• What: Launching an Independent Publishing House: Fab or Folly?
• Who: The Shebeen Club and Atomic Fez Publishing
• When: Monday, June 15^TH, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
• Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 212 Carrall Street in Gastown
• Details: $15 cash only, includes dinner and one drink (pint). No minors, please.
• Facebook Event Page: it’s got pictures and things, also a map; RIGHT HERE
• Blather: follows

MEET THE NAÏVE PROPRIETOR

The proprietor of Atomic Fez Publishing will engage the public in an all singing, all dancing event at The Shebeen Whisky House behind the Irish Heather Gastro-Pub in Vancouver’s Gastown district.

Ian Alexander Martin is expected to discuss his reasoning behind beginning a Small Press Publishing house in these days of financial turmoil which have seen several international houses drastically scale back their structures, frequently closing sub-imprints and selling off their intellectual assets like so much scrap iron. Likewise, when even local publisher Raincoast Books scales downsize their operation following the completion of the ‘Harry Potter…’ series, is there any point in trying to enter the market?

Additional topics will include:

• why be a small-press publisher if you’re not also a writer?
• what sort of books does Atomic Fez select?
• the answer to the question “dead tree books or electronic books” is “YES!”
• whither the future of independent bookshop?
• why can’t people buy any small-press books at Chapters or Smith’s
• why shouldn’t authors just self-publish and go straight to the readers and their money?
• just how insane are you?

Come and hear a 20-minute talk about what Mr. Martin’s approaches are, and what he thinks the state of publishing is today. A question and answer session with follow the presentation after a short break.

ABOUT THE NAÏVE PROPRIETOR

For three years Ian Alexander Martin was a Director in Humdrumming, Limited — a very tiny publishing company registered in England & Wales — during the last ten months of which was acting as President and C.E.O., Managing and Editorial Director, plus also being responsible for the contracting, editing, typesetting, publishing, and marketing of twenty different titles. Meanwhile, Humdrumming continually earned the respect and admiration of writers and readers alike, as well as seven ‘short-list’ nominations from the prestigious British Fantasy Society’s annual awards (and more to come in a few months).

In addition to the above, Mr. Martin has previously been an arts journalist; editor; professional photographer; photo-finishing store owner; web-site designer and consultant; theatre actor and director, as well as being the Founding Editor and Publisher of the theatre web-zine The Boards. If you had told him at the turn of the millennium that he would have accomplished these things, he would have laughed so hard he would have been physically ill at your feet.

He lives in Burnaby with his wife and two cats, all three of whom frequently succeed in dragging him kicking and screaming from the computer keyboard.

Building on last month’s successful meeting re-examining the existing publishing model, we’ve lined up renegade publisher and artist Robert Chaplin of independent publisher Library Editions to give us his take on end-running the Old Boy’s Network.

On Monday May 18^th at the Shebeen Club, Royal Canadian Academician Robert Chaplin will discuss publication and treasure, vis a vis the extinction of codex in the electronic age, and the importance of perfect rhyme and meter with respect to the mainstream absorption of hip hop.

Robert Chaplin was born under a lucky star and has fed pancakes to WhiskeyJacks. He will be launching his fourth Library Edition trade hardcover Brussels Sprouts & Unicorns on Thursday May 21^st at Walrus, 18^th & Cambie.

• Who: Robert Chaplin and the Shebeen Club
• What: our monthly meeting
• When: 6-9pm Monday, May 18^th
• Where: The Shebeen, behind the Irish Heather, 210 Carrall Street in Vancouver [map here]
• Deets: $15 includes dinner and a drink, so what are you waiting for?

So in about 24 hours, I’ll be looking at that thing there on the right. And, yes, it does look like some sort of phallic symbol: perhaps a penis with a condom designed by a minimalist (“as long as the ‘working end’ is covered, then the job’s sorted, innit?”). Perhaps something different; more filthy, perhaps.

Anyway, the point is that that’s the Air Traffic Control Tower of Vancouver International Airport. And, no it’s not a joke: we really do have an international one, with more than one runway and all that, just like a real airport. As a matter of fact, there’s four runways (yes, they’re all paved), and a total of 17,495,049 people on 326,026 æroplanes went in and/or out of the terminal for one reason or another, and if you don’t believe me, then go here.

So there!

All of the final matters are done: tickets confirmed for train to and from Warwick; the hotel in Londinium’s King’s Cross area booked (“room comes decorated with modern ‘rusted shopping trolley and discarded condom/hypodermic needle’ motif…”); relevant pages of Lonely Planet book of Britain passed through OCR and proofed for most weirdness (Westminster Abbey doesn’t have ‘electrical’ burial monuments, for instance, preferring “elaborate” ones); PDF copies of passport and other identity papers amassed in folder on lap-top’s hard-drive, along with as much music as I can shoe-horn on there as well; the digital camera’s 2GB memory card is empty and ready for images; extra batteries for the camera and an electrical adaptor for the laptop are ready; etc.

What’s not been done yet is packing.

Yes, really.

I’m doing laundry right now, so I’m getting very, very close to that. Probably most of it will be done tonight, with one last sweep through things tomorrow, ensuring I’ve enough socks, shirts, boxers, a face flannel, that sort of thing.

One must have priorities; mine happen to involve lots of digital media, personal documents, and travel guide pages.

The next you hear from me — should everything co-operate according to plan — will be from the Midlands of the UK and will cover flight plus train journeys.

Let’s hope the first two hours in England goes a tad better on this trip than the first two hours the last trip provided after landing.

A totally cool and intelligent review of my cousin’s recent show of his paintings in The Georgia Straight today. Read it here.

The show opened a week or so ago at the Atelier Gallery, and I was blown away by his improved use of detail. Reality for his works is so much stronger and clearer, yet the viewer still is permitted to explore for their own satisfaction and discoveries; something I very much miss when looking at Jeff Wall’s work, where everything is so very plain and bold that I no longer have any purpose in viewing the image.

I need to give Erin a savage beating, however, as he’s able to do things with acrylic on board that I’ve been trying to do with light on film for years using filters and a variety of slide films (depending on the colour cast and saturation level I wanted). I think I could accomplish something closer to what was in my mind at the time with PhotoShop now, but doubt I could get at close to perfection as he has.

His work is justifiably shown all over the continent now, and I’m fairly certain that there’s one of the Canadian embassies that has some up as well.