07/28/04’s illustrious band:

Tim Horton's Bits

Northwest Notes, Chapter 8

Brought to you by Tim Horton. And his bits, of course.

Saturday, July 10 was garden tourism a go-go. And go we did. We kicked off with the gardens of Government House, where volunteer guide and gardener Hazel Van Slyke met us to conduct a tour on her day off. Government House is the residence and office of Her Honor, The Leftenant Governor of British Columbia, the Queen's representative in the province. (Lef-what? Leftenant -- the British/Canadian version of Lieutenant. Well, Hazel was a former Brit, so maybe not all Canadians pronounce it that way.) In fact, as we set out, we encountered one of Her Honor's aides arriving at the office in full braid-and-beret dress uniform. On a Saturday, yet.

The extensive GH grounds, which are the property of the taxpayers of BC, are open to the public from dawn 'til dusk. Numerous garden "rooms" are each supervised and maintained by a staff of volunteers like Hazel. I don't know enough about plants to accurately describe the place, other than to say it's grand, but I did really enjoy the duck pond. Hit the link above for useful information.

Stop #2: Azkaban. Er, I mean Abkhazi Garden. Guess I've been reading a little too much Harry Potter, eh? Anyway, Abkhazi was once a private home with an impressive urban garden; now it's open to the public. We were served scalding tea in delicate china cups on the terrace overlooking the garden while waiting for our guide Dick, who had been delayed at home by a ceiling painting project (eggshell, by the looks of his hands).

Dick arrived by bicycle before the tea was cool enough drink -- like Hazel, on his day off -- and proceeded to regale us at great and rambling length with the history of the house and its owners. Something about a grand love story spanning many decades and continents. Dick meant well, I'm sure, but he was not a talented storyteller, and we did not care about the financial affairs of the homeowners' servants; we just wanted to see the garden already. But no amount of body language or suggestion of a tight schedule was going to stir Dick off that terrace until he had completed his spiel, which took him so long that I had time to figure out whether the turtle on the rock in the pond was real. It was; I saw it move ever so slowly, but still faster than Dick.

Abkhazi Garden, while small in contrast to where we'd just been, was comfortable and engaging, following the contours of the landscape and incorporating its many rock outcroppings. Poor Dick kept saying "Good for you!" every time G-Doc correctly identified a plant . . . which was every time G-Doc identified a plant. Dick did not seem to grasp the fact that he was talking to an expert, and G-Doc politely kept his corrections of the plant names to a murmur for my ears alone. Azkaban was nice, but we were relieved to escape its bounds in the end.

Our third scheduled stop was Hatley Castle, a short drive out of town. We had enough time to venture farther up the road to the village of Sooke in search of lunch. The twisty drive through evergreen forests reminded me very much of my home in the Black Hills, so I enjoyed it immensely. We stopped at a roadside park that turned to have a rugged trail down through the trees to a little bay, yet another inlet of the Pacific. We hopped from rock to rock, trying to avoid stepping on the squishy, stinky seaweed washed up on shore, and skipped stones into the ocean. Had we packed a picnic, it would have been the perfect spot. But we hadn't, and hunger drove us back up the hillside.

We agreed that it was time to have lunch at a Tim Hortons restaurant. (Perhaps my biggest beef with Canada is the missing apostrophe in that name, which ought to be a possessive. Would it kill ya to call it Horton's? Eh?) I'd been hearing about Tim Hortons from G-Doc ever since we entered the country, and he'd been hearing about it from his coworkers for weeks before we left, so clearly this was a must-see. Tim Hortons, owned by a popular Canadian hockey player, is sort of the Mr. Donut of Canada. Although you can get a basic sandwich or a bowl of soup there, the specialty of the house is coffee and donuts. And Tim Horton's Bits.

Once I got over my giggling fit (one of them, anyway), I learned that "bits," in this context, means donut holes. You can buy bits individually for $0.15 each or in multiples of 10 for even lower prices. (Why not by the dozen, the normal unit of measure for bulk quantities of donuts? G-Doc's theory is that Canadian bakeries operate on the metric system.) So we each got a forgettable sandwich and a box of bits and went away happy. Crispy/sugary on the outside, fluffy/lardy on the inside . . . them's good bits!

Tomorrow: The castle, the ibis, and the meaning of "spicy."

Today around the world: July 28 is Olavsoka Eve in the Faroe Islands.

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