September 4, 2014 Mainlining flowers...

Thursday September 4, 2014

My humans do this thing with putting little balls in a box.  There are lots of the boxes and they put the balls in each box.  One of the balls smells like fish and I want it.  I help them load their box.  One day, I will get one of the fish balls.  My paternal human calls them pills.

 Today is getaway day.  After my walk, we readied Hannah and departed Quebec City.  We are going to the botanical garden in Montreal.  We had been in Montreal on our boat trip seven years ago.  It is a nice ride with picturesque rural farmland.  At one point, we crossed over the Richelieu River and I saw where we navigated Playcation.  It looked just like I remembered it.  In our boat, there was no traffic.  It was so simple.  Here, with Hannah, Samaaaantha successfully navigated us to the garden, where there was room for us to park.

 I miss my plants.  I miss my volunteering at the Huntington Library's botanical garden.  When I walked in the greenhouses, it felt so good!  Bromeliads, anthuriums and of course, orchids.  They also have greenhouses for succulents, cactus and a gazillion types of begonias.  I was mainlining flowers and loving it!

 

Outside, there were some fabulous ornamental and vegetable gardens.  There are the biggest hibiscus mallows on the planet, I am sure.  And the colors ran from blood red, to burgundy, to pinks and to whites.  Flowers the size of dinner plates sure sucked us in!  And the fruits... as we sat under a grape vine, we picked a few of the grapes.  I have eaten a gazillion grapes in my life, but these are the grapes that grape jelly is made of!  I always wondered why grape jelly tasted the way it did, because to me, it didn't taste like grapes... Until today!  The light went on!

We also explored the Japanese and Chinese gardens, as well as the insectarium.  I will feel guilty killing insects in the future.  You could really see the faces of some of these guys. 

Oh, and the bonsais... fabulous!  One was 270 years old!

We finally spent ourselves, and got back to Hannah just in time for the Montreal rush hour traffic.  We are heading west to Ottawa.  Our intent is to enter the U.S. at Sault Ste. Marie in upper Michigan.  The traffic was not fun, and the road construction made it even less fun, but we finally pulled away.  Along the way, I saw part of the Ottawa River that we navigated on our boat trip.  It looked like the lake where we tore our drive off...  Fond memories... No traffic, no road construction... just peaceful water and a repair bill!

As we approached Ottawa, there was some traffic, although not horrible.  And there were malls, and buildings and it was big and city like.  I guess with a population of 900,000, you would expect all that.  But... once again, when we approached Ottawa from the water in 2007, it was an incredible experience.  The parliament building is perched high on the hill.  As a boat, you must approach via the 7 lock staircase that lifts you to the city.  The locks make you feel like you should bow/curtsey at the top to show appreciation for the gracious lift into the city.  It is a breathtaking first impression of the city.  And now we are in a truck just wanting to get to the other side!  I realize what a great experience our boat trip was as we saw a totally different side of this entire area.  I guess in a boat, you are limited, so you learn to live inside those limitations.  Your expectations are set much lower.  When you have a vehicle, there really is no limit to where you can go so you tend to do more.  More is not always better.  It's just different.

We ultimately made it to the town of Arnprior about 60km west of Ottawa.  Here we found a secluded marina and pulled over for the night.