Whew! By the time you walk from Union Station, across the Skywalk, you've done your feet in before you even start making your way around the show!

What a time we had - although my right ankle is no longer in existence, I enjoyed it immensely . . .

It began with me (natch - I'm so egotistic - all writers are like that) . . . here I am waiting for the bus to go downtown:

OK, OK, already . . . I know you didn't come into this thread to see pictures of me - you wanna' see the SHOW! RIGHT?

Most of these pictures are by Jeff Svamvour, my better behalf, by the way - usually it's me manning (womanning) the camera, but today he played the part of the writer's photographer . . . I should dream on, already.

Seeing as how I consider to this to be the most clever display I saw at the show (and I sure didn't see everything), we'll start with what I call the Green Apple Room:



That truly speaks to me, ya' know?

This one that Jeff took has to run a close second - I just love it!



This was gorgeous - Jeff didn't quite catch the crystal vases but here is the entrance to The Crystal Garden:

Here's some fish in one of the water garden displays - the guy who was hosting was standing up to his knees in water - with his pants on!

Jeff didn't take a picture of that - he just doesn't see humour in the same warped fashion as I do:



Here's one of me at that same spot in the Crystal Garden - big silly grin on my face, pointing with my walking stick. (I just carry it to look intellectual.)



Yeah, yeah . . . so it's me again. I might as well get over myself and post another one - here's me (with my garden pin on my hat) serenely gazing at a garden house display . . . oh, lord won't ya' buy me . . .

And oh, shall I start rippin' and roarin' about making a wreath, using eggshells now? Or shall I just content myself knowing they're there . . .



I'll put a couple more on tomorrow, folks . . . my bedtime.

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Pictures by Jeff (my better half).

Posting thanks to

Carly, those photos are FABULOUS! Some gorgeous creative designs!!! I wish I could have been there. My vote goes to making an eggshell wreath - unique Christmas gifts! Did you get ideas on how to do it?

No - I didn't - I didn't ask; there were so many people around you couldn't really talk a lot with individual exhibitors.

There was a nice little fella' representing Home Depot that did a little seminar on looking after your house plants.

I bombarded him with questions, of course. It was nice to know that I was right about a lot of things.

You need a good 8 hours and another set of legs to walk through that show and see everything.

I looked for more brilliance in the pictures - even though we checked the battery of the digital before we went, our pictures seem to have 'flash-fall-off'.

Maybe it was just the lighting there - I guess you couldn't have glaring lights on the plants, it wouldn't have done them justice.

This thumbnail can be clicked to show a shot of the scrub on the side of the railway tracks.

I'm really not all that good with the 'zoom' thing on the camera, so it's a bit fuzzy - I cropped the picture and re-sized it to try to get this odd little scene in.



At first I thought there was one large black cat with a couple of rocks, then as Jeff and I watched, the rocks moved around and we could see there were two jet black cats with a big ginger coloured one.

We couldn't imagine what the cats were doing there - beside a main road, with no houses around. This is downtown in the lakeshore area, of course.

Did they escape from some condo apartment?

Jeff suggested that they could have been from one of the restaurants in the Convention Centre - maybe they keep the cats as 'mousers'.

At any rate, the cats looked healthy. If we hadn't been so pooped out after we left the centre we might have gone around there and taken a closer shot of those cats.

I'll just bombard you with one more picture of ME - like I say, usually I don't like pictures of myself; don't know what got into me, guess I liked my face yesterday.

Toronto's city fathers and some business people commissioned artists to put moose sculptures throughout the city a few years back. There are still some around . . . this one is in the Convention Centre just before we went into the show.

I don't know who looks funnier here - me or the moose:

I'll close with this one - this is enough to set everybody dreaming.



Like Jeff said, it's an expensive hobby and you need grounds with some serious security if you're going to carry this one off.

If you have a room in your house, it's ok.

I thought it could be done on a smaller scale - another idea for window displays?

I think I could dream on just knowing this thing is 'there' - it's one of those things that show you that you don't have to own something in order to love it.

Yes, I'd do it again - go through all the pains of walking - I'll do more next year. I'll plan a schedule, go early and take in more.

I really enjoyed it. It was my first visit to a show of this kind (other than when my parents used to drag me off to the exhibit buildings at the Canadian Exhibition).

Well, you can tell by the big silly grin on my face in the pictures that I was enjoying myself.

I find when I go to displays of a commercial nature that I get good ideas for what to do with stuff I've collected - you can spend 19 bucks buying some little wrought iron dagger to poke into the soil, or you can get out some bit of plastic you saved from a broken edging fence, spray it black and have it look the same.

It's also less disheartening if some damn fool swipes it, which often happens to gardeners.

That's one of the things about garden space on the lot of an income building - the surrounding neighbourhood considers the lot to be 'public lands' and think nothing of wandering around in the night, doing whatever they want.

Sometimes teens pick the lot as a place to hang out, sit around and smoke. What the heck - I was a kid once myself. Most of them are ok, I guess, but some vandalize, so we don't throw a lot of money into decorative items.

There are also some adults around that can be pretty vindictive too - the other day Jeff found the leaves of the ficus on the floor of the lobby. I said it was probably just shedding a bit, but a few minutes later I went out there and found one of the branches had been ripped - right down the stem!

We clipped it and one of the tenants is going to see if she can re-root it. I already have a couple of clippings of that plant - so I didn't mind.

It might be that somebody was just trying to take a clipping off the plant and ripped it by accident.

I don't mind that but it's one thing to take a sprig of something and try to re-root it - it's another to damage good plants.

Well, that's all folks - hope I'll soon be sharing my projects on the front lot. Right now, there's still about 6 inches of snow on some parts and the rest is mostly frozen.

Carly, do not know why you do not like pictures of yourself you look really animated, facial expressions are the best identity of anyone, and you sure have those in abundance.
Love the egg wreath, it could start a whole lot of different ideas for crafts.
Come on everyone, give us your ideas.

Doreen

great pictures carly! i like the eggs too lol i love the apple room that's neat! i have an idea for eggs and it's be the perfect thing for easter too lol here's whatcha do...
1. take an egg and shake it up really good to mix the yolk and the egg white together.
2 poke a little hole in both ends of the egg.
3.put your mouth on one end of the egg and blow into the egg so that the egg inside will blow out and into a bowl (make sure the bowl is underneath the egg unless you actually like to clean up messes! lol)
4. when you have all of the egg blown into the bowl wash the egg shell out.
5. let the egg shell dry
6.decorate the egg shell any way that you want to! :-)
7.now that you did this you can use the eggs in the bowl to make breakfast in the morning! :-)

I remember doing this a couple of years ago in spanish...we took some to the old folk's home to give them something for easter because we couldn't give them candy :-) they loved it!

Thanks for the pictures Carly!!!

I LOVE the MOOSE one!!!

We have something like that here in Buffalo...
Called "Herd about Buffalo?

I love going to those shows too, you can get soo many different ideas..
You gotta take a camera and pen and paper too to remember all that stuff..

Thanks for sharing!!!!

Weezie!

The buffalo - ha ha!

I always thought the moose in Toronto were ridiculous - they spend mega bucks to treat the eggs of geese and swans (coat them so the clutch can't survive to birth), and then put a buncha' moose in the city.

That's city hall for ya'.

OK - now I can tell my old cattle joke - but I'll replace the cows with the buffalo . . .

Hey! Look at the buncha' buffalo over there?

Not 'bunch' - 'herd'.

Herd what?

Herd of BUFFALO!

Sure I've heard of Buffalo - who hasn't?

NO! I mean a BUFFALO HERD!

So what if a buffalo heard - I didn't say anything I shouldn't have.

That moose is hysterical! Er... or it made me hysterical.... one or the other!

Well, I was trying to emulate the moose, I think -I have that same in-your-face stance as it does.

Carly, Carly, Carly.... Emulating Meese without having antlers??? If I've told you a once, I've told you a thousand times....