dinner and a mural

[piranha]

or two or three. the paramour and i went to chemainus yesterday afternoon. chemainus did, once upon a time, come upon an idea to distinguish itself from other towns hereabouts who have such monikers as "salmon capital of the world" (port alberni, which is, as i understand it, not the only salmon capital of the world :) and "city of totems" (duncan). chemainus picked murals. it has by now a lot of them, and handily painted footprints lead through the town from one to the next (though there are some as yet hidden).

but before ogling murals, since we were taking the scenic route and paying attention, we came across askew creek park, which seemed to consider itself a "wilderness park". ya know, a parklet from which one can see two bordering roads, one of them being very noisy, has no business claiming to be "wilderness", not even if it featured a bald eagle nest. it's a lovely little park, however, with some nice second growth trees still standing.

	like this multiracial poly marriage between two western redcedars and a douglas-fir. :)
	and one fern to rule them.
	this is one of the murals i really like. prior to 1942 chemainus had a thriving japanese community of something like 300 people. i don't know how many there are today, but there are two murals i saw on this trip painted by people with japanese surnames, and with japanese themes.
	my favourite mural is "the hermit". some time in the 1800s charlie abbott settled in a wooded area near chemainus, and slowly began to transform it. he created flower beds, walled pathways, trails, and secluded corners, and until his death in 1889 shared his sanctuary with visitors. i wonder what happened to it.
	victorian houses have intricate birdhouses.
	amazing fall colour.

we ambled for a while, and i took lots of pictures, as always. drooled over a victorian B&B for sale, contemplated stepping into the twisted sisters' tea house, which came highly recommended by people leaving it -- and since they had british accents, how could we not trust that? we weren't quite in the mood for tea, though. well, i was, but the paramour is never, so that's it usually for tea houses. jo will have to come visit so we can have tea there. we wandered around a bit more; down to the water, and to the park with the waterwheel.

when we did decide on dinner, we met with the worst service i can remember, ever. wow. but hey, the music was good! and it was a great outing overall, crappy dinner notwithstanding.

Comments

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

In the small version of the fall colour, it looks a lot like bougainvillea in flower, which we have a lot of around here at the moment. It's pretty amazing they're leaves, not flowers. (Okay, I think bougainvillea are technically also some kind of leaf, where the actual flower is a little pale thing in the middle. Still.)

[lcohen]

the murals look great but yes, that does sound like stunningly bad service.