The fat of the land

Monday, August 20, 2007
CHILLIWACK, B.C. — Anyone with the slightest hint of horticultural ability deserves to live in a place like Chilliwack. Around here, you could jab a stick into the ground and walk away from it, and a week later it would be sprouting leaves.
From the Byrt’s front window, you can look across to beautiful grassed properties across the street with tasteful landscaping, and beyond their back fences are fields full of tall stalks of corn with dark shiny leaves and swaying tassels. There’s a strip of the Trans Canada visible beyond that field, and then some towering trees and the dark mountains at the horizon.
The occasional breeze brings in some ripe farm animal smells every now and then, attesting to the agricultural activity all around the homes here, and there are even some drive-through corn stands by the roadsides where you can purchase freshly-cut cobs of sweet golden corn for supper.
This morning, while Val and Ken were off getting our truck attended to, Linda and I headed out with plastic pails to harvest some of the abundant fruit that burgeons along fences and roadsides. We drove to the Pacific Region Training Centre, where around the old tennis court are great dripping grape vines. We could see clusters of green grapes, but Linda guessed that the cooler weather they’ve been having was delaying the ripening process, so we didn’t pick any of these.
At the edge of the property is another untended, wild section where huge clumps of blackberries grow. Each branch was bending over with berries, some of which were small, hard and green, while others had developed a red blush that made them look like raspberries, except they too were hard. Our objective was the fully ripe, shiny black berries that separated easily from the plants and tumbled into our pails in great abundance. The canes are eight feet tall or more, and covered with thorns and prickles, so I was glad of my long sleeves. It hardly took any time for us to fill two pails full to take home for tonight’s dessert.
I was rolling pastry for blackberry pie when Val and Ken returned, without the truck, but with news that the trouble was not misaligned wheels, but damaged universal joints, which they could fix today — one bit of good news — and which was covered by our extended warranty — the other good piece of news. They were able to pick up the truck later in the afternoon, ready for the next leg of the journey.
After lunch, we all went to visit the Minter Gardens in a part of Chilliwack slightly east of here. This 32-acre site was built in the late 1970s on a plot of land where a centuries-old landslide had deposited rocks and rich alluvial soil in the Fraser River Valley. The Minter family envisioned a beautiful garden, making use of the native trees that were already flourishing there, and dividing it into 11 themes, joined by meandering paths.
It was quite simply the most beautiful garden I have ever seen. Curving flowerbeds displayed every colour and type of blossoming plant you could imagine, set against perfect green lawns, or along gurgling streams and waterfalls with little footbridges. There was a fragrant rose garden, a Chinese garden with bonsai trees, a huge peacock on a hillside with flowers for tail feathers, an arbor garden, a perfectly symmetrical formal garden with precisely-trimmed boxwood hedges, a hilltop wedding pavilion with huge hanging baskets dripping with vines and colourful petunias and lobelia, and rows of pretty white chairs set under a tented roof, just waiting for a bride and groom. There were little fish ponds, and a cedar labyrinth, two Victorian ladies whose skirts were made of flowers, and an enormous Canadian flag on a hillside made of hundreds of red and white begonias. I could hardly stop myself from snapping one photo after another of this spectacular place!
Back at the house, at supper, we enjoyed hot, sweet cobs of corn with the main course followed by freshly baked blackberry pie with ice cream melting on top for dessert, washed down with the Byrts’ home made wine. The whole day was a feast to the senses!