Volker's Photo Blog: Stanley Park's Rose Garden

Blogging

Shortly after I came out to British Columbia in early 2006 I had a case of severely high blood pressure. It wouldn't have been fair to an employer for me to work for them until I got my health situation sorted out. I was on medications to lower the blood pressure and it took until early 2007 to find the cause. I finally went to a naturopath who found that a microscopic parasite was the cause for all this.

While getting my health in order, I took up blogging to share my photography. This way I wasn't wasting time and others got to enjoy the photos, not just me and those close to me.

In May of this year I had a mini-stroke cause again by severely high blood pressure. I may end up gong to the naturopath again since the specialist and other MDs can't seem to find the cause. This has only been a problem out here. Before that in Ontario, the blood pressure was only marginally high, not severely high like in BC.

Knowledge is good because being forewarned is forearmed!

All that said, enjoy this blog and all the photos I share with you.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Stanley Park's Rose Garden

A visit to Vancouver's Stanley Park isn't complete without seeing the rose garden. If you come along from the Second Beach on English Bay, along Lost Lagoon and underneath West Georgia Street to Pipeline Road or from downtown Vancouver directly via West Georgia Street, the rose garden is fairly easy to find. Of course, you could also take a tour of the park on a horse-drawn trolley such as the one above and get your bearings that way. Below is a close-up shot of the team drawing the trolley for those horse lovers out there.

There are many kinds of roses but there are other kinds of flowers too, such as this tree-form Fuchsia below.

The rose shown in the photo above is called 'Alexander' found to the right along Pipeline Road when entering the rose garden from the south. Then below are featured two climbing roses. In the foreground is a red climber from Germany called 'Dortmund', developed by the rose breeder Kordes in 1955, whose parentage is a seedling x Rosa 'Kordesii' and has a very slight apple scent. The flowers have 5-10 petals. This is one of the climbers I had in my garden back in southwestern Ontario. The canes were about eight feet high the first year. Its a rose well worth having and the bumblebees love the flowers too. The rose in the background is called 'Westerland' and also a Kordes rose. It has been available since 1969. The flowers with 18-25 petals are orange-pink with some yellow in the centre. One of the parents is the rose 'Friedrich Worlein' crossed with another parent.

The image above shows the rose 'Westerland' looking skyward. Below is a close-up shot of the flower.

Above is a palm tree in the centre of a flower bed and below is another colourful planting along Pipeline Road. So it's not all roses but plenty of other flowers as well.

The above photos shows one of the administrative buildings in the park. Below is a Grey Squirrel, a familiar sight in many parks across Canada.

A visit to any park cannot be complete without a surprise, so learn to expect the unexpected. Two elderly ladies entred the rose garden area from the north coming from an area where the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) have their park head quarters and stables for their horses (mounted police). The ladies walked along completely oblivious to the entourage of peafowl following behind them. I tried to get their attention but either they didn't understand me or they thought I was crazy. The Indian Peafowl (blue neck), Pavo cristatus, is native to India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka. The other one, the Green Peafowl or Pavo muticus, is native to Myanmar east to Java (Indonesia). The peacock (male) in the meantime was up on the roof of another building nearby at the northend of a parking lot crying out each time a car horn sounded or an auto alarm went off. I'll let the remaining photos speak for themselves. Enjoy!