On the next day, Becky and I boarded a bus and ferry for a tour of Vancouver’s sister city and the capital of British Columbia, Victoria. We visited The Butchart Gardens and downtown Victoria. The Butchart Gardens is fifty-five acres of floral display. People who have greener thumbs than I would better enjoy what the Butchart Gardens has to offer. The Gardens is a popular tourist stop, as evidenced by this photo.

The best souvenir I have from The Butchart Gardens is this exquisite shot of a blossoming oriental poppy. I actually have a client named Poppy and think of her each time I look at this photo. Though I’m not into plants, dirt, or manual labor, I think this organic, natural object is amazingly cool.

I took this photo to show the setting in which the previous photo was taken. This photo might be entitled “Before, During, & After.”

Here’s a photo of my wife, the tourist, standing on a couple of stepping stones in the Japanese Garden. This doesn’t look as though it’d be too difficult to create in one’s own backyard. Mosquitoes like Becky and me too much for us to have something like this, though.

I was merely complying with my wife’s instructions when she told me to take a photo of these lily pads in Butchart’s Italian Garden. The beauty of these pads occurred to me only after I saw the photo, which, according to my wife, is reason for me to always do and have faith in what she says.