Lucky's Doughnuts on Main Street

Open for a couple of years, Lucky's Doughnuts is a part of 49th Parallel Coffee. We've been to the coffee shop several times and the quality and presentation of the coffee is probably the best in Vancouver. While tempted to try the doughnuts we have always resisted, until today.












We were on our way to the Okanagan and, needing a coffee before leaving the city on a five hour drive, stopped at 49th Parallel. Jeem instantly noticed the apple bacon fritter and was compelled to have one. Really. Bacon, maple glazed, the genuine goodness of apples of course, and more bacon.







Sherry chose a more traditional scone or biscuit or something equally as healthy. Delicious too I suppose. Lucky's Doughnuts shares the coffee shop's dedication to quality and presentation. You won't find doughnuts like these at Tim Horton's. Authentic comes to mind, as does hand-crafted. In the case of Jeem's fritter, artery-clogging might also apply.

As usual the coffees were fantastic, sweet, rich and creamy. The fritter and the scone were both excellent; an indulgence that could become habit forming. Now if only they would make medialunas like our favourite place in Buenos Aires....

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.

Man on a couch by Jesse Rubin ~ in VanDusen Garden

It was a hot long weekend Sunday. Stifling perhaps. From the Okanagan through to the Sunshine Coast it has been a long dry spell of sun and heat, and on this day temperatures in MetroVancouver would again approach 30 degrees.




On this Sunday morning we enjoyed a coffee at VanDusen Garden, as is often our custom on a Sunday morning. We then walked through the garden seeking out the coolness of shade wherever we found it.









The colours were bright and bold in the sunshine, almost too brilliant to be taken as real.

Some of us found shade along the paths, others donned straw hats and discovered the coolness of the lawn.




Still another lone soul gave in to the heat, threw a blanket on a park bench and went to sleep.

Or so it seemed.


The Man on a Couch is actually a 45 cm sculpture by Jesse Rubin and was one of many featured at the 7th Annual Show and Sale by the Sculptors' Society of BC .

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.

Summer heat and summer blooms

The past few weeks on the left coast have been exceedingly hot, at least by our standards. Temperatures, "near the water" as the forecast always says, approach thirty on most days, sometimes more, and nights, especially in second floor apartments facing west, have been difficult. We complain, and will again when the cold winds and rain come.







The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses in its turning. The weeks that come before are only a climb from balmy spring, and those that follow a drop to the chill of autumn, but the first week of August is motionless, and hot.
- Natalie Babbit






When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it's your world for the moment. I want to give that world to someone else. Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower. I want them to see it whether they want to or not.
- Georgia O'Keefe

There is nothing you can see that is not a flower. There is nothing you can think that is not the moon.
-Matsuo Basho

Photos by Jim Murray. Copyright 2014.