On September 2, 2006, Haiyan invited us to a dinner party at her place. In fact, it was a dinner banquet!
So much delicious food she had prepared. Yangzi pointed out that she had done a lot of the cooking too.
We ate and ate and ate! And such wonderful company. Below, left L-R) are
Alex, Haiyan, myself, Patti, Marina, Jing and Lujing with Peter in the front. On the right are Lujing, Jing and Yangzi.
Note Haiyan's M.Math degree in the top right cornor.
It was quite an international group. At one point, we were all talking about different places in the world where we
had grown up or gone to school and it got quite confusing. Where is Belarus and Minsk, where is Hudson's Bay,
where are these cities in China? John solved the problem by getting a very small world globe and it got passed around
the table and everybody pointed at their favourite place.
Thank you Haiyan for a wonderful time!
At the end of August, 2006, I happened to look out our back window towards the waterfalls. Much to my
amazement, I saw a
Great Blue Heron (left). This beautiful bird is over a meter tall and has a wing span of about 2 meters.
I think it must have been attracted by the pond and the fish. I called Patti at work to tell her. Her immediate
reaction was "make sure he doesn't eat any fish!". To the right is our resident
Chipmunk. Sometimes we put out peanuts for him in the bowl, then we sit on the patio
and wait for him to find them. It usually takes a few minutes. He will take two in his mouth (which makes it bulge!) and then run off and
hide them for the winter. He and his family live under our gazebo.
Below are some Shasta Daisys in our back garden.
Below, left are some hanging petunias in our back garden. On the right is a wild rose growing by the waterfalls. Note the small insect.
