What a way to celebrate my birthday but to hang out at the beach.  We had warm weather for swimming and relaxing at the beach.  This is the first time I have been to the North Shore where the waves were pretty mild and there was not too many surfers out.  We stayed at the Marriott Waikiki Beach which was twin tower hotel located across from the beach near the Honolulu Zoo and Diamond Head.

Click here to see more vacation photos.

We were lucky to find our blue lynx ragdoll in April 2009 from Vancouver and bring her home.  She has gorgious ice blue eyes with long white fur with very distinct brown/grey markings.  Our little diva loves to strut her stuff and fetch her mouse.

To see more photos of her growing up click here.

I have become an apiarist (a beekeeper).  The bee on the left is a bee from one of the two colonies I purchased. 

Fascinating and industrious, the bees are enjoying the many flowers around here.  Many were checking out our gladiolus patch.  

Some more photos of our many gladiolus are available here.

Our gladiolus are have started to bloom at the farm.  We have thousands of them! Many are baby plants, but quite a few grown specimens are producing a lot of flowers in a wide variety of colours.

The bulbs were left behind by the previous owners of the farm we recently purchased.  The plants came up in what we were going to make our vegetable garden, but we decided to keep the gladiolus to see what they would do.  Very glad we did as many are very interesting varieties.  Now we need to decide where we will expand them to so the baby gladiolus plants have room to grow.

To see all the Gladiolus pictures click here

This year the Victoria Orchid Society's Orchid show was held at the Student Union Building (the sub) at UVic.  The place has changed quite a bit!  While the show was small there were still some interesting specimens, and many temptations for sale.  One day when I have a greenhouse...

Click here for the rest of the photos from the show.