Still gardening

I haven't written much about our garden... maybe because we've been working weekends and evenings like crazy to tame it. We've also completed the final stage of landscaping for our front step remodel... I'll post before and after shots next week, but here's a sneak peak.

Simple

Two favourite African-American spirituals. 

Two great American choirs. 

Not much more needs to be said. 

Deep River, sung by the Dale Warland Singers

Balm In Gilead, sung by Chanticleer and gospel great Yvette Flunder

Big Adventure

After several weeks of posting about the Queen's Diamond Jubilee, I'm going to return to regular blog posting... and this post will go off in a completely different direction!

Yesterday, I went to Vancouver for an appointment and a bit of shopping.  This, in itself, is a pretty big adventure for me.  Living two blocks from the ferry terminal makes these sorts of excursions pretty easy, and now that school is finished, maybe I'll do it more often.

Yesterday, however, I had a bigger adventure than I anticipated. When I arrived in Horseshoe Bay on the ferry, there was a LONG line at the bus stop. Rather than try to fit on the packed 257 Express bus to Vancouver, I took the slower (by about 15 minutes) 250 bus (with only 4 people on it) and rambled through West Vancouver. On one street, we were stopped by more than a dozen police, fire and other important looking trucks parked on the side of the road. The reason? THIS:

I'll admit- I used the zoom on my camera to get this shot (through a momentarily open bus window), but this guy was still too close for my comfort.

He wandered out of sight and we took an alternate route, but later news reports confirmed he was succesfully tranquilized and "relocated" back to the wilderness. Phew.

And finally... the Jubilee Celebration

Here are some highlights of this weekend's official Jubilee Celebration. Prince Philip unfortunately, missed the final two days due to illness; despite his unfortunate absence, the party continued.

Prince Charles' speech at the end of the concert

Jubilee Blessing written to conclude the Service of Thanksgiving

Balcony appearance and military fly by on the last day of celebration (with a wonderfully rousing version of the national anthem sung by the crowd at 7:45 and three cheers for the Queen 9:25)

And finally,  a word from the Jubilee girl herself. 

Celebrating Jubilee: Happy and Glorious

With today being the final day of Diamond Jubilee Celebrations, I've come to my second last photo montage. Tomorrow, we'll look at highlights of this weekend's celebrations, but today we'll finish our look at the Queen's past 60 years. Enjoy!

Gospel Jubilee

If you haven't heard (!!), this weekend marks the official celebration of the Queen's Diamond Jubilee. This afternoon, the celebration will get underway with a massive floating parade of boats (including several with the Royal Family) down the Thames River in London.

For music today, I am going back 10 years to the Queen's Golden Jubilee. To celebrate her 50th anniversary on the throne, she hosted a  concert in the back garden of Buckingham Palace. One of the performers was the London Adventist Chorale; their versions of two gospel classics were just fantastic. 

Skip ahead to in the video to 18:40 for the first song, Great Getting-up Morning. The second piece, Jubilee (Great Day) follows immediately afterward at 22:30.

Celebrating Jubilee: Documentaries

There have been some wonderful documentaries produced for the Queen's Jubilee this year. Here are some of my favourites:

The Diamond Queen Episode 1: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

The Diamond Queen Episode 2: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3 and Part 4

The Diamond Queen Episode 3

The Queen's Palaces: Buckingham Palace

The Queen's Palaces: Hollyrood House Part 1 and Part 2

The Queen's Palaces: Windsor Castle Part 1 and Part 2

And finally, this tribute from The Prince of  Wales. He shared home movies taken by his parents that have never before been seen by the public- it's just great. 

Celebrating Jubilee: Artwork

While I wasn't initially that impressed with the official logo chosen for the Queen's Jubilee (the graphic here on the left), it grew on me substantially after I found out it was one of hundreds of pieces of children's artwork requested by Buckingham Palace to commemorate this event. The Queen specifically asked for children's artwork to be part of the celebration, and a number of images have been released to the public. For several weeks last month, some of this artwork decorated Buckingham Palace as well (see the bottom two photographs). The artwork, as you see here, really is wonderful.

Photos are courtesy of The Daily Mail and Geoff Robinson Photography