This is unquestionably the most difficult move I've ever done and I've spent most of my life moving around. I started working on this move in January, decluttering and downsizing in preparation for listing my condo in Calgary. It is now six months later and although we are moved into our new place, we can't finish unpacking because the movers broke a big storage unit and we are waiting for them to decide whether to replace or fix it. So all the stuff that would normally have gone into that big wall unit is sitting in boxes in a corner of the living room. As a person who values order and serenity in my surroundings, I find it difficult to still be living among boxes, without some of my own things being available to me, and without my favorite pieces of art on the walls.
Having said that, I'm trying my best to ignore the clutter in my living room and enjoy the parts of the home that are largely settled, most especially our beautiful patio, where I've begun to plant herbs, some tomatoes, kale, lavender, and a few annuals (lobelia, impatiens). We've developed a good relationship with the resident manager. This is a clean, quiet, well-maintained building, full of friendly people, we are finding it stays comfortable cool in our apartment even during the heat of these summer days.
Our apartment is on the ground floor in the rear courtyard of the building and we have a huge private, fenced patio with raised beds. Being on the east side of the building, we get sun in the morning and in the afternoon it stays cool on our patio even when it's hot outside. There are many established plantings already and some bare spots where the previous residents took things out when they left. But this is great, because it gives me space to put in what I'd like instead. Aside from putting in a few edibles, I'm mostly just watching this garden at the moment, to see what it might need or like to have in addition to what is there already. Just outside our patio is a huge sequoia and I often see hummingbirds in its lower branches, so I've put out a hummingbird feeder and a hanging fuschia in hopes of luring some into our garden.
James Bay is an amazing neighborhood, full of interesting old houses. We are a block from Beacon Hill Park and a five-minute walk from the sea. Last night we walked down to the Inner Harbour to watch the Canada Day fireworks. We are on a quiet little street, with very little traffic, mostly local. Yet, we are just a block off the lower, quiet part of Douglas, which makes it very easy to get around the rest of the city when we want to.
Five short blocks west of us is a little commercial strip along Menzies that includes a Thrifty's, a drug store, several restaurants, a book store, post office, and more shops I've yet to explore. Around the corner is the Emily Carr House (haven't yet been for a visit). Two blocks away is a small corner grocery that is full of healthy food, including lots of gluten free items, organic food, fresh produce, local honey (including James Bay honey from hives within just a few blocks of us). A few blocks in another direction and there is a more mainstream corner store, full of junk food just in case we get the urge.
The abundance of good, healthy food is one of the things I love most about living in this city. Everywhere you go, even small shops, organic food can be found. There is also a lot of local food everywhere and merchants make it very easy to see the origin of whatever they are selling. It's like it defaults to transparency, the opposite of what you find in so many other places.
