Our third Bollywood installment also comes from Ram-Leela:

So much has happened since I last posted…

Cosmic solar eclipses, a hurricane, a trip to Canada,

Kosmik Kactus?

Wait, What…No?

“Aye, it’s no right at a’ ESPatch!”

This has gotten out of hand.

I find this obsession with tinkering and making cacti more colorful somewhat disturbing?

Why are they not picking on the succulents in the background?

Oh wait…

As if sticking in fake flowers was not enough, Kosmik Kactus have resorted to just blasting their poor plants with rather bright coloring…just to jazz up the apparently REALLY boring and natural GREEN color of the plant.

“Boldly going where no plant has gone before…”?

Borg Queen:  Cacti! We used to be exactly like them. Flawed. Weak. Organic…green. But we evolved to include the synthetic…fake little flowers, spray paint. Now we use both to attain perfection to sell in the box stores. Your goal should be the same as ours.

Okay that was a stretch, moving quickly along to a recent trip to Canada…

Yes the Levwolds were once again taking to the air, 

this time headed to Montreal for to compete in the North American Pipe Band Championships in Maxville with

The Silver Thistle Pipes and Drums.

At cruising altitude the window frost resembled Celestial cartography.

Coming in to land.

Time to unpack, hang up the kilt and have a quick ‘dab’ in our hotel room.

Of course I called it a ‘dub’ and got laughed at then reprimanded for apparently doing it completely wrong.

We were hoping to escape to some cooler temperatures in Montreal but unfortunately for us they were in a heatwave, of course they were.

It was hot, really hot and like Europe, not many places had A/C, fans, well, anything really.

I almost lost my mind in a store in China Town.

Hmm, okay?

Sweat was running down my nose, the air was completely still, a sweltering combination of Peking duck and raw sewage hung heavy in the air.

I felt some involuntary head movements coming on, a sure sign my tourist tolerance valve was rattling and about to blow.

Everywhere I looked was shelf after shelf of tourist tat, umbrellas that, we were told, could never blow inside out (naturally we bought 3), chopsticks, fans, jade elephants, you get the idea…I mopped my brow, eye twitching.

I finally cracked at the excruciating duration of time it was taking to pick out some Squishies and a wooden Samurai Sword.

This was an interesting find (well, for me) on a busy street in Old Montreal.

I will forever wonder if the celosia had been growing in there or if someone had dumped it in there?

He found lots of opportunities to cool down on our excursions.

One of our journeys took us to the historic district of old Montreal, to the Notre-Dame Basilica.

The church was built in the gothic revival style,

and is insanely ornate and colorful on the inside.

We passed a lot of street art installations.

This one strangely reminded me of when I used to try to protect my citrus trees from frost.

Ridiculous.

http://www.eastsidepatch.com/2010/01/carnival/

These rotating seats were an instant hit at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts:

And then there was the food.

Some traditional,

some extravagant,

and some rather challenging, well, for some people.

Escargot kids!…Dig in!

Let’s take a closer look at that middle one.

The sheer distress.

Moving along…

We headed out of a now rather blustery and wet Montreal for the hour and a half drive to Maxville to compete with another 50 or so bands in the Glengarry Highland Games.

Here is our MSR (March, Strathspey and Reel) performance.

The rain and wind really picked up at the end of the closing ceremonies making surprisingly short work of the umbrella that could not be blown inside out by quickly blowing it inside out.

Time for one last trip, this time to the Montreal botanical Garden.

Exiting the metro we had a great view of the Olympic Park. an impressive structure that would not look out of place in a Star Wars movie.

It was massive!

An elevator runs up the spine.

Entrance to the Gardens.

Impressive sedum,

coneflowers,

lots and lots of coneflowers.

The grounds were extensive (about 190 acres of thematic gardens and greenhouses), you could spend days in here.

The grounds are also home to the Montreal Insectarium. 

So many specimens. 

But by far the strangest critter I encountered was this odd looking chap:

I mean,

really?

All the walking found us a little peckish…

It had a very progressive menu, but after the escargot adventure nobody seemed too keen.

Stay Tuned For:

“Gossiping Wheelbarrows”

 

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