Canada Adventure Day 3

Today is the last day of our "mini innersearch" with the traveling monks and a grand tour of the Butchart Gardens.  This is the story of an amazing woman, named Jeannie Butchart - married to an enterprising concrete manufacturer. Basically he purchased the land to extricate lime stone deposits for his concrete plant and what was left after the quarry was a huge (and ugly) hole in the ground. 
 Usually patrons to the gardens simply walk through on their own but that wasn't enough for our incredible hosts  - Nagarajan and Shamini who arranged for the director of the gardens to host Sadasivanathaswami (don't try this from home – it took a superhuman effort to arrange this special tour).  According to our most amazing guide– Jeannie Butchart (also the plant chemist) was given a few seeds from a friend to start a vegetable garden.  Something magical must have happened as she watched those seeds sprout and looked out over this huge empty pit. She immediately expanded a large vegetable garden. The sides of the pit were lined with exposed rock so she had ropes strung along the sides of the cliff and from a hanging chair started planting ivy. She then sent for Japanese garden masters to come and develop the beginnings of what was to become a massive world renowned English style garden of incredible beauty with 65 full time gardeners that host over 800,000 people each year.
 It was quite amazing and humorous, listening to Sadasivanathaswami and Susan Wright (our additional guide) talking Latin back and forth throughout most of the tour!

Pieter Veltevrede joined the monks and Nagarajan for breakfast at our hotel. Here is Swami honoring Pieter with a rudraksha mala from Kauai Aadheenam.

Pieter is somewhat stunned

Pieter also brought about 20 original paintings from his archive to show the monks. We saw some astonishing work that no one in the world usually sees.

Here we are at Butchart Gardens. The place was slighty crowded and everyone moves along a narrow path as we all walk together.

Thurai Singham seen here, in what seems to be our favorite kind of shot from the trip: A photo of someone taking a photo

Here is Swami with one of our tour guides and behind him is the head gardner

Amala Ceyon tried to stay in the background but I wouldn\

t let that happen. What an amazing soul. '

Nagarajan\

s company chef brought her dog Kimiko. These dog is pretty special. She stays quiet, doesn\'t bark or make any demands. '

And of course the opening vista of Butchart Gardens. One can see this and basically be content to just turn around and leave.

A small group of friends blossoms from this wonderful minisearch.

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