Christmas theme light decorations, hot chocolate, a frozen pond, some ducks… but where are the flowers?
Can’t find anything better to do than read my meandering over the past few weeks? Well, we visited the Van Dusen Botanical Gardens Festival of lights on Sunday 27 December 2009 and were treated to menagerie of light displays and… well more light displays.
Several minutes after walking around aimlessly in the cold I realized that I have not seen any real flowers. Van Dusen is a botanical garden after all. Well, to
be more exact Van Dusen is the founder who is a person… but you know what I mean.
There were a few displays that I enjoyed:
- Make A Wish Candle Shrine – The Make A Wish candle shrine stood out for me because of it’s simplicity. Unfortunately, I appeared that people missed that true concept of the exhibit. I heard several parent’s telling their children make a wish on their candle. Seemingly not knowing that the display was to raise funds for the Make A Wish foundation. The Make A Wish foundation is an organization that aims to grant wishes to terminally ill children. In reality, I believe that the “shrine” should have been treated more like a prayer for the children, rather than a self serving, wishing well type display. But that’s just me.
- Dancing Lights – As we walked around the garden, I noticed flickering lights. For a moment I thought that it was a signal for patrons to leave the garden since it was nearing closing time. OR, a catastrophic cascading black out brought about by, what seemed like, the millions of millions of Christmas light that adorned that garden (mostly not LED by the way). After several minutes of brainstorming several worst-case scenarios in my head, i realized that the flickering lights were synchronized to the music being piped through the speakers. Then the Awe factor kicked in soon afterward.
To conclude by keyboard diarrhea, with a few mugs of hot chocolate, a warm coat, and eyes of a child the Van Dusen Festival of lights was a great experience (although there was not one flower to seen). It was highlighted by sharing the experience with a few good friends. This jsut goes to show that no matter where you are or what you do, it is the company that you keep that make an event worth remembering.. or blogging about. I suggest you take a few good friends and enjoy the dancing lights before the holiday season ends for 2009.
Peace!
