Hey! Whazzup with U today? I had soooo much fun last weekend – hiking and going fishing on the beautiful little island where I live. Fishing is a lot more fun than you might think!! I actually did catch some fish!! - 5 small rockfish. Hey! They were only about 10cm long but they tasted great!

I'm still thinking about how well that garden meeting went. (I'm starting a Community Garden where I live) People stop me in the street now in Yung Shue Wan (榕樹灣) to ask me about the garden. I think we'll be ready to start by next gardening season (the best time to grow vegetables in HK is in the winter).

Next weekend I'm going to take my sons to the beach. They love playing in the sand and throwing rocks in the water. Avi is getting pretty good at building sand castles. There are many great sandy beaches on Lamma but the closest to my house (at Luk Chau Wan) is stony so we mostly just fish there or look for shells and other neat stuff.

One thing that's been bothering me lately is that I'm not really getting enough exercise, and I'm fatter than I was before. I don't know what to do - I'm so busy. One thing I have been doing is trying to ride my bike around the island more. It's pretty good exercise for me biking home from the ferry pier because I live up the hill in Tai Peng. Mountain biking is really popular on Lamma and they even had a great race here a few months ago called 'The Lamma Enduro.' Bicycle Racers have to ride as many 5km laps around and over a mountain as they can in 5 hours. Crazy!! Someone wrote about it, "The concept is simple. The LAMMA ENDURO 2007 is five hours of pain." Nice! - Not what I need to get in shape, but a few more hours of exercise a week will get me fit I hope. I found a video on Youtube from last year's Enduro Race - check it out!

Community Garden Meeting!!

On Sunday we had the first meeting of the Tai Peng Community Garden. What a success!! Eleven people came: a university professor, a carpenter, a herpetologist (she studies frogs), a couple of teachers and one lady who works with special needs children (智能障礙).

I was so happy with this turnout because I was afraid only 2 or 3 people would come --- I had only posted the meeting agenda on the Lamma Community website earlier the same day. At 11:00 am I put up 5 posters advertising the garden meeting in Tai Peng and in Yung Shue Wan (榕樹灣). Anyway, I'm so excited that the garden has actually begun, because it will give my kids and I such a great place to grow flowers and vegetables and to make new friends.


There are other things to do in Tai Peng. There are quite a few French people who live here and regularly gather to play Pétanque (地掷球). I know they have a lot of fun playing because they make so much noise!! haha! (I don't mind ;-) Players throw metal balls and try to get them as close as they can to a small wooden ball that is thrown beforehand. One of these players also plays the saxophone, which is great to listen to on a warm spring night.

We can also hang out at the store, just drinking soda pop and meeting friends as they walk up from Yung Shue Wan. But I prefer more active things to do, like hiking in the hills or wandering down to the East Lamma Channel (東博寮海峽) to go fishing off the rocks. I really like these activities because I'm a nature lover, but I also like making friends and doing things together with my neighbors. I guess that's why the new garden make me feel so excited about the future. For me, it's just as much about friendship and community as it is about flowers and vegetables!

I thought I ought to post my picture. This picture of me with my 2 young boys was taken on the stony beach at Pak Kok Tsui a couple of months ago. We had a great time that day just playing and collecting all kinds of neat stuff that had washed up on the beach. My elder son, Avi, found this red flag that had once been a marker for some fisherman's lobster traps. Avi made it the court flag of our beach rubbish castle!

Today, I'm really excited about starting a 'community shared garden' at my place in Tai Peng Village. I have started clearing up a pice of land for the project where I live and I just made a posting on Lamma.com, Lamma Island's Community Website, to ask if other people would be interested in helping to set it up.

Back in Calgary, Canada about 5 years ago, I had been involved in a community shared garden. At that time I had two 2 mentally challenged roommates also got involved and it had been a great way for all of us to make new friends. Not only that, but we had a good time and a lot of delicious fresh vegetables to share with all our non-gardening friends.

I sure hope this new garden can 'get off the ground!'

I found this neat little video about a community gardner in Toronto: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMJB_bhF58E

The name of this blog, Tai Peng Canuck, has two parts. The first comes from the fact that I live in a wonderful small village called Tai Peng It's a 10 minute walk up the hill from Yung Shue Wan on Lamma Island (南丫島) in Hong Kong SAR PRC. Click on this button to find me on a satellite map:


The second part, 'Canuck,' is a friendly way to refer to people from Canada.