.::|TheDish|::.

In Celebration of Spring: The Sutton Garden Club

You may not feel it due to the chilly temps in the Northeast today, but it is the official first day of spring! And in the spirit of my favorite season, I'd like to introduce to you the newly launched Sutton Garden Club blog!

If you haven't heard of Sutton, it is a small town about 34 square miles in size, with a population of 8-9,000, and is located about 50 miles (1 hour) southwest of Boston, MA; it's also my home town. The Sutton Garden Club, founded in 1997, is dedicated to the following objectives: to encourage interest in all phases of home gardening, promote better horticultural practices and use the acquired skills and knowledge of the membership to benefit the town and residents through community projects and to promote a spirit of good will. The blog highlights Club announcements, such as the 2008 Sutton Garden Tour, award-winning gardens, scholarship information, plant sales, and more!

If you have a green thumb, or if you just need a quick hit of color and cheer from time to time, be sure to check out the blog, leave a comment, and join the gardening community. I'd also strongly suggest you take a short, leisurely trip out to Sutton on June 21st for the tour, and enjoy a stroll through the breathtaking gardens, mingle with artists and artisans, and embrace all the beauty that Sutton has to offer.

Hovis London Freewheel

Boston is known to have terrible drivers. Those drivers, from my perspective, fit into one of two categories. They either don't know how to drive - you know, they switch lanes without a blinker, swerve, cut you off, etc - or they are one of the aggressive road-rage types, who are so outraged with the don't-know-how-to-drive types that they ride everyone's bumper, honk the horn, and drive at excessively dangerous speeds through our cow-path streets. So its no wonder that cyclists are never a majority at any time on Boston city streets. And if they are, then they are among the brave ones. Its really a shame that we all don't accept bike riding as a preferred means of transportation; after all they are easy to navigate the terrible streets, easy to park, good for the environment, and even provide quite the cardio workout.

So I was jazzed to see what London is doing to boost bike-use in the city. The event is called The Hovis London Freewheel. The city is closing down 9 miles of  traffic-heavy streets and allowing only cyclists to make their way through. As noted on the Freewheel site, "All Londoners – from mums on shoppers to old folks on rusty relics – will be coming from far and wide to ride down the city’s most famous roads, seeing sights like London Eye, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge". No cars, no traffic, and no bad drivers! And when you tire of pedaling, there is a secure area to leave your bikes and wander around the Freewheel Festival with demonstrations, maintenance centers, and entertainment. I don't know that Boston would ever embrace cyclists like this, but it sounds like it could be so much fun and a great (safe) reason to dust off your otherwise abandoned bike for a day.

The Great Blue Hole

I had cocktails with a former colleague tonight, and she told me about her recent dive experiences in Belize. It's been in my top-ten list of vacation destinations to visit, and now that we are certified divers, its an absolute must.

The Great Blue Hole is a perfectly circular limestone sinkhole more than 300 feet across and 412 feet deep about 60 miles off the coast of Belize. As the Ambergris Caye website notes:

Part of the Lighthouse Reef System, it lies approximately 60 miles off the mainland out of Belize City. It is one of the most astounding dive sites to be found anywhere on earth, right in the center of Lighthouse Reef is a large, almost perfectly circular hole approximately one quarter of a mile (.4 km) across. Inside this hole the water is 480 feet (145 m) deep and it is the depth of water which gives the deep blue color that causes such structures throughout the world to be known as "blue holes."

How amazing is this?! The temp in the hole, at its deepest point, is about 76F, the prefect diving temp for me! Although the deeper you go, the less the light penetrates, the less the water circulates, and therefore the less life you expect to see, you may see a blacktip tiger or a hammerhead shark lurking about, as my friend did! I have mixed feelings about seeing a shark, but from what I hear, it can be a beautiful, and surprisingly calm, experience. Apparently the visibility from the top down the hole is incomparable, and although life may seem close, it may in fact be many feet below.

Apparently Jacques-Yves Cousteau brought his ship to the hole in 1971, and declared this site one of the top diving sites of the world. I can't wait until we explore it's depths some day in the (hopefully) near future.

Scuba Diving: Natural Beauty, Elegance and Adventure

Quite a few friends and family have said that they think I am crazy for loving to scuba dive, and often what it really is, is that they fear what may be down below the sea's surface. Well, yes, you never really know what is down there until you get down there, but when you dive you are diving with an experienced dive master who knows all the dive sites like the back of his hand. They are experts and you need to trust them. The masters won't take you somewhere they know sharks may inhibit if you aren't ready for that (I am not quite ready for that)! The truth is that once you become comfortable with the equipment and how your body works under water, and once you dive a couple times and discover how safe it is if you are educated, its not scary at all.

What you can count on to be down "there" is beauty, serenity, and wildlife; its like nothing I have seen (except on Discovery Channel HD) or experienced before. Here is a video of still photography I discovered on the Scuba Channel (keep the volume up for the funky music), that captures the natural beauty, elegance and adventure that's the source of my passion for diving.

Scuba Channel