A22 FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 2016
RICHMOND-NEWS.COM
VOICESin the City
Can you keep a Paulik Park secret? LYNDAPASACRETA Gardening
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hhh! Paulik Neighbourhood Park — Richmond’s very own secret garden in the centre of Richmond. This six-acre city-owned park was once owned and inhabited by two families as far back as the 1930s — the Ohlers and the Pauliks. The Ohler family sold botanical plants and frogs. The Paulik family planted a forest and perennial garden beds using the arts and crafts design popular in the 1930s. Arts and crafts landscape design incorpo-
rated the look of “wild gardens” with informal borders. The use of rocks or plants (for example, boxwood hedges) to delineate borders was predominate in this style of gardening, along with incorporating long, lush focal view points within the gardens. Matriarch Irene Paulik was the chief architect of the Paulik Park perennial gardens, covering 1.5 acres on their property. Rock and plant borders are abundant within the park. Long, magnificent views of sumptuous gardens are prevalent in the park from all angles. As soon as the Lion’s Gate bridge opened in 1938, the Paulik family visited the North Shore and brought home coniferous tree seedlings of all types, creating a forest on their property! They also brought back sequoia seedlings and planted them in their gardens. After Irene and her husband passed away, their son, Ed Paulik, continued to live on the property and maintained the gardens. He delighted in adding massive rocks he collected from his many adventures into the interior of British Columbia, which can be seen today. The City of Richmond purchased the property a number of years ago with Ed continuing to maintain the gardens. When Ed passed away, the family home was demolished and the gardens were adopted by Richmond Garden Club in 2008. Today, volunteers from the Richmond Garden Club and the community at large continue to maintain 36 perennial garden beds in the park. The joy that we, the volunteers, experience is palpable — anyone strolling through the park enjoy finding us up to their elbows in dirt. Lots of friendly conversations, even with people who speak other languages, are struck between the gardeners and the visitors. Children of all ages love hanging out with
n The beauty of
Paulik Neighbourhood Park, left, is there for all to see, even though few people are even aware it’s there. Far left, members of the Richmond Garden Club volunteer their time to keep the gardens in fine shape for everyone to enjoy. Photos submitted
us; friendly dogs always need to stop by and ask for a pat or two. We even have a neighbourhood cat who loves to come in and see what we are all up to! Imagine the feelings of peace we have while being surrounded by lush green plants, vivid coloured flowers and perfume scents from plants around us! First time visitors to the park have trouble leaving. They can be found wandering through all the nooks and crannies of the gardens finding something new and astounding at every turn. Long time faithful visitors spend many days a week strolling through the gardens enjoying the quiet and the everchanging landscape. People often say to us with their finger on their lips, “Shhh.
Don’t tell anyone. I call this my secret garden!” A strong sense of ownership has been created within our community with all the interactions between the volunteers and visitors to the park. We invite you to come and visit us and share the joy of this gem in the middle of our urban jungle. Paulik Neighbourhood Park is located north of Blundell Road between Heather and Ash Streets. But don’t tell anyone! Lynda Pasacreta is the current president of the Richmond Garden Club. If you would like to join the club or volunteer in the gardens at Paulik Park, email the club RichmondGardenClub@gmail.com. Richmond Garden Club has been supporting urban gardening since 1957.
You’re never too old to learn new tech tricks SHELLEYCIVKIN
Retirement For Beginners
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hose of you who know me, know that I’m a virtual luddite. (Is that an oxymoron?) Compared to the younger generation (ie. anyone under 40), I know the bare minimum about technology. Or at least that’s what I’d convinced myself to believe. Retirement has allowed me to expand my technological horizons. Having been a devoted PC user most of my working life, or at least once I escaped the Dark Ages of the card catalogue (google it, you Millennials), I never thought I’d go over to the “other side.”
But here I am, the proud owner of an iPad, iPhone, and a new iMac. The first two are easy-peasy to learn. But the iMac...it’s a whole new animal. I’d been told how easy Mac is to use, so I thought, hey, no problem; I’ll just magically transfer all my PC files over to my Mac and get on with life. Not so fast. And apparently not so easy. I learned the hard way that migrating documents and photos from one platform to another is not as simple as just putting everything on a flash drive and plugging it in. Especially when you have 24,000 photos, like I do. I’d need a flash drive with memory the size of a Smart car. So, with nothing but time on my hands, I embarked upon some computer self-
tutoring. Between tips from OS X El Capitan for Dummies and Google, I learned that I’d need a portable hard drive that’s compatible with PC and Mac. Sounded simple enough. That was until I learned that you have to format the hard drive in order for it to work. And therein lies the rub. After approximately six hours of frustrating calls to Apple Support and the Geek Squad at Best Buy, I came out with a whole new lexicon: exFat, Fat32, NTFS, disk utility, partitions, and more. And I actually know what they all mean now! All this is by way of saying that one is never too old to learn new stuff. I don’t claim to be a tech-head, but I’m living proof that fears, once faced, can be overcome.
And now my files live harmoniously on the iMac. So if you’re retired and looking to expand your knowledge about technology, check out the free Idiot’s and Dummies guides at the library, as well as free computer classes there. Retirement allows you the luxury of learning at your own pace. There may be frustrations along the way but it sure feels good to accomplish something you never thought possible. Particularly in an area like technology, which is changing so fast. Even just conquering the lexicon is an achievement. So get out there and start computing! Shelley Civkin is a retired communications officer with the Richmond Public Library
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