Disclaimer
These are notes from walks. They are not a promise, and they are not a set of instructions you should follow against your own judgment.
A notebook, not a notice
I am writing as a gardener who keeps a notebook. I am not writing as your lawyer, your physician, or the person who decides whether a path is safe on a given morning.
Do not treat a paragraph as a notice from the garden or as a map issued by the city. It is a record of attention, dated and personal.
Names, and what not to put in your mouth
I name plants as well as I can. Sometimes I am wrong, or I name the group and miss the cultivar. A rose I call by a loose name may be the neighbour of the one I meant.
Do not use these notes to decide that a plant is safe to eat or to handle. I am talking about looking. Some beautiful plants on a garden path are a bad idea in the mouth or on the skin.
Wet stone and summer heat
Quarry paths can be wet. Gravel can roll under a shoe. The rim is a drop if you treat it like a meadow. I sit on benches. I do not climb the walls, and I am not suggesting you do.
Heat on the rose walk is real in summer. Rain on the peninsula is real for much of the year. Dress for the day you actually have. My sentence was written in another day's weather.
Harbour, ferries, and roads
I describe the inner harbour and the inlet as a walker, after a garden day. I am not telling you how to run a boat or how to time a crossing.
Roads on the peninsula are ordinary roads. I do not give turn by turn directions. If you drive, the road in front of you outranks any sentence of mine.
The notes are dated
This set is dated November 2026. Gardens change faster than paragraphs. A bridge can be closed, a bed replanted, a view from the rim blocked by a shrub that was knee-high when I wrote.
If you need a promise, you will not find one here. You will find what I noticed. That is all a journal can honestly be.