A pictoral of the gardens at Olds College

As I was packing for Olds, I realized that my plan to put my camera bag in my carry on wasn't going to be feasable.  The camera bag was just a tad too large.  So I decided on a single all purpose lens, the 28-105 kit lens and shoved the naked camera in the carry on, surrounded by clothes and other soft items.  Coming home, it was well surrounded by fleece and fibre, so it traveled safely, despite the lack of it's normal cocoon.   However, it is a big and slightly heavy camera and without protection from the elements, I only dragged it out once.  The rest I took with my phone camera, which did an admiral job, all things considered.  Next year, I'll actually get scenery photos though :)

This photo was taken with the big gun, the rest with my little phone camera.   I found out after I got home that the phone has a panoramic view setting, which would have been an awesome bit of info to have figured out ahead of time!   Next year...


Olds College has a huge campus.  The accomodations are at the one end of the campus and the classrooms were at the opposite end of the grounds.   In order to get from one place to the other, we had to walk through the botanical gardens 4 times, each and every day!  What a hardship that was!  (not so much )

The grounds are spectacular.   There are water features, wet lands, native perennial gardens, pristine gardens, gazebos and more.   This is one very welcome sight we passed by every time we walked back to the townhouses, where we stayed.

I was quite amazed at the flowers in bloom.  I don't know if the season is later this year, or if the substantial distance farther north than we are shortens their season that decidedly.   Regardless, I got to see their Poppies open and bloom on my daily walks.

As well, plants that I would have considered to be earlier or later here, we in bloom at the same time.


The Colombine was in full bloom at the same time as the poppies and a number of different Gloriosa Daisy types.  I don't really know what they were, but they had that daisy look and were very pretty.




There were Roses.  What would a trip to Alberta be this time of year without wild roses?   This yellow rose bush was taller than myself and absolutely covered in blossoms.  There were more bees keeping themselves busy around it than I've seen in the past couple of years here!  It was stunning!

There were cultivated roses as well.   You could see that they were planted so that something would be blooming over a long period of time.   The colour of this rose was so incredible.

A gazebo with a covered walkway, this time totally covered with annuals in full bloom.  What rampant colour there was absolutely everywhere.   I'm hopeful that now that I've experienced it once, I'll be savvy enough to drag my camera out more frequently to capture the rest of it rather than walking around rather awestruck, as I did.