Butchart gardens at night

On our recent trip to Victoria, we met up with some friends, and hit the Butchart Gardens. The gardens are all lit up with holiday cheer this time of year, and look very cool. While we were there a little over an hour, it probably snowed around 3 inches. Our van was totally covered by the time we were done. The down side was that photography while it is snowing is always a little dicey. Flash pictures usually look pretty odd with the flash reflecting off of the snowflakes. I did get some stunning long exposure photos of the lights in a couple of areas.

Off in the distance you can see the 8 maides a milking. They had different scenes from the 12 days of Christmas portrayed in lights. My favorite (it was snowing too much for a picture) was the four calling birds which were four birds with cell phones.

Here are a couple of great shots of the Sunken Garden all lit up. It's around a 5 second exposure and you might see a ghost or two of people walking through. It really looked that beautiful from the top of the ridge.

I also found out that for some reason the Canadians refer to the Madrone tree as an Arbutus. I saw several references to it in the area, and only after my friend Carl referred to it as an Arbutus did I realize what they were talking about.