I don't know why I have gardening on the brain today....
But I remember seeing something interesting on TV last spring, so I tried to google around to find some more info about it

And I actually found it here, and here

courtesy of Vancouver Sun

S*le Food

The reason this caught my eye....well back in the day...1975/80.  I used to come to this site every.friggin.day

It's False Creek, in Vancouver
It used to be (back in the day ...pre stadium construction) a CP Transport Terminal and a HUGE railyard of gigantic proportion.  Container traffic from all places oriental.  What I like to call "crap from china"  but I'm not calling it that ...today.

Back in the day I used to be a "Container Transport Rate Co-ordinator"  I think that's what the "official" title was.  God only knows what it was called, I can't really remember.  Pre Computer.  Pre everything days.  I used to sit in an ATCO trailer on a huge piece of pavement, surrounded by multiple railway lines. And cost out the shipping cost of container after container of "crap from china" (but I'm not calling it that today") for most/all the department stores and retailers across canada, for ships that didn't want to offload at Centenial Pier in Vancouver.  Something about mandatory destuffing containers in union clause of contact of longshormen.....as in massive theft.  But you didn't hear that from me. Wink wink...It was a giant obstacle coarse, not to get hit by either a train running backwards, a huge container lifting thingy, or a multitude of semi's in various stages of either picking up containers or dropping off containers.  And don't get me started on the many STRIKES I had to endure at the Vancouver waterfront terminals.  Because OUR stuff came up from SEATTLE TERMINALS so whenever there was a strike.  ALLHELLBROKELOOSE.....anyway....sidetracked again

When the stadium was proposed back in 1980ish if I remember correctly, the company I worked for moved.   And I was having the first of many babies, and living an hour away...and I quit ...the long and short of it....I could not get around the whole daycare, and hour drive...thing.  So I quit. Lock stock and barrel...coarse the husband/father was not prepared for anything like that...but...I did. Instead I spent a year building a house 600 miles away.  But that's another story.

So anyhoooooo

Got sidetracked

Back in the 80's this particular site was deemed a "contaminated site"  ....and I wonder why I used to have all those stupid rashs.....

...and I feared my child would be born with two heads.....


...got sidetracked again....

anyway, there was cadmium, arsnic...and heavy metals etc etc scarry etc....

much of the original soil/dirt got carted away and ...I don't know...probably is sitting in a pit in the middle of a mountain range in Cash Creek/ Lilloette...somewhere...up north....


The soil, ( in containers of raised beds...but still) was sitting on the pavement of what used to be ....not an ideal place to actually plant veg.....But I was intrigued.  I watched on TV how they sprayed the soil out of a big dump truck full of soil....with these huge hoses.  It was the craziest thing I ever saw.  It certainly had the whole...wheelbarrow, shovel and a pile of top soil....all beat.


Too bad I completely forgot about this project the one and only time I was actually in the general vicinity, would have been a good thing to see.
And maybe get a soil sample for testing
  Dont' know when I will ever be back to Vancouver.  Seeing as how it's not really a fav place of mine.  But I should pinterest the thing.  Just in case.  To remind myself to go see.....

Too bad there isn't anything similar here.  I would get involved with something like that...for sure. 

As it is...I'm probably having spring fever or something.   Cause all I can think of is starting seedlings...I wonder if it's too early...probably.