A perfect Canadian afternoon, eh?

Ah, the perfect Saturday. A leisurely brunch with friends. A trip to a garden centre. And a Stanley Cup playoff game.
Quintessentially Canadian, eh?
The garden centre was, of course, packed with people. This is the May 24 weekend.
May 24 has a variety of meanings, depending on your hobbies. To a fair number of people, "24" is an obvious reference to the number of bottles contained in a case of beer. Or, the number of empties in that same case, a few hours later.
What we're actually celebrating is Queen Victoria's birthday, an odd reason for a Canadian holiday, since the British know of no such thing. So we in the colonies continue to remember an occasion long forgotten by her more immediate, if less perpetually loyal, subjects.
I do find it a pleasant irony that our friend Nigel, currently back in his native Britain, gets no holiday on Monday, while we Canadians can relax in honour of the late, great monarch.
For gardeners, May "24" refers to the number of hours we will have to work, without a break, to plant all the flowers, veggies and other plants we succumbed to in the heady environment of the garden centre.
The place was as packed as a mall on Christmas Eve, but a heck of a lot friendlier. When I speak to garden groups, I always comment on the pleasant, friendly and even generous nature of gardeners, and that part of my talk, at least, is the unvarnished truth.
In a May 24th weekend garden centre, the aisles are overfull of plants, and then more plants to replace the rapidly depleted stock, and large shopping carts filled to overflowing with plants, and shoppers, and staff... well, you get the crammed, jammed picture.
Today, at Colour Paradise, not one person was rude; people yielded the aisle to others; people smiled ruefully when in the midst of a seven-cart jam, with no obvious solution in sight.
We --­ like everyone else in sight, by my reckoning --­ bought far more than we could ask or imagine. So many things look so great, and we know where we can put them in the garden.
Of course, when it comes time to actually do the planting, we invariably discover we have purchased at least three plants for each available space. No matter ­-- we have plenty of pots, and places to put them.
And so, home. But not straight into the garden this time because it is a)drizzling and much more importantly, b) time for the Montreal-Philadelphia hockey game.
This is a very congenial period in our home. During the regular season, things are not always entirely friendly ­ I am a life long Toronto Maple Leafs fan, while my spouse (and several of her closest friends) have roots in Quebec, and cheer for the Canadiens.
Normally, this causes a certain amount of friction, not to mention downright abuse. But as usual, the Leafs have solved this contention by disappearing like smoke on the breeze even before the playoffs started, leaving me free to cheer for the Habs from the get-go. (They are my second team. All hockey fans have a descending panoply of teams, at least six deep, right?)
I finish this column in hope and optimism, during the first intermission of Game Four. The score, at this moment, is 0-0.
I write it now because at the end of the game, if the Habs don't prevail, I will be too depressed to write; not that this is an outcome even to be considered.
And also because, if the game doesn't go into overtime, I may have time to get out into the garden and plant some of the new stuff, just before we fire up the barbecue.
Ah, Canada on the May 24 weekend. There's no place like it, eh?