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Dear Tony: We recently purchased a two-bedroom condo on Vancouver Island, for our parents to use as a comfortable retirement location. My father has several physical disabilities and has special access requirements.

Dear Reena: I have often noticed that restaurants have grains of rice in salt shakers.

Dear Debbie: I’m fixing up a tiny bedroom as a guest room for holiday company.

Two rules interior designers consistently remind us about decorating are to keep in mind your home’s original architecture and to try to stay true to your home’s roots.

There is something uniquely satisfying about the winter food garden. Almost daily, I amble around the vegetable plots to gather food for dinner.

Christmas is a special time for this condo owner, as one glance around her 1,250-square-foot condo in Sidney’s Landmark building attests.

On a splendidly usable day recently, I was out in the garden madly pruning a very old and rambunctious Akebia vine growing into smothered red huckleberry bushes and over a tottering length of snake fence.

This house is not right on the ocean. But it’s only a pebble’s throw away, just across Beach Drive, and the sun-splashed property offers wide-angle views across an attractive broad bay and easy access to the waterfront scene.

Dear Helen: Around mid-summer of this year an odd plant appeared in a hot, dry part of my garden where the soil is poor and sandy. By November the plant was 30 cm high and around 50 cm across. Several smaller plants grow alongside this main plant.

Dear Tony: Our building is only seven years old, and with the addition of a resident caretaker and concierge to manage our property, our strata is facing a massive increase in our condo fees this year.