For 11 years, the teacup tree on Clarence Street in James Bay has attracted a steady stream of visitors.
Pedicab drivers, horse-drawn carriages and people strolling past century-old homes on the street all stop to gaze up into the boughs of a blossoming plum tree hung with dozens of different teacups.
“They’re always taking pictures,” neighbour Doris Brozuk said this week, gazing across the street at two young women snapping photos with their cellphones. “It’s very popular, especially when the blossoms are out.”
James Bay couple Nairn Wilson and husband Rory Palmer started decorating the tree 11 years ago to honour their grandmothers, but especially Palmer’s grandmother.
Eleanor Palmer, who was born in 1900 and died in 1985, was a petite woman who personified the expression “an iron fist in a velvet glove,” said Wilson. She moved to Victoria from New Denver in the Kootenays in her early 20s and taught at Central School when it was a junior high.
Palmer was particularly good at dealing with boys with challenges who were placed in the alternative program, Wilson said, and stayed on at Central even after her retirement.
Palmer also loved to travel. In her spare time, she formed a tour company and spent her summers taking people to Asia. Orson Welles was her most famous client, Wilson said.
The teacups evoke the idea of taking afternoon tea, something women of that generation often did, she said. “When we think of our grandmothers, we think of taking tea with them in the afternoon. That’s what you did.”
Palmer earned a special place in the heart of her grandson Rory, who hangs the teacups in her memory. He uses a ladder and secures the teacups and teapots with zap straps.
It’s an ongoing project because they continually need to be replaced. Garbage trucks and recycling trucks smash into them on their rounds, Wilson said. And bad weather has taken a fair share of them.
The women who work in the thrift store at St. Aidan’s United Church save teacups for Palmer, but he’s always looking for more, Wilson said. And teacup donations are happily accepted from anyone who wants to honour their grandmother.
