Blogtober 23: Gardens and Geese

 

Yesterday's walk with a friend was in Butchart Gardens, full of colour and change. Gardeners are working in the beds putting in the winter plants - English daisies among them. In other areas, shiny balls are hung in enormous trees. It takes a long time to decorate the gardens for Christmas.

The Dahlia walk is still awash with colour. 

In the Japanese Garden, the deciduous trees are a lacy mixture of reds, oranges, and yellows. 

Although the morning was cloudy, sunshine poured down in the afternoon, and all day today. It feels like the earth is holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. All this sunshine is lovely, but unusual. 

In my own garden today, I clipped flowers to make three small bouquets. The roses are Harlow Carr, pink and fragrant. 

I'm loving the hydrangea bushes with their intense colour this year. I keep wondering when they will begin to fade. I've clipped lots of them for indoors. 

This afternoon, while walking, I heard the geese honking and looked up to see a long trailing V of birds flying overhead. Colder, wetter weather will come, they seem to say. 

Blogtober 22: Small Things That Bring Delight

 

Enormous trees and grand ocean vistas are all wonderful, but the little things found in the forest are enchanting. I kept my eye out for fungi on our walks and was happily rewarded with some lovely specimens like the Fly Agaric above. These had such fat stems. I saw another with a much more slender stem. These look like little houses for tiny fairies. 

This clump lived on a fallen log. The tallest was about 2.5 centimetres or 1 inch. 

I think a small creature used this for his umbrella and then placed it in the tree. 

A truly good book is something as wildly natural and primitive,

mysterious and marvelous, ambrosial and fertile as a 

fungus or a lichen.

Henry David Thoreau

The latest Louise Penny novel arrived yesterday. I'm eager to begin, but will wait until I've finished my current books. I hope it's as good as a fungus, as Thoreau expressed. I'm about half-way through Elly Griffiths' The Last Remains, and I've also begun an older book, Mrs. Miniver by Jan Struther. 

She unwrapped the chrysanthemums and arranged them in a square glass jar, between herself and the light, so that the sun shone through them. They were the big mop-headed kind, burgundy-coloured, with curled petals; their beauty was noble, architectural; and as for their scent, she though as she buried her nose in the nearest of them, it was a pure distillation of her mood, a quintessence of all that she found gay and intoxicating and astringent about the weather, the circumstances, her own age and the season of the year. Oh, yes, October certainly suited her best.

Jan Struther

On the beach a few days ago, Tim cut a piece of bull kelp - tangles of it lie on the beaches, tossed up by the waves. He blew into one end and made lots of trumpeting sounds. He said it took a lot of effort. I suggested that our granddaughter who plays the trumpet might find this fun. 

It's always lovely to sleep in my own bed and roam about my house that is much larger than a travel trailer. And it's equally lovely to slip into my daily routine once again. I walked with a friend this morning, bought a few groceries, did some small chores, and spent a couple of hours with the two youngest granddaughters after school. Cora is still very pleased with her earrings. 

Blogtober 21: Time at the Beach and Home Again

 

Yesterday evening the half-moon shone through a bit of fog. I love the silhouettes of tree skeletons in autumn when the leaves have fallen and bare branches remain. Some trees are full of lacy stems and twigs, while others reach out in tangles. 

Yesterday, the last day of our little jaunt, we walked on Long Beach, BC. The sun warmed our backs and glinted off the waves. If I had had a towel or something to wash the sand off, I would have walked barefoot on the sand. That would have been a sight - bare feet and a light down jacket. 

Mist floated in the air and water had its way on the sand, creating undulating designs as the waves rushed upon the shore and receded. Long Beach is about 10 miles in length; we didn't walk all of it. It runs between Ucluelet and Tofino on the west coast of Vancouver Island. The vast Pacific Ocean. 

We had to raise our voices over the noise of the unceasing surf. Not many surfers were out as the seas weren't high and it was low tide, but it's a very popular spot for surfers year round. It's also subject to rip currents and there are signs warning of the dangers. The water is very cold year round and only very hardy souls swim here. None today. 

For lunch we drove into the town of Tofino and ate at the Wildside Grill. They have no inside seating but we found a pleasant table in the sunshine. There are signs warning people to protect their food from the marauding crows. This pair watched for us to drop our guard, but we were very diligent. Also, we both enjoyed Seafood Chowder, and I think the crows much preferred the french fries at the table next to ours. 

I'm not a fan of ice cream, but Tim is, and decided to treat himself to a Salted Caramel Sundae. It came with a surfboard-shaped chocolate! He offered me a bite and oh my, I ate probably 1/3 of the sundae. I'm just very picky about my ice cream. Salted Caramel ice cream is amazingly delicious! We made certain the crows got none of that either. 

This morning we packed up and drove home, winding through narrow valleys where autumn colour lined the road, and fog hung in the trees, up over the mountain, down again, and into our very own driveway. 

All is unpacked and sorted, and normal life begins again. 

Blogtober 20: For the Love of Trees

 

A number of people commented on the trees in a recent post. I was reminded of a French woman who lived on Gabriola Island. She had a restaurant there in a log building in the forest. After a delicious dinner, I asked her what brought her to Canada. She had been living in Paris during the unrest of the 1970s and said she just wanted to live where there were trees. So she moved to western Canada, to a relatively remote island, and made her life there. She has since died, but I think of her from time to time. She spent the majority of her adult years there in the trees. 

Trees are so important to the health of our planet, producing oxygen and cleaning the air from pollutants, to name just two of their benefits. 

The large maple leaves in my last post are from Western Maples, also known as Big Leaf Maples. They can be huge. And unlike Eastern Maples in the other part of our continent, they are not red, but golden in autumn. Still very beautiful. 

Long time readers might remember our exploration of large trees a couple of years ago. Some of our trees are very old and very large. In the above photo I'm standing beside the Red Creek Fir, the largest Douglas Fir tree in the world, and about 1000 years old. Just imagine the things happening in other parts of the world when this tree grew from a seed to a sapling to the enormous specimen it now is. 

For those interested in numbers, the diameter is 4.2 metres (14 feet), with a circumference of 9.8 metres (32 feet) and a height of 73.8 metres (242 feet). The top just disappears into the sky. 

But a tree doesn't have to be massive to be appreciated. I love listening to the wind in the trees. Such a gentle sound. I also love looking up, up, up into the sky to see the tops of trees when I'm in the woods. I have to lean way back to see them. 

Here's Tim standing in front of the world's second largest Sitka Spruce tree. He's 6 feet tall and is dwarfed by the massive tree. 

I would be hard pressed to choose favourite tree, but I am partial to a birch tree with papery white bark and delicate leaves. Do you have a favourite tree?

For in the true nature of things, if we rightly consider,

every green tree is far more glorious

than if it were made of gold and silver

Martin Luther

Blogtober 19: A Short Jaunt

 

Because it seems that sunny weather is hanging around for a bit longer, we decided to take one last camping trip before winterizing the camping trailer. Ucluelet, on the west coast of Vancouver Island was our goal, just 5 hours drive from home. We made good time, arriving around 4:30 on Sunday afternoon. After settling into our campsite, we drove to Amphitrite Lighthouse. Dusk was falling and the day had been cloudy. It's always a joy to see the waves roll up onto shore or crash into the rocks. 

The sign indicated there should be a life ring nearby, but none was visible. Then, walking a short distance away, I spied a round white Life-Saver candy in its wrapper, and I couldn't resist placing it beneath the sign. We giggled and I hope the sight brought a smile to others' faces, too. 

This morning we hiked along the coast trail (not the infamous West Coast Trail), for about 6 kilometres, and then 6 kilometres back. Such gorgeous views at every turn. The shore is rough and jagged and the site of many shipwrecks in the past. 

The view from our campsite - a pretty red bridge, a marina with boats sitting still in the clear water, and as the tide came up, shorebirds began looking for food. A very peaceful scene to watch. 

Last night was a wee bit chilly, but we have some heat in the trailer, and lots of blankets and slept very well. Tomorrow will be another day of exploring. 

Not too much time for blogging, so I'll catch up with everyone later in the week. 

Blogtober 18: There be Bears!

 

This is a repost from our trip to the Yukon in 2022. We were talking about bears and I rewatched the videos and admired the power and agility of these grand wild creatures. 

On our trip to the Arctic over the summer of 2022, we did not go to the American state of Alaska, other than for one 10-kilometre stretch of the Alaska Panhandle. The road to access several gold and copper mines in BC, Canada, runs through Hyder, AK. That small community is accessible by land only through BC.  

We stayed in the small town of Stewart, BC, and crossed the USA/Canada border there. Hyder, Alaska bills itself as the "friendliest little ghost town", and a ghost town it is. There is one bar, one gift store, and a fish and chip restaurant, plus a very few families and old-timers. Hyder's electricity and phone services are supplied by BC.

During the pandemic, when the border was closed, life was made doubly difficult for these few Americans who lived in Hyder. The only way out was via seaplane or boat. The few children in town attended a Canadian school in Stewart, but that ended abruptly. Residents would phone their grocery orders into the Canadian grocers, who packaged everything into boxes and left them at the border crossing for the Americans to pick up. 

This is a remote area of BC, with tall, steep, densely forested mountains lining narrow valleys where water rushes down, down, down to the sea. The main attraction of Hyder is just a few miles beyond the town at the Fish Creek Wildlife Observation Site. 

In the most beautiful, lush, green temperate rainforest, pools of water are home to many kinds of waterfowl, including the Common Mergansers seen above. 

In mid-August, summer is already drawing to a close, and salmon begin their long trek upstream to spawn in the many rivers and streams. The USA Fish and Wildlife Department constructed an observation deck alongside the stream. Here we watched salmon lay their eggs and die, bodies decaying into the water and soil. 

Exciting as the salmon run is, it was no match for another event that takes place at the same time - grizzly bears fattening up for winter. From the safety of the observation deck, on two separate days we watched grizzlies fishing for salmon. 

The first bear we saw was in the evening and we waited about an hour before he showed up. The next day, en route to the observation site, we saw another grizzly cross the road in front of us and head down into the bushes by the river. We quickly and raced in so as not to miss anything. 

The people who stood along the observation deck were mostly quiet as we waited for bears to appear. Once they did appear, everyone was silent, watching the amazing spectacle before us. It was like being part of a nature documentary, with the bear running back and forth in the water after the salmon. 

I have to confess that at one point several tourists began laughing and talking quite loudly and the bear was looking around at the noise. My teacher mode kicked in and I said, "Shush!" They shushed immediately. I did feel a bit bossy, but really!

It was an amazing experience to be so close to these bears, and they took no notice of us watching them from above. Notorious for their poor eyesight, they couldn't see us above the wooden barrier, but I would think they could smell us. Regardless, they paid us no attention at all. In the above photo, the bear was directly below me in the stream. 

I uploaded two videos of bears running in the water and splashing as they catch salmon to YouTube. Now after several years, I can still feel the excitement I felt seeing those magnificent creatures. 

Grizzly Bear in the Morning 

Grizzly Bear in the Evening 

This is my private channel, but the videos should be visible with the link. Searching for them on Youtube won't work. This is new technology for me, so I hope it works! Tim took the videos while I took stills. 

Memories are wonderful for reliving adventures such as this one.  

Blogtober 17: Voting, Ear Piercing, and Garden

 

Bright and early this morning my husband and I stood in line to vote in our municipal elections. Then we walked over to another facility and voted in advance for our provincial elections, the final date for that is next Saturday. Civic duty done! There's a couple of rabbits who make their home around the library/sports complex where we voted. Unfortunately people drop off unwanted pet rabbits and leave them to fend for themselves. This is one of them, or a descendant. I thought its fur was a very pretty colour. 

When I gave birth to my two daughters in Ecuador, one of the first questions I was asked was when the girls' ears would be pierced. It's not unusual to have it done prior to leaving the hospital. We did not choose that and the girls had their ears pierced as young girls, at their choosing.  

However, pierced ears are the outward sign of a baby girl in that culture. I was asked several times about my sons even though the girls were dressed in frilly pink dresses with bows in their hair. A cultural norm that we had to learn about. They never asked about our son - he was all boy since he didn't have pierced ears. But they often called him "el heredero" - the heir. Cultural differences are neither bad nor good; they're just different. 

Our youngest granddaughter, Cora, decided a couple of months ago that she wanted her ears pierced for her birthday in November. But she wanted the piercing done "on or about the first of November." (Her words) The reason - she had learned that piercing took awhile to heal and she wanted new pretty earrings for her birthday at the end of the month. She's quite definite about what she wants. 

Today I accompanied the family to the ear piercing appointment. It's my gift to her as it was to her older cousin. She was very brave and shed just a few quiet tears while hugging her stuffed rabbit. A lollipop helped ease things. 

I took a wander in the garden this afternoon. Things are slowing down. A few flowers still bloom - a dahlia or two, the guara, and some zinnias. Soon there will be only seed heads and dried stalks. I'm enjoying the warm and sunny weather, while hoping the rain comes soon.

There was a handful of raspberries to pick and a few more will ripen. 

Tired Rudbeckia still puts on a bit of a show. Soup for supper this evening, with some of the buns I made for Thanksgiving. I froze the leftovers. 

Wishing you a lovely Sunday.