Marching into Autumn

Our hot summer days continue and there's not much autumnal about the weather. We could do with some rain. Meanwhile, as the sun shines, we make the most of it. 

Last Sunday we went to the grounds of Royal Roads University, formerly known as Hatley Castle. I showed you the gardens, but the real reason for the visit was to see the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) Musical Ride.

Marching bands and seated bands entertained the large crowd until it was time for the stars of the show, the horses and their riders.

Our Lieutenant Governor General opened the event. Her arrival to the stands was preceded by the single piper seen above. Bagpipes sound so wonderful in the open air, less so in buildings, I find. 

The Massed Pipes and Drums featured members from three groups, each in their distinct uniforms. I enjoy drums very much and these musicians did a superb job, marching about the field on a very hot day. 

Tim pointed out the daggers tucked into the stockings of the one regiment. I did a little research and the dagger is called a sgian-dubh and is a traditional part of Highland dress. Wilfred Owen, the first World War poet, referred to "daggers in plaid socks" in his poem "Disabled."

We sat next to the bandstand and I snapped this photo of the crowd as a reflection in the horn.

Then came 32 horses and their riders dressed in red serge. How hot they must have been. The Musical Ride is a tradition in the Mounted Police, stemming from trying to relieve the monotony of drills in the 1870s. The riders did tricks and competed amongst each other, and their first performance was in 1876.

Intricate turns, drills, and figures, set to music, show off the riding skills of the police officers and showcase the beautiful horses. The horses seemed to dance through many of the movements, light and graceful. 

One popular move is the charge, seen above, where the officers point their lances forward and urge the horses to gallop. 

The Musical Ride serves as an ambassador of goodwill these days, rather than as a police unit. They travel all over the world performing and representing Canada. This year, as its our 150th anniversary, the RCMP Musical Ride completed a cross-country tour.

Our seats were at ground level, quite close to the front and with the dust, we looked at each other at the end of the show and saw faces covered in dust! 

Have you ever seen the RCMP Musical Ride? 

Linking to Mosaic Monday, back after an August break. Hosted by Maggie of Normandy Life.   

The Man Who Loved Shakespeare

Should you drive from the southern coast of British Columbia into the Interior, you might choose to take the Coquihalla Highway. Along the way you might be intrigued by road signs for Romeo, Portia, Lear, Juliet, and more. 

Andrew McCulloch was the brilliant engineer in charge of constructing the Kettle Valley railway through an incredibly challenging landscape, including the Coquihalla River canyon with its sheer cliffs and narrow gorges.

If you take the turn off to the Othello Tunnels, you can walk along the old railbed and through the tunnels, as we did a couple of weeks ago.

There are three tunnels, dark, damp places blasted and chipped from solid rock. It's good to have a flashlight, or failing that, a strong arm to hold. Between the tunnels are two bridges. 

Looking down, the water rushes over and around boulders of all sizes and shapes. Rock faces jut sharply over the river, low now in late summer. It was a hot day and the water looked cool and inviting, but there were warnings that the swift water was dangerous and one could be swept away by the current.

McCulloch loved Shakespeare, and named several of the railway stops for characters in the plays. It is said that often, in the evenings, around the campfire, he read Shakespeare. 

Although the rail line has been long abandoned, McCulloch's feat of engineering is remembered as modern travelers hike along his route, and the signs that flash by as cars zoom up and over the mountains bear witness to his literary preferences. 

I wonder what he would think of our modern highways and fast cars. I like to think Andrew McCulloch would smile to see the names he chose still in use today. 

Waning August

I went into Michael's today for a couple of things for school and was appalled to see not only fall decor items (I'm still in summer mode), but Christmas items, too! Waaaay too early.

The hydrangeas are fading, but continue to produce a few new mopheads of intense colour. They have been most reliable during this summer of intense heat and no rain.

We visited Hatley Castle Gardens over the weekend. I love the Italian Garden with the clipped boxwood hedges, the cool pergola, and the wide flower beds. 

Purple heliotrope smells like vanilla and babies to me. I think it looks wonderful here with the light grey artemisia. 

We're experiencing another intense heat wave these days and gardens everywhere are suffering. Lawns are crispy and brown unless heavily watered. 

I picked a bouquet of this and that from our garden - vibrant colours that stand up to the sun's heat. Dahlias, rudbeckias, blue salvia and oregano in flower. 

Our Akane (also known as Tokyo Rose) apples are ready for harvest. Unfortunately, the worms got to many of them. There are still plenty for applesauce, and for an apple pastry that disappeared in a real hurry. I hope to make another one once the temperatures cool down a little. 

Teachers are back to school this week, prepping classrooms, holding department meetings and gearing up for the students next week. It seems that we just ended school, and here we are again. I'm kind of excited to get started! 

Are you looking forward to September and cooler weather? 

Paying Attention

Mary Oliver begins her poem "The Summer Day" with 
"Who made the world? 
Who made the swan, and the black bear? 
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean..." 

Notice how her focus changes from broad to narrow? On our boating trip to Princess Louisa (see previous post), I was, at first, a little put out about the smoke that hampered our views of this magnificent place. I could have groused and grouched about it. 

I gave myself a mental shake and decided to focus, as Oliver did, on the specifics. All of these photos were taken within view of the top photo, a wider view of Chatterbox Falls.

How delicate are the white blossoms, less than 1/2 inch long, that bloomed in the grass. I don't know their name, and they don't care about that. 

The curving symmetry of an unfurling fan. I stared at it for some time, and now, when I study the photo, I remember crouching down on the soft moss at the edge of a clearing, listening to the silence.

Green fans and white stars in the woods. Oliver goes on, in her poem to say, 
"I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed..."

I think that paying attention is a form of prayer, in which I acknowledge the Creator's attention to detail and His care in forming these hidden delights. 

The colours were mostly shades of green and brown, but the occasional colourful flower popped like a staccato note in music. 

Tangles of moss dripped from trees in this damp, lush setting.

Isn't this fungus amazing? 
Oliver concludes her poem with these words,
"Tell me, what is it you plan to do 
with your one wild and precious life?"

Her question is one I ask myself from time to time. Am I paying attention? - not only to nature, but to people and to myself. Life is short, but it's an amazing gift. Too short to waste.

Princess Louisa Inlet

"It has been said by people who have travelled the world and viewed all its beauty spots that two places stand out as the greatest mountain scenery in the world. One is Princess Louisa and the other is Milford Sound in New Zealand." Ray Phillips, The Royal Fjord

The distance from the boat launch at French Creek to Chatterbox Falls at the head of Princess Louisa Inlet is 70 nautical miles. Our boat chugs at about 7 knots. You can figure out how long it took us to get there. We broke the trip into two days, and it didn't seem overly long.

Unfortunately, smoke from the BC wildfires drifted westward and obscured the view. At times it felt like we were drifting on an unknown sea, not certain that there was anything beyond the next point of land.  

The inlet is narrow and tall vertical peaks rise sharply from the water, so high that we had to tip our heads far back to see the peaks (or their outline, as the case was). 

Chatterbox Falls lies at the head of the inlet, a torrent of freshwater, fed by multiple waterfalls above, rushing over rocks and logs to the saltwater. We anchored our boat, at the bottom of the falls for the best view in the house (our boat is the little one on the left) for a blissful few days.

We rowed our little dinghy along the shore and captured these photos with the falls in the background. It was hot and the spray refreshing.

Yours truly. This is my boating hair - curly, frizzy, wild. I tie it back in a pony tail to try to control it. I am so thankful for my flat iron!

The mist from the falls rises in great clouds wafted here and there by the breeze. Beautiful moss covers rocks and logs; tiny star-shaped flowers bloom in the hidden places. The water falls and falls in unending streams, creating a lush environment. 

The trails near the falls are not long and we like to get out and hike. We saw this sign, talked to a family who had done the trail, and set out one morning to do the same. 550 metres = 1800 feet. It was strenuous, alright. We made it in 1 hour 45 minutes, scrambling up rocky faces, using tree roots as foot holds, and sweating a lot. I can't imagine the Trapper who once lived up here who would have hauled his supplies from the inlet up this trail.
  

The Trapper chose a beautiful spot for his cabin (now in ruins) beside another waterfall. How lovely it was to let the cooling spray fall on our faces. Taking these photos with my camera's timer feature proved hilarious. There are other takes where I'm scrambling over the rocks and don't quite make the photo.

Here's a little perspective. The white speck above the "w" in white is the Trapper's Cabin waterfall. Our boat is in the bottom of the photo. After our descent we changed into swimming suits and bathed in the stream coming off Chatterbox Falls. Brrrr!

In the inlet, the water was completely calm, disturbed only by the comings and goings of boats and the occasional float plane. There are tour operators who bring people here for an hour or so, by fast boats or planes to see this amazing place. I suggest you do an internet search to truly see the beauty of this place. My smokey photos are but sad representations.

It is such a peaceful place. The continual chatter of the falls dulls other sounds. Admiring the scenery takes time and is utterly absorbing. The quietness of nature seeps deep into my mind and soul.  

Another day, on a tip from friends, we rowed to a stream trickling down through the rocks, climbed a very short ways and found this small waterfall. Two rocky pools, one just below the falls and another a bit lower, are completely hidden from shore and also very "refreshing." This was another case of using the delayed timer on the camera and I had just fallen into the water at this moment. I look at these photos and think that we are very silly for our ages. But we do have a lot of fun together. 

A low-flying heron. You can barely make out the far shore. It was indeed eerie. 

And our view leaving the inlet, still smokey. The next day the smoke blew away and it was lovely to see blue skies and real clouds. One day we hope to return to Princess Louisa Inlet when there is no smoke. 

Home and Garden

I awoke early this morning and quietly dressed and slipped outside to potter in the garden for a few minutes before breakfast. I pulled up the sweet peas that were so pretty and fragrant for so long, but are now a tangled mass of brown vines. Later in the day, I took my camera out and watched a pair of white butterflies flit among the lavender.

A friend gave us a pot of Balloon Flowers (platycodon) that put out bloom after bloom. I'm hoping to do some moving of plants in a week or two and am thinking about where I will place this one. 

Dahlia bloom in perfect symmetry. My dahlias didn't survive our cold and prolonged winter (I didn't lift the tubers), but there was a bag of free tubers in the staff room at school one day, so I took a few, not knowing what would result. These make me very happy. I'm glad they aren't orange!

And another luck-of-the-draw dahlia. They are tall, with spindly stems, but seem strong and aren't drooping at all.

Cosmos growing alongside bright white phlox. This year, the white seems whiter, or perhaps I'm just noticing it more. The blooms stand out so well against our green cedar hedge. 

Faded blue hydrangea blossoms are just as pretty now as when they were bright blue. Each bush is changing in different ways, but all the colours are becoming mellow as they absorb the waning summer sun.

A dozen or so figs found their way into the kitchen this morning. I'm trying to use up supplies just now, before going grocery shopping, so I tried to think what I could make with them. I remembered a fig flatbread that Mary of A Breath of Fresh Air had mentioned, so I looked up some recipes on line. There was some pizza dough in the freezer; I pulled it out and put it on the sunny front porch to thaw. 

I used this recipe as a base. There were enough figs and dough for two flatbreads; both have figs and caramelized onions. One has blue cheese and was drizzled with balsamic reduction and sprinkled with basil leaves.

The second flatbread was topped with cranberry goat cheese. They were both good, but I preferred the blue cheese and Tim preferred the cranberry goat cheese. 

Did you notice the cutting board in the above photo? It's shaped like a book and the title is "Romeo and Julienne." A fun gift.

It's hard to believe we're heading into the last half of August. This has been a different sort of summer, with several shorter trips that make it seem as though I'm always packing or unpacking. The garden has not received as much attention, nor have I accomplished nearly what I'd hoped in terms of house projects. Ah well, there's still a bit of time before school begins. I'll only be teaching afternoons this year, which will free me up considerably. 

"Summer afternoon - summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language." Henry James