So sad

I've just watched the meltdown of a message board where I have been a regular for years. Now hundreds of us, me included, have resigned/boycotted/self-banned in protest at recent events.

No sense even naming the place anymore; it's closing down, section by section, forum by forum.

I am too disheartened right now to post anything here. Sorry, all.

Since it's Hallowe'en ...

... a couple of spooky pics.

Evening clouds.

Red-eye special.
(Family party; sometimes the light is just right. Or not.)

Lineup

Walk around the block: Houses and Trees

... That's the block at the end of Kwomais Point, again.

And I'm limiting the photos to houses and trees, this time. All from a two-block length.

"Welcome, strangers! Feel free to poke around!"


"This is my care-takers' house. And I think that image reflected in the window must be the Guan-Yin. (Ignore the tall stump in the garden, there.)"


"My buddy, here, keeps an eye on that unruly mob at the end of the block. And watches eagles."

"But go on, make yourself at home. I think you'll catch some of us molting, though."


Molting?


He's right; it does look like it.


Up the street. Still green, but fading.


In among that "unruly mob".


Roots. Going somewhere.


An attempt at tidiness?


Back to the tame trees.


Nicely contained behind fences.


And reflected in glass.


But this one is out-shouting even the "mob".


Full circuit: across the street from the welcome committee, a less exotic, more self-effacing guardian shades his house.

Expanse of Pale Blue

The first of Laurie's photos from the Kwomais Park area are in. Here are a few views from the lookout at the corner of the Park.

That's Point Roberts over there, and beyond it, islands in the Strait.



Dried weeds


Shade to full sun: such an extreme contrast that the camera registered it (almost) in black and white.

Great spot for dreaming!

You see what I mean about not being able to choose! More tomorrow.

Embarrassment of Riches

We got Laurie's photos from the other day's jaunt yesterday. Three whole rolls of film. And they are good ones; too many really good ones; it was almost impossible to narrow them down for posting here.

Tomorrow they go to London Drugs for scanning to the web. Maybe as early as tomorrow night (depending on LD's schedules), they will be ready to post.

In the meantime, I will tell you what happened, and post a few samples from my digital.


We were trying to find the shorter steps down to the Kwomais Point area that the deli owner had told us about. Following her tentative, maybe-laden instructions, we drove as far south as the roads would take us, around the curve onto a residential street that soon ends in a cul-de-sac, watching the seaward side closely for a hint of a trail. Not here, not here, not here, not here...

We backtracked. At the extreme point, the map showed a green space, maybe a park. We checked out both ends, and finally stopped where there seemed to be a gate of some kind.

No-one sits here any more.

It was a park; Kwomais Park, with a sign: Temporarily Closed to the Public. Chained and padlocked. We parked anyhow, and skirted it, toward the cliff face. No way down, unless you didn't mind being scooped up in pieces at the bottom.

As close as we got to the water.

Still, we were out of the car; we walked around the block for a look-see. And Laurie used up the afore-mentioned 3 rolls of film.

The street had a "feel" of stopped time. An aroma of leaf-mold, of damp wood. An end-of-the-year sleepiness. In the distance, we could hear sounds of traffic, but close at hand, just the murmuring of the trees, the rustle of their leaves underfoot.

Shady porch



A hint of yellow leaves


The makings of winter ground protection


Fading hydrangea



Red leaves far overhead


Red apple


Watch your feet!


Deep shade

When Laurie changed film for the third time, we headed back to the deli.* Where we were made much of by the owner, fed, watered, and given more oh-so-vague instructions as to the whereabouts of those steps. We'll try to find them next time.

For now, we were well satisfied.


*Salt Cellar Delicatessen, Ocean Park Mall, 128th St & 16th Ave, Surrey. Drop in sometime, if you're in the area; good food, great service, "interesting" directions.

Rocky shore, with loons

... Following along in our attempted peregrination around the Lower Mainland shoreline ...

A week ago, before the bad weather hit us, we went looking for the "1000 steps" that Cicero had told me about. Starting at the Ocean Park mall, we explored the streets to the west and south. Most end in a few blocks at big houses built right on the bluff, occasionally at wild bush hiding muddy cliff faces, unclimbable except on all fours.

But at the end of 15A Avenue, there it was; a place that looked like a parking area, with prominent No Parking signs, a trail head, and a notice; "1001 STEPS". We found parking a block up the hill, and walked back.


It was a steep climb, but didn't live up to their advertising; there were only 236 steps in all. Enough, though.


(The lighting was strange; bright, dazzling sunlight, shining straight in and reflected off the water, but deep shade under the brow of the hill. My camera couldn't handle it very well, and Laurie's seems a little off. Even my old eyes protested.)

On the slope, the trees, a mixed bag, respond to the lop-sided exposure by twisting and angling themselves into the light and out of the wind.





Almost at the bottom. Below us, just the railroad track, a short scramble over tumbled rocks, and the shore. Not a beach.


Difficult walking. But quiet, so very quiet. Just the rustling of falling leaves, and the lapping of a retreating tide.

There were only two other people on this segment of coast, a man and a small boy. They walked ahead of us, almost to Kwomais Point (marked by a heron silhouetted against the water), then crossed the track into the bush.


After they had gone, we moved away from water's edge, and tried to work our way up to the heron and a bit beyond, to be able to get a clear photograph. He sat, unmoving, until we were almost there, then squawked once and left. Oh, well.



Laurie, at the Point, wishing for a heron.

As for other live things, this shore bears a different mix than the sandy areas to the north, and around the Point into the White Rock beach. The rocks were bare, well-scrubbed. There were few crabs, no dead crab shells, no sign of seagull feeding. A few white clamshells, sun-bleached. Barnacles, small ones, at the water line. No mussels. And none of those invasive batillaria mud snails. (Yay!) The few snails among the barnacles were smooth and dark, fatter and shorter than the batillaria.


At the high tide line, dead kelp wound itself around the bigger rocks. I don't remember seeing eelgrass, and there was no sea lettuce, which shows up on every other stretch of beach in the area. But in the cracks between some of the bigger rocks at the water's edge, I found a few small clumps of these, that I had never seen before.


Deep purple seaweed. Growing only in the deep shade in cracks between the rocks. I had to put the camera right into the crack and rely on the flash to show it up; to my sun-dazed eyes, this looked almost black. When the flash was too close, edges of the weed flared orange.

Back over the rocks, we climbed to the railroad track, under a fence, and through a bit of bush, making a shortcut to the steps. Up, all 236 of them, up the hill to the car -- my legs were aching -- and back to the mall for a bite at the deli. Where the proprietess told us of another set of steps, a shorter one, that would take us to the south side of the Point.

More on how we tried to find them yesterday, in the next post.

Oh, and the loons? Here they are, doing what loons do; diving as soon as you get anywhere near, coming up 'way over in the distance.

Not-quite-weekly five

... or seven. Links, that is.

I've been babysitting, antiquing, plowing the car through rivers (where they shouldn't be; it's been raining hard and long), fighting off a flu, and now I'm falling asleep almost as soon as I sit down. So we'll see how far I get with this before my head hits the keyboard. Again.

Detail of dying maple leaf

This week, I bookmarked these (in no particular order):

• The Holy Order of Blogging. A cartoon, and a timely warning. From GrrlScientist.
• She also has a beautiful boxfish photo for us. All puckered up for a kiss? Or whistling?
• While we're looking at fish, here are some new ones to ponder over. Killifish: "If you listen carefully, you can hear them singing.." Fish that live in trees. Really. From Zoologix.
• NewKerala has a bit more info on these.

• A bit of sad reporting. The Amazon rainforest burns. Once again, they say. Laurie says, "Still." From the Guardian.
• Via YouTube, some excellent educational videos by cdk007. The first one I found was on the "watch in a bag" analogy, but there are 28 more, all worthwhile, judging by those I have already watched.
• And in the "People do the darndest things!" department, and just in time for Hallowe'en, The Coke Machine disguise! From Amygdala.

And there we are; I'm still awake! 'night, all.

Couldn't keep these to myself...

I was sorting out some 10-year-old photos for my youngest son, and I came across these, from the couple of summers that he went tree-planting in BC's north country.

I said I would upload them to Flickr, and his reply was, "Cool". So, given that they're now public, I must share them with you.

These are copies of copies: photos taken with my camera of old hard-copy photos from a cheap film camera. I don't know exactly where they were taken, just "up North".

Music


Ice and water


Waterfall


Glacier runoff


Warm afternoon