Blues in a White Rock Alley

I've been sorting photos, cleaning out the hard drive. These are a few leftovers from the last time we made it to White Rock. We walked down an alley, looking for shade. (I don't remember finding any.) We did find a cheerful blue bird, though:

New species?

Teasels. With blue stems and sunbursts.

Blue car, with reflections of the machinery alongside.

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Defining "Slow Pandemonium"

1. pandemonium - a state of extreme confusion and disorder (The Free Dictionary)

2. Slow pandemonium - this summer, now mercifully almost over.

Restaurant window, Vancouver. With reflections from across the street.

I have been blogging a bit irregularly for a while, and skipped yesterday entirely. I haven't lost interest; it's just that slow pandemonium thing. A brief explanation may be in order.

It all started, as far as I was aware at the time, back in June, when Laurie fell badly on the rocks at Kwomais Point. He injured both legs, knees and ankles. No broken bones, fortunately, but the swelling and pain lasted all through July and half of August. So our hiking and walking was drastically curtailed.

Then came the burglary, and the theft of Laurie's wallet, keys, and vacation cash, and our car. The police found the car the next day, but it was damaged beyond repair. (And as long as I don't get on the topic of young punks who think they're hard done by if they get slapped on the wrist, this won't turn into a rant.)

We've weathered that ok. Most of the ID has been replaced. The locks have all been changed. We've dealt with the insurance people and spent hours on the phone, pressing "0" to speak with a human and listening to "Please continue to hold. A service representative will be with you shortly." And we're getting around, for now, on buses. We're managing.

But the sore feet and the lack of transportation made the next event much more challenging. A routine appointment to replace Laurie's glasses turned into a series of visits to doctors. In Vancouver, in Surrey, back in Vancouver, etc. By bus and SkyTrain and sore feet. This Wednesday, he had cataract surgery on one eye. The next will follow in a month. (He's fine; he can see, his eye doesn't hurt.)

Orchids not in an old truck. (Double reflection: house window/truck window.)

An interesting summer, certainly. But not one I want to repeat.

Window, Strathcona. That twisty yellow thing is a kayak on the roof of a car.

Some tidbits of information I picked up along the way:

1. SOC police are politer than traffic cops.
2. Never try to remove leftover fingerprint powder from walls with a damp cloth. It immediately turns black, black, black, and glues itself to everything. It also covers much more area than is apparent: may as well plan on dusting everything in the room, and washing all affected areas half a dozen times.
3. The police are terribly Biblical; the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing.
4. Credit card companies will get you a new card in days. Government agencies take several weeks.
5. From here to the closest beach by bus involves two transfers, and an hour and a half on the bus. That doesn't include the time walking at either end.
6. A bag that doesn't weigh anything at all at the beginning of a trip somehow weighs half a ton by the time you're home.
7. The doctor who developed the first plastic intraocular lenses, Sir Harold Ridley, got the idea from his experience with WWII aircraft pilots. He noticed that splinters of perspex windshields lodged in their eyes were not rejected, and had lenses made of that same material. He implanted the first one in 1949. (Laurie's ophthalmologist told us about it.)
8. A 15-minute operation takes 4 hours of prep and paperwork.

Outside of a door with glass window. The pathway, reflected.

And I'm tired. Exhausted. But there's light at the end of that tunnel; another month of rounds of labs and doctors' offices, and we're done! And next week, I'm determined to find a car. So that we can get back to the beach; it's been far too long, already.

(Meanwhile, I'll go back and re-read Hugh's post on the lugworms of our favourite beach, at Boundary Bay. Amazing critters, they are!)

The pictures: Laurie has been taking photos of reflections, in mirrors, car windows, houses, and water. A Lewis Carroll universe.
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Slow Pandemonium

Sometimes life feels like that.

Pandemonium


Slow Pandemonium, at that.

Photos from a Strathcona alleyway, last month.
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Photos through dirty windows

We still haven't replaced the car that was stolen a month ago; while the weather is decent, it won't hurt to walk a bit more, and use public transit for longer runs.

We had to go into Vancouver on Monday, which entailed several hours on a series of buses and the SkyTrain. I entertained myself (and probably some of the other passengers) by taking photos through the windows. Here are a few of the least blurry:

Tipsy. No wonder: I was holding my the camera above my head on a swaying bus. A fragment of Delta, and blue sky above.


The Fraser River, from the SkyTrain bridge, looking west.


Apartment buildings, somewhere in Burnaby. The train is entering a station, so the track is fenced.


Rooftops, and beyond, on the other side of the river, Burns Bog. Looking southwest.


Somewhere in Burnaby, looking south.


A freight train parking lot. New Westminster.


The Port Mann Bridge, from the SkyTrain Bridge. New Westminster-Surrey. Looking east.


The first support of the Alex Fraser bridge, from the Scott Road Station, looking west.


Almost home again: window of a supermarket, Delta.

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No wonder they won't pose!

Bad hairfeather day:

I've been trying, at intervals in the last few days, to take a photo of a red-headed house finch. With no luck; he's not interested. I am, and not only because he is so vibrantly coloured.

Today, I stood at the door, stock still, camera ready, all lights at my back off, pretending to be part of the door jamb. The redhead was in the feed bucket.

Normally, the finches jump in the bucket, grab a seed, hop up to the rim to deal with it, then drop back down for the next.

Cracking the seed.

"Red" was doing just that, when I turned on the camera. While he was down in the bucket, I positioned myself at the door. And waited for him to show up. And waited. And waited...

Meanwhile, a chickadee took a bath at the feeder to my right, a family of sparrows lined up on a branch of the rhododendron, another pair of finches was bouncing around at the edge of my vision. Photo-ops galore, and I stood focussing on a bare rim of a tin bucket.

Five minutes went by. Six, seven. No Red.

I eventually decided that he must have left while I was distracted by the chickadee (I was? I was sure I had kept my eyes on that bucket the whole time. But maybe I had lost concentration for that necessary split-second.) I gave up and walked over to peer in the bucket.

And Red blasted out of the bucket and away. I think he was laughing.

I did get a shot at him later, at a distance and with the wrong background:

The red topknot almost disappears against the dirt.

A couple of weeks ago, this bird was smooth and beautiful. Now, he looks scruffy. His head is knobbly, there are bald spots, and the feathers stick out at odd angles. I have been trying to get a close-up to see if I can determine whether he is just molting, or if there is a mite infestation problem to worry about.

The chickadees are all looking good, but some of my other finches are showing signs of wear.

Looks like it's been in a fight. A feather-pulling fight.


Zooming 'way in, same bird. Bare spots on head and neck.


Wearing a Mohawk.


This one looks good.

I'm beginning to understand their reluctance to smile for the camera.
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Buggy Post

The good kind of buggy, mostly. A collection of small beasties that have turned up here or in the neighbourhood in the last week or so.

One of our neighbours grows tomatoes. He doesn't have much sun, so he moves his plants (a whole row of them!) out to the sidewalk every morning, and brings them back behind his hedge at night. We walk past and inspect the ripening progress every couple of days.

On his first red tomato, last week, we found this beetle*:

It's black, with an orange rim, and greenish underside.

Captured, and brought home (the tomato grower didn't object) I got a closer look:

"Where's my tomato gone?"

I couldn't find this beetle on BugGuide, so I have submitted it to be ID'd.

*Update: it's not a beetle, it's a stink bug nymph, Chlorochroa. Thank you, Jim!

And I brought home from the church next door, a handful of weeds to decorate the kitchen table. Wild daisies, some tansy, a small yellow ray flower, etc. A few residents came along for the ride:

A tiny yellow inchworm.

A fat crab spider.

Zooming in. She is so transparent that the eye arrangement is laid out like a diagram. Only 6 eyes on this one.

In her ambush position. Just because she's beautiful.

And today's haul, one step outside my door:

A tiny, tiny, yellow spider, in a flower vase. That green stuff is the foam that the flowers were propped in.

Unidentified brown moth. Submitted to BugGuide.

Full-frontal view.

He has an odd protrusion on his snout. (A wart on the nose?) I've never seen that before.

And this was not a welcome find. Out of a crack in the bathroom baseboard, 8 carpet beetle larvae have crawled. Two had made it into the laundry basket. I killed these without the slightest qualm of conscience. These are the villains who make holes in my wool sweaters. No proper buggy manners at all.

Grrrrr!

As soon as things calm down around here (I hope by Friday), I will shampoo the carpets and upholstery again.
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Quick note

I missed posting yesterday, and today, I'm swamped with work.

On my breaks, I've been rummaging through old photographs. Here's one of a granddaughter on a neighbouring farm, some 20-odd years ago:

Milking lesson

And now, nose to grindstone again.
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Arghhh!

Textures and shapes at Steveston Pier:

Tangle of ropes


Old boat, moldering away. Rust, old paint, rot. And weeds.


Rope bumper.


Must be a pirate ship: she says "Arghhh!" Or something like that.


A more conventional view, on a grey day.

Photos from Laurie's almost defunct film camera, taken last June, and forgotten in this summer's to-ing and fro-ing. There's one more batch in the camera.
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1000 Photos of chickadees

Laurie says I must have at least 1000 photos of chickadees already.

I don't. However, I think I have taken 1000 photos of empty perches. Some of them even have a blurry section where a chickadee was a split-second ago.

Empty perch #1043. Or thereabouts.

I don't keep them, though; have to leave space on the hard drive for the chickadee photos. I'm an optimist.
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Pure Gold!

This is a follow-up on my post "Blanket on a Stick", and posts and comments by Seabrooke, and Hugh:

Actually, the story starts earlier, and it's a chain reaction. A quick recap: on the first of January, Gerry at Naturespeak, blogged about the Shy Cosmet (Limnaecia phragmitella) larvae he had found in a cattail head. Seabrooke read this, and brought home her own cattail in March; she discovered one larva. I picked up on this, read about them in BugGuide, collected a cattail, and found dozens of similar caterpillars.

However, BugGuide lists them as an eastern moth; BC is not in their range. What were the ones I had, then?

I had filled the birdhouse with cattail fluff, probably including a fair number of larvae. And I had a Tupperware lidded bowl with more fluff and larvae. Laurie contributed another cattail head, undisturbed. I tied a plastic bag loosely around it, to keep the inhabitants from escaping, stacked it in a corner, and left the whole shebang to sit until June or July, when the moths should be emerging. (If they were the Shy Cosmet, that is.)

And forgot about it; this has been an eventful summer. And here it is, the end of August.

Yesterday evening, I brought everything inside; the birdhouse:

Front door, with the bedding hanging out.

... the Tupperware, and the bagged head.

After all the rain we've had, I expected to find mold and mildew in the birdhouse. But the fluff was as fine and dry as the day I jammed it in. I pulled out a couple of handfuls and inspected them. No larvae, no moths, no other insect life. I re-hung the birdhouse, disappointed.

The bag next. I opened it carefully, removed the head. It was intact. I pulled apart some of the fluff. No larvae, no moths, no other insect life. Oh, well.

I shook out the empty bag, and two moths fell out. They looked dead; well, they would be, locked inside the bag like that. But when I touched one to position it for the camera, it moved.

Shy Cosmet, about 1 cm. long.

These were beautiful moths, if tiny. The wings, legs, antennae, head, all reflect a warm, golden light; like something fashioned by a fine jeweller. The camera boggles at it, and barely hints at the metallic gleam.

The wings are much longer than the body, finely feathered, curved outward and upward at the end.


Besides the antennae, the Shy One carries two long spikes upright in front of the head. I don't remember seeing anything like this before. It belongs to the family of Twirler Moths (Gelechiidae), and those spikes, or labial palps, are characteristic.


The moths started walking around on the paper towel where I'd dropped them, and one found a damp spot. He stopped right there and started drinking. (Look closely; you can see his feeding tube.) I gave the second one a drop of water, too.

But were these the insects that had been in the cattail, or had they somehow found their way inside the bag through the knot? I turned to the Tupperware container, and inspected its contents. One dead larva. Two dead moths. The same species as the live ones. That settled it. The moths are the adults corresponding to the caterpillars I found in the spring.

And the Shy Cosmet has come to the west.

After their drink, the surviving moths were in the mood for exploring. I collected them (had to chase one) and took them outside.

Sitting on the hedge.

Next time I looked, they were gone.

One of the Shy Cosmets on BugGuide had been found half a mile from a cattail marsh, so these guys have a chance at finding a home. I hope.
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Astigmatism at the mall

Laurie had an appointment with the ophthalmologist near Surrey Central*. Afterwards, we walked back to the mall:

Pointing up and out.


Surrey Central tower.


The tower, reflected in the mall windows.


Zooming in. No, that's not the eye drops; that's what it looks like.


Reflections and a view of the mall interior, superimposed.


The upturned-boat roof of the mall.


And to rest those poor abused eyes, a view of the world out there. But still a warped reflection.

We have to go back to the eye clinic now.

*Mall, SkyTrain station, and Simon Fraser University, all scrambled together.
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