Thursday, December 08, 2011

Wishing for ice

I have been tidying up my storage disk, reviewing and deleting old photos, sorting and renaming. I was surprised to realize I had been wearing my down jacket last November; here it is December, this year, and I'm still wearing my summer rain jacket. Either I've gotten younger (unlikely), or it's been unseasonably warm.

With that in mind, I checked over the November/December 2010 photos more carefully. It was definitely colder:

November 23, 2010. The lagoons at Reifel Island were frozen solid.

Looking down from the warming shed onto the frozen pond.

Aside: coots are even more ridiculous on ice than they are on land or water. Ducks walk, carefully but neatly; only when they come in for a landing do they skid on their bellies far beyond where they planned. But coots ...! They try to run, as if they were running on water, but it doesn't work, and they scramble across the ice flapping their wings madly, squalling, skidding from side to side. They can't stop, either, without belly-flopping, feet one way, wings the other. I'd like to see them on snow, though. They may be quite proficient at that: they're wearing snowshoes, after all.

December, Centennial Beach duck pond. Thin ice, even down here in the "banana belt".

All the ice we've gotten this year. An inch deep, in the birdbath one morning, gone by noon.

December, 2010, Boundary Bay. The north shore mountains are snow-capped.

If I put my rain jacket in storage, will the weather co-operate and freeze? Or will that just guarantee another two weeks of rain? Should I be dreaming of a grey-green Christmas?

2 comments:

  1. Don't put your rain jacket in storage -- leave your warm jacket at a friend's house at least 50 miles away. It'll turn cold for sure.

    Great post.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Elva, that sounds like the voice of experience!

    Hi, "Island"! Nice to see you back. It's been a long time, and I've wondered how you were getting on.

    ReplyDelete

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