Good place to hide?

Along the edge of the rising tide at Boundary Bay, hundreds of tiny fish darted from hiding place to hiding place. Even in the open, they were difficult to see; once they'd settled in the shadow of a scrap of seaweed, we couldn't find them at all, until they dashed away.

This one thought the sand beside my red wading shoe made a good hiding place; he stayed there for a long time, until I got tired of not moving.

Zoomed in, with contrast slightly increased. The red serves as a handy distraction.

Each of these sculpins is slightly different from his neighbour, so I can't generalize, but I found it interesting that the eyes are so inconspicuous. Instead, the round, dark spots surrounded by a lighter circle at the root of his side fins look like eyes, which gives the impression of a much larger fish.

Inside, Outside

The Secret Garden, Batch Three.

There's more to this garden than pretty flowers!

Small pink flowers, unidentified, and a greenish fly.

Beach Grove, the small community at the southeast corner of the Tsawwassen peninsula, is criss-crossed by narrow walking lanes, connecting the inner streets to the beach. In one of these lanes, the easement behind his house, Brian Whitehouse planted a few flowers 14 years ago, replacing the invasive blackberries and horsetails that so quickly overpower any forgotten spot in the Lower Mainland.

Map of Boundary Bay. (Google maps base) The Secret Garden is under that line pointing into Beach Grove.

Gardening never stops. A year later, in the evening of September 11, 2001, he found forgetfulness and calm working in his little flower plot; after that, he began to expand the garden, to give others a place to find that same peace.

Whitehouse says there was no real plan. Over the years he just kept clearing away more brush and blackberries, and planting more plants and flowers, creating a meandering garden with landscaping materials that he's scavenged or had donated. (Delta Optimist)

These days, down the centre of the lane, a curving, well-manicured lawn serves as walkway; on both sides rocks, trees, benches, a wishing well and a sundial (in the shade!) serve as backdrops and support for the plantings. Ferns, hostas and rhododendrons soften the fence on the shady side; sun-loving vines and tall flowers line the north wall.

A bird cage full of moss and roots. I thought it was for birds making nests, but there's also a tiny plant just sprouting in the centre.

A vintage wood stove, with a lidless coffee pot, a bit on the leaky side. Last year, it held a mass of pink flowers.

(The stove is a McClary "Kitchen Heater". Years ago, up North, I cooked on one, but it was twice the size and a boring black.)

The garden is fenced, at the back to separate a working and tool storage area from the public garden, and at the front, with a solid board fence and gate, to limit access overnight. But there's something in the air, or in the soil more likely, that extends the happy influence of the care lavished inside well beyond the gate. The beginning of the lane, cleansed of its blackberry canes, but otherwise untended, is a thriving, supremely healthy, knee-deep patch of a large variety of weeds.

Horsetails, grass, plantains, Dove-foot geraniums (pink with 5 double petals) and Common Storks' Bill (pink with 5 single petals).

We couldn't identify this. Laurie mentioned asparagus, but the branching is wrong. The tallest one was about 2 feet high.

Dandelions gone to seed, buttercups, clover, horsetails and grass.

Maybe that front fence is more to keep the dandelions out than to prevent vandalism.

Light and shadows

The Secret Garden, Batch Two.

Again, in no particular order.

Succulents, pink flowers, rocks, under a palm-like tree.

Maidenhair ferns

Rusty sign. Can you read this? I can't.

Red and white tulips

We found this pinned to a bench. Love never forgets.

Another fern, unrolling. Google has thousands of fern pics. I gave up trying to find the name of this one.

Old wood, California poppies, and ivy

Just leaves.

And there will be more tomorrow.

The hurrieder I go, the behinder I get

Life is too busy. It's all good, but so busy! I still haven't processed the Secret Garden photos, and now I've got tons more; mating crabs, skylines and clouds, a wasp nest, invisible fish, a laughing log, a singing sparrow, and a critter that bit me. And the flash on my outdoor camera just went off (2 AM); no telling what I'll find in the memory tomorrow!

And then there's this:

Bald-faced hornet eye.

I found the hornet dead on my carpet. Too bad, but it gave me a chance to see how far I could zoom in, now that he's not moving. And won't sting. One bite is enough!

Now I'm hoping for a few boring days; maybe I can get "aheader" instead of behinder.

Rainy day companions, naughty and nice

Laurie brought me a big, black ground beetle, and a medium brown spider. And it was raining, so I dropped everything and set up my bug photo booth.

The beetle was having none of it. He escaped three times, refused the nice, damp bark I'd found for him, turned up his nose at the leaf, knocked over the plastic box I tried to contain him in, kept his back to the camera, and kept running, running, running.

I got one semi-decent photo.

Catching his breath between escape attempts.

The spider, though, what a little sweetie! She sat on my paper towel and stared at the camera. When I turned the towel to get a side view, she stretched her legs a bit, then sat there, where I'd put her. If she could have, she'd have smiled. Does showing off your humunguous fangs count as a smile?

Twinkly eyes and hairy fangs

Side view. Composite photo, because she was too long for all of her to be in focus.

When I was done, I put them both outside, near the door out of the rain. The beetle, ornery critter that he is, just sat there for half an hour. Ma Fangs took off running and was out of sight in an instant. Things to do, places to go.

Thanks for your time, Ma Fangs!

Secret Garden assortment

The Secret Garden this spring is a bit bedraggled, but still beautiful. It has been a tough winter for gardens, and this one, mostly shaded like mine, would have frozen harder and deeper than most, and thawed more slowly, with each round of extreme temperature changes causing more damage to already weakened plants. I lost several winter-hardy plants, and I noticed gaps in the Secret Garden's plots. A good summer should make up for it.

Here's the first batch of my photos, a half dozen in no particular order.

Akebia vine, hanging over the gate.

The Akebia vine comes originally from Korea and Japan. In its usual form, with dark red flowers, it is known as the Chocolate Vine. The white-flowered variety is less common.

The vine produces a sausage-shaped fruit, with a mildly sweet central section. The outer casing has been used as a vegetable, although it is said to have a slightly bitter flavour.

Some pinkish flowers, some white.

Caterpillar on a sunny rock

One of the ferns, freshly unfolded.

Sleeping stone Buddha. Tired out from drumming?

I photographed this tulip centre because I loved the colour. I didn't notice the fly peeking out from the side until later.

Behind the secret garden

We went to the Secret Garden in Beach Grove, and took hundreds of photos. I'll be busy processing them for days, I think.

Off-limits; work space, wheelbarrow. Purple columbines on our side of the fence.

Flower mimic fly

At our local nursery, Potter's, there is a long, sunny bench of ground cover plants, raised to easy viewing height. A swarm of yellow and black flies was buzzing around them, often standing still in the air, just under my nose. I couldn't resist them, and spent some time chasing them with my little pocket camera.

They were far too quick for me; I got dozens of photos of places where they had been a split second ago.

One finally parked on a green flower, and pretended to be part of it.

Green wings, brown wings

Not just another pretty face

Although you have to admit that the colours are nice.

My polychaete worm in the aquarium, about 6 inches long stretched out.

Zooming in. Those green fang-like structures are just palps, sensory organs. So are all the tentacles.

Standing tall

At one point while I was watching, Mr. Worm stretched out and up to the surface of the water. He moved too fast for me, so I ended up cutting off the tips of his palps. And he never gave me a second chance.

Lonely beetle

At our usual entry point to Crescent Beach, where the lane emerges from deep shade to the sunlight, we always have to pause to look at the flowers, wild and cultivated, that bloom there. This time, we found purple irises, a towering mass of small white flowers I can't quite identify, the brilliant evergreen roses, and beside them, the quieter wild Nootka rose.

On one of them a golden soldier beetle longhorn beetle caught my eye.

Golden back, black pronotum and head.

Pidonia scripta, a flower longhorn

This looks similar to the soldier beetle I usually see, the Common Red Soldier Beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, often in large groups, usually mating. It has the long golden body, but with black tips on the tail, and a red head. I only saw the one beetle here, although I looked at other flowers nearby.

Common Red Soldier Beetle, Rhagonycha fulva, on daisy, June 2010

When we came back to the shore an hour and a half later, this same beetle, as far as I could tell, was still on the same flower. And still alone.

UPDATE: BugGuide has identified it as Pidonia scripta, a flower longhorn beetle. Post corrected accordingly.

Practice makes ... well, a bit better.

I have a lot to learn about my camera and its possibilities. On lazy days, sometimes I spend a few hours just practicing, and then tossing hundreds of photos.

Laurie found these mushrooms in a dry spot near the rhododendrons. I haven't tried to ID them, instead spent time playing around with the lighting, trying to get true colours indoors without extensive Photoshopping afterwards. I photographed them on the kitchen counter against a blue background, to tone down the yellow of the overhead light, which is supposedly "soft white". These turned out almost right; the rest were deleted at first glance.

(I did a bit of post processing, mostly to clean up scattered dust and lighten one where the flash failed to work.)

A bit too much yellow from room light.

Better, but I had to lighten it up, so the blue background almost disappeared.

These look about right.

And I took a spore print, half on black, half on plain white paper. The spores turned out charcoal grey.

The half on white paper. Not very informative, but there's no lighting problem here; I scanned the print.

Deep pink

Evergreen rose, Crescent Beach

This is a huge rosebush, growing wild, towering far above our heads.

We've been taking too many photos. There's just so much to see! I must do an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink post to catch up. Maybe tomorrow, if the weather isn't too beautiful.

Miles of seaweed, sand and snails.

The tide was low, low, low this afternoon. From Crescent Beach, it almost seemed as though we could walk to the far side of Boundary Bay, at Centennial Beach. I tried.

Halfway to the tide line. That's Point Roberts and Centennial Beach at the far right.

Walking the dog, far away. I think this is directly south, near the edge of Semiahmoo Bay.

I walked to the west edge of the beach, but then there was a wide stretch of water before the sand started on the Centennial Beach side. Of course there was; there's a river running down through there, the combined Nicomekl and Serpentine Rivers flowing out of Mud Bay.

And it's 7 miles, shore to shore. It just looks like a quick walk.

12,000 babies!

The last few times I brought goodies from the beach home for my hermit crabs, a flatworm has come along, possibly among the barnacles. They would eat the barnacles, but then, so would the trophon snails, so I decided to let them sort it out among themselves, and added the flatworms to the aquarium. But the pump inhaled them and tore them up; it's a stronger pump than I used to have when flatworms roamed the walls before.

The next one went into the auxiliary tank, the amphipod and hydroid breeding tank, which has no pump, just the bubbler. There, it did just fine.

This last collection included the largest flatworm I have ever seen; up to 2 inches long when it's travelling. Again, we debated whether to add it to the tank; what would it eat that I wanted to keep? But there are plenty of barnacles and mussels, and a whole shopping list of worms there. The flatworm fits in fine.

"Stretch", resting, underside against the glass. The brown splotches are algae on the glass.

Three days later, "Stretch" had found the small flatworm already in the tank, and they were travelling together. The next afternoon, I found them, still together, with two patches of eggs they'd laid on the wall. A day later, there was another patch, larger, about an inch long.

Day 2. The third patch is not as densely packed as the first two.

Zooming in on the second day's eggs. The eggs are glued in a single layer on the glass.

Zooming in more. First day's eggs, near the top. Background cleaned up.

This afternoon, Day 4, with the microscope I can see, inside each egg, a swirling mass of points, with usually one darker spot.

What I can't really show you is the frantic activity around, under, and over the eggs. They are surrounded by a snowstorm of copepods, amphipods, worms; transparent hair-like worms, stretched ovals sliding and curving about like scale worms, two-tentacled tube worms and feather duster worms on the sand directly beneath them, busy mites, a pair of mud shrimp, and hundreds of things moving too fast, and too small besides, to identify.

One of the mites.

Shadow and feet of an amphipod on the far side of the layer of eggs.

Feather-duster worm with catch. Something tentacley, something blobby, something leggy.

There seemed to be an enormous number of eggs, so I had to count them. The lazy way; I cropped a square approximately 20 eggs on a side, and measured it against the total area.

About 20 x 30 = 600 eggs.

This was about 1/20 of the total area, and about mid-density. Multiplying 600 by 20, I get around 12,000 eggs in that mass. Could be more; some areas are quite dense.

Even after the onslaught of all those opportunists, I think there are enough so that some may possibly hatch.

The flatworms are hermaphrodites, with both male and female reproductive systems in each individual. In some species, one acts as the male, impregnating the other, who then lays eggs. In this case, it seemed that both flatworms were laying eggs; this is also a strategy of some species of flatworms.

The young may hatch as plankton, swimming about for a few days before they settle, or they may emerge as tiny worms with the adult shape. I couldn't find any information on our local species, which are notoriously difficult to identify, in any case. I'll just have to wait and see.

I hope some do make it.

Serendipitous miniature

Squinting through the microscope at a new centre of activity in the aquarium - story tomorrow - my tired hand slipped down, and I discovered two feather-duster worms in the sand.

The taller of the two. Still too small to see without a lens.

And there are two tinier critters caught in its tentacles, as they dashed around feeding on something even smaller.