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.

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.

Some black spiders are pink.

In a mass of tiny pink flowers at the Secret Garden, I surprised a pretty jumping spider:

Unidentified flowers.

Jumper*, turned to look at my camera lens cover, dangling on its cord. I couldn't get him** to look at the lens.

I love how the pink flowers are reflected in his shiny skin.

More reflections.

Some of the buds have a spider-head look about them, too. Pink jumping spiders! 

If a prey insect sees different colours than we do, does the spider just blend in to his surroundings? I wonder.

*By the markings on his back (white forward border, two dots, upside-down V, two more dots), he's a Phidippus audax, the Bold jumper. But all the ones I see on BugGuide are on the east side of the continent. Most of the Bold jumpers have green fangs; I didn't get a chance to see his.

UPDATE: I found him in one of my books; his range is listed as "Throughout North America".

**I never got to see this spider head on, so I don't know if it's male or female. But I don't like "it" for a critter with a mind of its own, so I choose whichever comes to mind first.

Leap into the sky

Heron weathervane, Beach Grove.

Silhouette, facing the sun

Un-heron-like colours. Must be made of copper, with a few iron fittings, all corroded. The two round balls look like recycled toilet-tank floats.

A Skywatch post.

Backyard cat

I love those eyes!

Beach Grove watch cat.

Copycat flies

A clump of Michaelmas daisies in Beach Grove attracted a swarm of yellow and black insects this afternoon, honeybees and wasps, mostly. And a pair of lookalikes.

Syrphid fly. Eristalis tenax, a bee mimic.

Flies have only two functional wings. Bees have four.

Another syrphid. A bee mimic's mimic. Smaller, and with a striped vest instead of the furry one.

Not a purple spider

It was a purple day. We found purple irises in the sand at Boundary Bay, small, very purple irises in a driveway in Beach Grove, purple pansies in roadside gardens, and acres of purple lathyrus on the dunes. Add in a couple of purple shore crabs and a tall lilac bush. Purple!

Irises swaying in the wind.

I didn't even see the spider right in front of my nose until I looked at the photos. Here she is:

Laying in wait.

She's a crab spider, not camouflaged. But in the rainbow of colours all around, who's to notice? I'm sure she'll get a meal.

There's a second spider, if you look carefully at the top photo. Can you find it?

Besides purple, there was much more to be seen. We came home with hundreds of photos, and I was already behind with my sorting and processing. I need a rainy week!

And I've got baby, as in infant, barely here, hermit crabs! More later.

Circle tour

I have a theory - in the totally non-scientific use of the word, meaning a guess about evidence badly infected with confirmation bias - that the harder it rains, the sooner it will quit. After all, raining hard will drain out all the water up there sooner, won't it? And when it does, it can't rain any more, can it?

Laurie laughs at me, but I have one more bit of "proof"; Saturday afternoon, it rained so hard that I missed my regular exit off the freeway because I couldn't see it. And a mere two hours later, the sun was shining. See?

So Sunday, the sun shone all day, from early morning till dusk. Not a cloud in the sky above us; summer blues. Beautiful!

And, of course, we went to the beach. Boundary Bay, parking in Centennial Park, and walking south on the sand, then back to the car through the streets of Beach Grove. The tide was 'way out, and the walking was easy, but the wind was vicious; in spite of the sunshine, we were bundled up to the ears.

Laurie took this directly into the sun, so it turned out like a moonlight photo.  We both loved those ripples in the sand.

Sand ripples merge into water kicked up by the wind.

There wasn't much else to see out there; seaweed, sand, blue sky, and far in the distance, the bay. Glorious, but boring, from the cameras' point of view. Four or five eagles were sitting out on the furthest sandbars, just black dots with white tops at that distance. We found more camera fodder once we returned to shore.

Heather, primulas, pansies, and tiny daffodils.

Chickweed, a couple of inches high.

Paper-white crocuses.

We were surprised to see azalea so early.

More crocuses, my favourites; purple and white striped.

The first ladybug of the year, under the watchful eye of an old log.

This bee, Bombus melanopygus, I think, was working a heather patch. I chased him down until I got one fuzzy photo. Then he disappeared. Look at that nice new paint job!  The orange belly almost looks metallic.

Laurie found this old telephone pole with a crown of old man's beard reflected in the trunk of a car.

And back to the parking lot, looking out towards the bay. It's almost supper time; the  shadows are stretching. The clouds hide our circle of mountains.

Bare tree, with trash can. I do wish they wouldn't paint them in such intrusive colours!

Then off to Tim Horton's for a warming cuppa. Afterwards, we stopped in at the nursery to buy sea soil and manure. I got a bag of primulas, yellow and white. Spring is here; the garden beckons.

Pampas grass?

Ornamental grass catching the sunlight, by the shore in Beach Grove.

As far as I can figure out, it's a variety of Pampas grass, less feathery and darker than the kind we usually see.

Semi-silhouette.

A small tree by the boat ramp in Beach Grove is a favourite singing spot for sparrows. Coming and going, we hear their song, see their silhouettes against the sky. The lighting was marginally better this week.

I think it's a song sparrow. I could be wrong.

It looks like it's going to freeze tonight. Winter is coming! Snow next?

Cure for cabin fever

Tsawwassen! Beach Grove! Boundary Bay! It seems ages since we were there together; not since this summer, because of Laurie's various injuries. He's getting better. This afternoon we made it back.

The weather co-operated. The rain stopped. There were even patches of blue sky, and the occasional glimmer of sunlight on a yellow-leaved tree.

We went to the Delta Potters sale, walked around, as we can't resist doing, several times, bought a few Christmas presents, and went back to the car. Laurie was still not in too much pain, so we went to our favourite lunch place in Tsawwassen town centre. I suggested, afterwards, a quick trip (only 5 more minutes driving) to Beach Grove, just to collect some water for my critters at the boat ramp, not to walk. Laurie said ok; he was tired, but he could handle it.

Beach Grove is BC's banana belt. Here it is November; our annuals have hidden away for the winter under a mulch of brown, soggy leaves. But not in Beach Grove! There the flowers are still in cheerful bloom. Along the streets we saw pink hydrangea, pots of marigolds, nasturtiums, roses, asters and dwarf sunflowers, fresh pansies, luxuriant fuschias, and more. Most of the trees are green. People are walking about in shorts and T-shirts. Golfers trundle their carts across the greens.

By the time winter arrives down there, spring will be on its heels.

At the boat ramp, a nasturtium sneaks out beneath a garden wall. The berries fell from a bush overhead.

Looks like holly, but the leaves aren't spiky.

Laurie was planning to wait for me in the car, but he couldn't resist; when I turned around to wade back with my water, he was on the beach taking photos, trying to zoom in on a flock of diving birds, too far out, and too often underwater to identify.

The tide was high, and the waves were forceful, if not really tall. They had stirred up the mud so that the water was brown for a good way out.

Boat ramp near the US border. Looking across to Mud Bay, Crescent Beach and Surrey beyond.

A recent storm loaded the beach with fresh eelgrass, both large and dwarf. I filled a bag in a couple of minutes. My critters are Happy!

Detail of a section of stump used as a stool.

Patches of blue sky, low blue hills. Looking south.

Sky over Point Roberts, with a gull on a post at the bottom.

On the way back through Beach Grove, we passed these pumpkins above a gate, looking as new and fresh as if they were carved this morning.

"Beaky"

"Curly"

A Skywatch post.