Down a solstice rabbit hole

 A few numbers.

Looking up, last night, the length of this, our shortest day of the year, I noticed one particular number, one I've probably seen before but never stopped to think about. 7:03. The moment of the winter solstice this year here in BC. 

Three minutes past the hour. Odd, I thought. But why not? There has to be a moment, a precise second in which the earth passes the spot where it stops distancing itself from the sun, where the angle of the tilted axis starts its swing towards the sun again. And why would it have to coincide with a "sensible" moment on our clocks; like 7:00 PM. Or even 7:15; that would seem reasonable, right?

No, the earth and the sun aren't watching our clocks.

So, why aren't our clocks set with the solar system times?

Down another rabbit hole.

The earth's orbit isn't a circle. It all starts there. When it is closer to the sun, in spring and fall, the earth travels more quickly. Like when you tie a nut to a string and swing it around your head, (or a bolas spider ties his ball of glue to his silk) it goes faster and hits whatever you're aiming at harder, if the string (or silk) is longer.

So our clocks are set to 86,000 seconds per day, but the solar day? It depends. It's longer than 24 hours in winter, shorter in summer. Solar noon, when the sun is directly overhead, here on the 50th N parallel of latitude and 125°15' falls at 12:19 PM, Pacific Standard Time. Over on the mainland, in Vancouver, it's at 12:10.

And our day, today, the  21st, is 8 hours and 4 minutes long. With 6 extra seconds. Tomorrow, we'll get another whole 5 seconds. Then 10 more, 13, and 22 for Christmas, giving us 8 hours and 5 whole minutes, a nice Christmas gift.

That's here. In Nunavut, they have to wait another 6 weeks for the first glimpse of daylight. And I remember the years in the deep Bella Coola valley, at 52.37°N, where the sun first peeked through the gap between Table Mountain and the next peak over; the 4th of February, give or take a day depending on the snow cover. 2 minutes, and it was gone, but it would be back the next day.:

But — one more weird number— sunrise today here was at 8:17. It will still come later, even after the solstice, up to 8:19, January 4th, before it starts to come earlier. While the days are lengthening; because sunset will be coming later. And that's because the earth is tipped over, and the axis isn't aligned exactly with the earth's orbit.

Earth currently has an axial tilt of about 23.44°. This value remains about the same relative to a stationary orbital plane ... But the ecliptic (i.e., Earth's orbit) moves due to planetary perturbations, and the obliquity of the ecliptic is not a fixed quantity. (Wikipedia)

And:

The Moon is—very gradually—slowing the Earth's rotation because of friction produced by tides. Over the course of a century, the length of a day increases by a couple of milliseconds (where 1 millisecond equals 0.001 seconds). ... Within this general trend, however, there is fluctuation: sometimes the Earth spins a bit faster, sometimes a bit slower. Recently, our planet has been speeding up a little, making for slightly shorter days. (TimeAndDate)

The only constant, it seems, is change.

I looked through my old photos for one taken on a winter solstice. Here's the one I found; December, 2008. I was house-sitting in Vancouver. A snowy year, that was.

Pender St., Strathcona, Vancouver. Solstice, 2008.

~~~~~~~~~~~

 Unos cuantos números interesantes.

Anoche estaba mirando los datos sobre lo largo del dia, este dia más corto del año, y me llamó la atención un número que probablemente he visto antes pero sin hacer caso. 7:03. El momento precisod del solsticio de invierno aquí en Colombia Británica.

Tres minutos después de la hora. Extraño, pensé. Pero, ¿porqué no? Tiene que haber un instante exacto en que la tierra pasa el punto donde deja de alejarse del sol, donde el ángulo del eje empieza a volverse hacia el sol otra vez. ¿Y porqué tendría que corresponder a un momento "lógico" en nuestros relojes; como por ejemplo, las 7:00 pm.? O las 7:15, que parecería ser un tiempo razonable, ¿no?

No, la tierra y el sol no se guían por nuestros relojes.

Bueno, ¿porqué no tenemos nuestros relojes armonizados con los tiempos del sistema solar?

Otra vez, voy siguiendo el conejo de Alica del Pais de las Maravillas.

La órbita de la tierra no forma un círculo. Aquí empieza todo. Cuando se acerca al sol, en la primavera y el otoño, la tierra se mueve más rapidamente. Como cuando atas una tuerca a un hilo y la giras alrededor de tu cabeza (o cuando una araña bolas ata su bolita de pegamento a la seda), mientras más largo tu hilo (o la seda), más rápido vuele la tuerca o la bola y más fuerte choca con el objetivo.

Nuestros relojes están configurados para marcar 86.000 segundos diarios, ¿pero el dia solar? Depende. Es más de 24 horas en el invierno, menos de los 24 en verano. La mediodía solar, cuando el sol está directamente sobre nuestras cabezas, cae aquí en el paralelo 50°N y longitud 125°15'W a las 12:19 pm, tiempo Pacífico. En Vancouver, no tan lejos, cae a las 12:10.

Y nuestro dia de hoy, el dia 21, tiene 8 horas con 4 minutos. Y 6 segundos de propina. Mañana, nos tocarán otros 5 segundos. Luego 10, 13, y 22 el 25, dándonos 8 horas y 5 minutos enteros para Navidad. ¡Un buen regalo!

Eso es aquí. En el territorio norteño de Nunavut, tienen que esperar otras 6 semanas antes de ver la luz del día. Y me acuerdo de los años en el valle profundo de Bella Coola, en el paralelo 52.37°N, donde el sol se asomaba por primera vez desde el espacio entre el monte Stupendous (Mesa lo llamábamos) y el pico próximo; el 4 de febrero, más o menos, según la profundidad de la nieve en aquellas cumbres. 2 minutos, y desaparecía, pero regresaría.

Pero — un número extraño más— el sol salió esta mañana a las 8:17. Seguirá saliendo más tarde, aun después del solsticio, llegando a salir a las 8:19, el 4 de enero, antes de empezar a amanecer más temprano. Y eso, mientras los dias se alargan, porque el sol se pondrá cada dia más tarde. Y eso, porque el eje de la tierra no está alineado respeto a su plano orbital.

La tierra en estos momentos tiene una inclinación axial de aproximadamente 23.44°. Este valor permanece aproximadamente igual respeto a un plano orbital fijo. ... Pero la eclíptica (eso es la órbita de la Tierra) se mueve debido a perturbaciones planetarias, y la oblicuidad de la eclíptica no es una cantidad fija. (Wikipedia)

Y:

La Luna está —lentamente— retrasando la rotación de la Tierra por causa de la fricción producida por las mareas. En un siglo, la largura de un día aumenta con unos dos milisegundos (donde 1 milisegundo es igual a 0.001 segundos). ... Con esta tendencia general, sin embargo, hay variación: a veces la Tierra gira un poco más rápido, a veces un poco más lentamente. Recientemente, nuestra planeta ha estado acelerándose un poco, dando por consiguiente días levemente más cortos. (TimeAndDate)

Lo único que sigue siempre igual, me parece, es el cambio.

Busqué entre mis fotos viejas, para encontrar una de un solsticio de invierno. Aquí está la que encontré; en diciembre de 2008. Estaba cuidando la casa de mi hija en Vancouver. Ese año había toneladas de nieve.

Foto: 21 de diciembre, 2008, la calle Pender, Strathcona, Vancouver.

Strathcona wildlife

They promised us rain all week, but sunshine for the weekend. What we got was sunshine all week, but Saturday it alternately snowed, hailed, rained, and threatened more of the same, or worse. Neither of us felt like going beachcombing, as we had hoped.

A good day to stay home and get some more work done. Laurie cooked; I sorted and cleaned out half a year's worth of photos. In the last two days, I've managed to delete almost 10 Gigabytes of duplicates, copies of duplicates, copies of copies ... It feels good.

In the evening, when my eyes were burning, and my stick-to-it-iveness was just about dead, I ran across a folder labelled "Strathcona wildlife". It made me laugh, and gave me energy for another hour of work. So I'm passing it on.

These are from street scenes, walking around Strathcona when I was housesitting there.

Have to start with a cat.

Driveway guardian

Tree snake

Lost in a gravel wasteland. And so hard on her tender toesies!

In a window, with reflections. Deer and lizards. (Well, the remains of deer.)

Maybe the sun will shine tomorrow. I can always hope.

Another weather grumble

BC Christmas season weather. At least it's easy to predict. Rain. Rain. Rain. With the occasional storm, and sometimes snow. Then more rain.

It started to snow yesterday. Then it rained, then snowed, then rained. It's raining hard now.

Umpteen and umpteen years ago, we were driving through the New Mexico desert. On and on and on, never a hill or a tree or a curve in sight. Heat waves and straight highway. Eventually, we passed a small sign, that said simply, "Monotonous, ain't it?"

There are still the memories of other winters, winters with bright skies, winters with snow. And we can always hope; it's not Christmas yet.

December, 2008, MacLean Park, Strathcona. It snowed all Christmas week.

Shopping tomorrow. Stormy weather, too. Wish me luck.

Rainy day sampler

I have a hard drive full of old photos, most too bad to be used, some with possibilities; but these get lost in the undergrowth. Following Ted McRae's example, I've been sorting them out and rescuing those I can, now that I have newer software and am slowly learning to use it.

Here's a random assortment of the most recent recovers, in no particular order. (Blogger's choice, and I didn't interfere.)

In a dry summer, an angel dreams of days when her pool was full. York Road, Campbell River, 2009.

Is that a ... turtle?!  Photo from Laurie's old film camera, pre-2006. Boundary Bay.

Rotting ball, White Rock beach, April 2009.

I posted this on the blog in August of 2010; I think it's a feather duster worm. The photo was messy and dark, but a few quick tricks with Elements (Ted's first two) brought it to life.

Same worm, clearer pose. It's about an inch and a half long.

Lion, in the jumbled entrance of a house in Finn Slough. The background camouflaged the lion in front; a pity, because I think he's beautiful. I finally figured out how to use the selection tool, masked the lion, and blended the mess. Simple, now I know how. October, 2010.

Signs in the corner of a store window in Strathcona. April, 2011.

1980s photo, taken with one of those little Kodachromes, much faded with age. Scanned and cleaned up, it's passable. This is my younger son rototilling a patch of swamp land we were draining and reclaiming. Wonderful soil! That first year, I had 7 boxes of tomatoes to can.
Firvale, the Bella Coola valley, BC.

Straw "painting" I brought back from Mexico in the 1970s. Cheating here; I threw out all my old photos, and took a new one now that I have a better camera and a decent flash. For the first time, the straw came out as straw, and Elements cleaned up the edges nicely.

I've done a batch of scanned family photos, which I've uploaded to Facebook, and umpteen worm photos; these I will store for reference material for the next time I find another. The weather people threaten us with two solid weeks of rain: I don't care; I'm having fun!

'Way back post

I am at work on a longer post, and meanwhile am re-posting some early posts from my starter blog, on Delphi. This is one of the earliest, written in Strathcona, June, 2006. The photo is from Laurie's old film camera.

These little guys are so smart!

Ok, you'll have to click on the photo to see them properly. And even then, they're blurry; they were just too tiny and too active for our camera. But it's the general impression that counts here.

These are baby spiders, just hatched. I had seen some the day before, on the back porch railing. A yellow clump about 1/2 an inch across, vibrating gently. Up close, I could just see the tiny legs moving as they clambered over and under each other.

Half an hour later, when I came back with my glasses, they were gone.

We stopped to talk to a neighbour over her garden gate the next day. In a clump of sedges, Laurie saw what he thought was a yellow flower, and pointed it out to me. "It's more baby spiders," I said, and he bent to look at them more closely. Instantly, the clump disbanded, spreading out over a small web that we hadn't noticed before; efficient predators, commanding as much territory as they were able.

Laurie took his photo quickly, before they spread too far, but once he had moved away, the spiders again froze into position, still looking vaguely like tiny yellow flowers.

So here they are, newborns, out in a big new world for the first time, planning strategy; make a web, clump together to look like a flower so as to lure tiny bugs, and at the first sign of action, prepare to leap!

Co-operation and aggression hand in hand. I am sure many of them, not finding enough noseeums nor tiny crawlies, ate their brothers and sisters.  But still ... they started out with that splendid group effort.

I wish them well.

~~~~~~~~~

Looking back from 2012, I think these are infant Cross spiders, Araneus diadematus. They are plentiful in Strathcona, and those were good years for them.

10 minute birding

After a week of driving back and forth from Strathcona, mostly in the rain, I woke up the last morning there to see blue sky outside the window, promising a good day, at last, to get in a quick tour of the gardens before I came home to Delta. A deceptive promise it was; by the time I'd done the morning chores and packed, the clouds had settled in again.

But it wasn't raining - yet - when it was time to leave. The car was parked just a few steps from MacLean Park and the Paneficio; I went over to see what Valerie and Arnt were displaying this month. I stood for a while admiring a reclaimed wood bench, visualizing a room to build around it.

Behind me, a bird screamed; not a crow as I would expect in Strathcona. I turned and looked for it, finally seeing it high in the branches of the closest tree, barely visible in the low light; about crow-sized, but with a splotchy white breast.

Could be a merlin. Too small for a peregrine, I think.

I walked around and around the tree, trying to find a vantage point where no branches would be in the way. It was hopeless; from every angle, he was sheltered. How do these birds ever fly in and out of such thickets without banging into a dozen branches on the way? Amazing!

Back view.

Another front view, this time showing the barred tail.

The grass under the shadiest park of the park never does very well. This year, they've plowed it under and planted a ground cover I don't recognize.

Tiny plants, the leaves almost flat against the ground, the flowers at most two inches high.

The flowers sit upright in a three-lobed calyx tray.

Spray of pink tubular flowers, and a blue door.

I took a last few photos of flowers beside the car before it started to rain again. I drove home and we went to Home Depot to buy plants and potting soil in the rain.

March came in like a wimpy lion; it went out like a grumpy lamb.

Blue house, with cherry blossoms

I spent most of the afternoon, the evening, and the night, on the road, in the rain and wind. For a few brief moments, the sun made an attempt to break through the clouds over Strathcona. I rolled the window down and took a photo.

Pender Street is lined with blooming cherry trees.

I hope tomorrow will be dryer.

Living dangerously

One thing I like about Strathcona; it's buggy. There still are no flying critters at home in Delta, and very few spiders, even out in the garden. While there's nothing for them to eat, they're sleeping.

Ah, but Strathcona! I was coming up to bed in my daughter's house here, when I noticed a tiny bug on the staircase wall, well above my head. I risked my life, trying to get close enough for a photo; every time I felt secure enough to focus, the narsty critter moved away.

The best I could do. I'll track it down tomorrow, in daylight.

There were a couple of pretty moths, though. I managed to catch one.

I love the frilly pleated "petticoat". The smudge on the left wing is my fault; I had to hold the moth for a while as I searched the kitchen for a suitable lidded container.

I haven't attempted to identify these. I should have been in bed hours ago. Goodnight, all!

Artsy critters

 From the sidewalk in front of Paneficio Studios (Strathcona):

Fat cross spider. Lunch is a syrphid fly taco.

Fatter cross spider. I tried to get a photo that showed her girth, but she was having none of it; she kept turning and turning, to keep me and my intrusive camera within reach of her fangs. Check the photo full-size to see the droplets of glue along the web.

Snail on dying Solomon's seal. Artist's window in background.

Wall blogging

A brief comment from Strathcona's mad poet without a blog:

To be able to say
How much you love
is to love but
a Little

Previous offerings: On this thin raft, Stalking Elk, When the world is sick ...

Farming Strathcona

Poking around a back alley in Strathcona, we met a woman who asked me about one of Arnt Arntzen's "totems" (see penultimate photo in linked post). I couldn't explain it; maybe Arnt can. But we got talking. She has recently moved to Strathcona, and has fallen in love with the area. The art! The quirkiness! The houses! And most of all, the gardens!

"The gardens! The gardens! ..." she repeated, at a loss for words to describe them.

I think she could have used "exuberant". Or maybe, "uninhibited".

These gardens are not necessarily beautiful, or fashionable; they don't limit themselves to the decorative plants, the shrubbery and carefully tended flower beds, although those do appear here and there. The plants range from wildflowers to exotics, from flowers to fruit and vegetables. And every spare bit of space is used. See:

Cucumber in a front garden

Food plants grow in landscaped front gardens,

Bush beans, snap peas, nasturtiums.

in back gardens,

Pole beans and other veggies

Between the sidewalk and the curb,

Corn

On front decks,

Tomatoes, Swiss chard

Up to the roof.

Grapes

Where there is no ground for them, any container will do ...

Orderly rows of seedlings in storage bins

Greens in a styrofoam packing crate. Warm feet! Behind them, there's a pot of chives, then strawberries behind the hydrangea.

More beans and corn, and big zucchini plants between the sidewalk and the top of the sunken garden, at the level of the lane below.

Zucchini, flowers and ripe squash.

A pair of raised beds in a driveway. Plants outrank cars.

And these surprised me: in MacLean Park, which is mostly grass and play area, they have added a landscaped flower and shrub garden at the southwest corner. There are roses, blue teasels, exotic evergreens, lilies and ferns. And veggies:

I think these are globe artichokes.

The plants are over 6 feet tall, the flower a good 4 or 5 inches across.

And the strangest garden of all is this; in the mix of gravel, pavement oozings, and hardpan at the edge of an alley, rows of lettuce are somehow surviving.

Salad fixings, and weeds.

And somehow, I missed the balconies and roofs; that will have to be another day.

The gardens! The gardens!

Beauty and the (tiny) beast

(I've been house-sitting for my daughter in Strathcona, dashing back here every couple of days to water the gardens. I'm home again, to stay.  Now I'm sorting photos; this set is from the house in Strathcona.)

On my first inspection tour of the Strathcona house, I noticed a tiny spider in a corner of a high basement window, a favourite spider hangout I've examined before. This one was barely a pair of dots, one larger than the other; I wouldn't attempt to photograph it, not in that awkward position, not with a handy crack to retreat into; these spiders are shy.

But a couple of days later, going down to empty the washer, I saw a fluttering orange thing on the sill, and that tiny spider hovering nearby. I ran back up for the camera. When I got back, the spider had grabbed her prey:

Spider, maybe 2 mm. Moth, up to 5 mm.

For the next couple of minutes, the pair executed an elaborate dance; the spider would dash in to bite the moth, then back off while the moth struggled frantically. When the moth rested, back came the spider, to sink in her fangs, or to attempt to attach strands of sticky web. The moth fought, the spider retreated. Again and again.

One foot is tangled in the web.

Trying to tie up an antenna.

Reinforcing the bonds.

This may be the prettiest moth I have seen in BC; look at the colours! The wings are patterned in orange and tan, with yellow and pink accents; on the bottom, deeper reds outline the underwings.

Moth all tied up, being dragged off to the spider's corner.

I went to attend to the laundry. When I came back, the moth was jammed up against the spider's hole. Of the spider, there was no sign; she was probably deep inside, washing up for dinner.

A couple of days later, the dried husk of the moth lay on the window sill. When I tried to collect it, it crumbled to dust.

UPDATE: Identified by BugGuide as Carcina quercana.