Lake, lower down

 What a difference a few metres make! I stopped at Echo Lake on my way to Snakehead Lake. It was snowing, slowly, at Echo Lake; the snow on the ground was less than an inch deep. At Snakehead a few minutes later, the untouched snow covered my shoes.

Snakehead Lake is at 283 metres above sea level. Echo Lake, a mere 6 km. away as the crow flies, is just above the 200 metre line.

On my way home, three quarters of an hour later, it was raining at Echo Lake; the snow on the ground had melted.

The east end of Echo Lake.

West end, with a distant pair of waterfowl. And some snow on the shrubs.

Zooming in from water's edge. The birds are buffleheads.

And these, at Snakehead Lake, I think are scaups. I could be wrong.

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¡Que diferencia hacen unos cuantos metros! En camino al lago Snakehead, me detuve en el lago Echo. Estaba nevando un poco en este lago pero había apenas un centímetro de nieve en el suelo. En el lago Snakehead, en cambio, unos minutos más tarde, la nieve, donde nadie la había pisoteado, me cubría los zapatos.

El lago Snakehead está a 283 m. de elevación; el Echo, a una distancia (a vuelo de pájaro) de unos 6 km., apenas pasa la linea de 200 metros.

Camino a casa, tres cuartos de hora más tarde, estaba lloviendo en el lago Echo; la nieve ya se estaba derritiendo.

Fotos:

1. El extremo oriente del lago Echo.
2. El otro extremo del mismo, con una pareja de pájaros acuáticos.
3. Desde el borde del agua, se ve que la pareja son porrones coronados,Bucephala albeola.
4. Estos, en el lago Snakehead, creo que son los patos buceadores Aythya sp. 

Mini-micro havens

It snowed again yesterday afternoon. Then the snow turned to rain. Our streets were black, then white, then black again. But just a few miles away, on the mainland, the black is bad news; there, it's black ice. And the snow keeps falling.

Closer to home, if I drive over the hill that borders the shore, I find snow, six inches deep, undisturbed, and frozen hard enough to walk on without leaving a mark.

New forest coming, under snow.

Here on Vancouver Island, we live in a microclimate, its temperature and humidity determined by the encircling ocean currents, northbound from the warm North Pacific Current. Our summers are cool and wet, and our winters are usually mild (and wet; we don't tan, we rust.) Some years, there's no snow at all.

But microclimates have their own microclimates. Our shoreline strip is one. The backside of the hill is another. Forested areas have their own variants, depending on height of trees, direction of the slope, extent of logged areas, nearby rivers, roads and their traffic, and other circumstances.

And then there are the mini-microclimates. The warm zones around blades of grass, the wells at the base of stumps, hollow logs, even the ruts in old car tracks. Each imperfection in the surface shapes the wind currents, captures or blocks the sunshine, funnels off the rainwater. And in these mini-climates, plants and animals wait out the cold weather.

Baby Douglas fir and shrubs, each in its own warm well.

Each living plant affects its climate in various ways. It absorbs sunlight, which otherwise bounces off the surface of the snow. It deflects drying winds. And its own living processes produce a minimal amount of heat. Enough to melt the snow up against the branches, and provide cover for other small plants.

An old stump in its own mini-climate, harbouring evergreen salal.

Two more stumps. With lichen, salal, and bare twigs of deciduous shrubs. These will have an early start to their spring growth.

A few small trees and shrubs share a warm spot.

Even a rock can build a mini-climate. It absorbs more warmth from the sun than the surrounding earth, which is cooled by air pockets and seeping ice melt. The rock radiates this extra heat into the snow around it.

Snow on the side of the road, tossed up by a snowplow. Even this can create a disturbance in air flow and sunlight. The lump itself, exposed to the wind, is frozen hard, but the sunny surface is slowly melting, making that icicle.

A side road, unmarked on the map, with ruts and tracks of a dog or coyote, made before the snow froze hard. The forested and ferny areas are just warm enough to melt off the snow before it freezes.

And there's another mini- or really, not so mini - microclimate, usually unseen. Underneath that frozen snow cover, the ground is protected from freezing winds, and stays just above freezing. And there, the little creatures wait out the winter, sleeping or burrowing deep into the warmish earth.

Back at home, a few of my spring crocuses are pushing through the wet soil, hidden in a mini-climate of their own between a wall and a staircase.

Banana belt

Bananas grow and produce fruit in BC. Outside. Who knew?

Banana flower, with clumps of developing green bananas, in a front yard in Tsawwassen.

Front view of flower.

The big bud contains the beginnings of many small flowers, such as the ones under the lifted sepal. Each flower develops into one banana; behind the fresh blooms are a clump of baby bananas with drying flowers at the tip. The next clump up the stem has dropped most of the blooms, except for a few black threads.

They're still a long way from ripening, but now the days are cool, the nights chilly. Even in Tsawwassen. I don't think they'll make it, at least on the tree.