Snowed in.

It's snowing. It's not all that cold; this is the mild coastal rainforest zone, after all; it rarely gets very cold here. So the temperature's hovering just below freezing, even overnight; enough for our normal rain to turn to snow.

I went out at midnight last night to watch it come down.

View from my carport. Handheld, slow shutter to show the streams of blowing snow.

My poor Sweet Williams. Last week one was starting to flower. In the background, someone was smart enough to get his car off the steeply inclined driveway. I wasn't. Flash freezes the snowflakes.

And the snow keeps coming. This afternoon, the snow plow finally arrived to clear the street, but it's completely snowed under again now.

I put on my boots for the first time this winter and went out to follow cat tracks in the snow. (They travel in leaps, bounding up out of the snow with each leap. Their tails drag in the snow behind them, collecting snow to drop on my chairs.)

Long-suffering bird, tolerating sun, rain, wind, and now snow, never complaining, just quietly rusting away.

Baby monkey tree. I photographed it in the snow two years ago. Back then, the upper branches were just stubs.

My landlady put this in a few weeks ago. Unidentified. Pale flowers, still on the plant in winter.

One of my spring flowers, I'm not sure which. I've got hundreds of bulbs in; daffs, tulips, bluebells, snowdrops, crocuses, and many mystery bulbs discovered when I turned the soil.

And tomorrow, rain

It's snowing again. A bit of variety after the eternal rain.

4:50 AM, from the shelter of my carport.

It's mushroom (and bug) season

I was sure I'd seen a spider. I was searching through the new growth and the logging slash on a recently cleared site, looking for the last few spiders I need to complete the month of Arachtober. And I knew I had pointed the camera at one. But where was it?

It had been too fast for my shutter finger. I enlarged all my photos and peered at them, looking for even a trailing leg; nothing! But it wasn't wasted effort: I found spider food. Tiny bugs!

White and cream mushrooms. With bluish springtails, a couple of globular springtails (one brown, one orange), and a startling blue fly.

These mushrooms are coated with a jelly-like orange varnish.

Zooming in. A red-eyed fly above, and a tiny, patterned bug on the mushroom.

No critters on this beige mushroom.

Nor on these. They were all too busy on the creamy/orange ones.

A different species of orange mushrooms. The critter here is down on the piece of wood beneath them, too blurry to make out. But it's long, has two antennae visible, and a segmented body. I wish I'd focused on the wood, rather than the mushrooms.

And I eventually got my spider for today's Arachtober entry; he came to my door in the middle of the night.

Crane fly patrol.

Shivery

The moon was fat and round, a searchlight riding high in the sky, too high to make its accustomed path across the strait; the water, instead, gleamed faintly shore to shore.

On my way home from an evening with friends, I stopped to get a better look. I got out and crunched across a lawn that's usually wet enough for my shoes to sink into the mud underneath, where now I could walk a foot above the tips of the grass blades. When my way was blocked by icy, snow-covered logs, I stopped and pulled the little camera out of the pocket where it was keeping warm.

I tried to focus on the moon. No good; I was shivering too much to keep it in the viewfinder. I leaned on one of the tall chainsaw carvings Campbell River residents leave dotted over the landscape, using it as a tripod of sorts. The moon still danced.

Aiming away from the moon itself, the viewfinder and screen were completely black. I hugged the carving and took photos, anyhow; Photoshop does wonders in finding light where none was visible.

Logs under snow, and the lights of a resort on Quadra Island. And moonlight.

Back at the car, with the heater going, I was still shivering. The steering wheel served as my tripod substitute this time, as I focused on the garish lights of the hotel across the highway.

The lights look better without the hotel. Photo as taken; no Photoshopping.

'nuff silliness. I'll be sensible tomorrow, once my brain thaws.

Creatures of the night

One nice thing about being a night owl is that, when the days get too hot, the nights are perfect, and I'm not wasting them asleep in bed. A whole heap of critters agree with me, too.

I found these in my backyard, this week:

Once the birds are asleep, others get a chance at the birdbath, resting on the "shore", or even going swimming. This weevil is following the edge around and around, looking for the exit.

Slug and springtail on birdbath.

Algae on my bare cement, and snail eating algae.

I checked the new BirdCam's photos, and was amused by this snail. I was fussing around with flashlights and the tripod, and the BirdCam kept taking photos as I moved around. And in all the bustle, in each photo, there was the snail, moving right along, and somehow not getting stepped on.

Long slug, going places.

"Look before you slither."

The mosquitoes have been voracious these past few weeks. Even though I slather myself with repellent, I'm still scratching bites. I tried burning these mosquito coils outside the door to discourage them. I don't know that it helped.

On the plate with the next night's coil set up, I found this small slug. He doesn't seem to mind the chemicals in the coil. Later, I found him on the coil itself.

"Did I hear something behind me?"

The door stays open until late. A few critters followed me inside.

Pretty yellow spider on the wall by my desk Update: Enoplogatha ovata.

Very small moth, ditto. (White-shouldered moth)

And this: what is it? The BirdCam picked this up last night.

Something in a hurry.

Not a 'coon, not a skunk, not a cat, nor a fox, rat, or dog. It looks to me like a possum. I hadn't realized that we have possums here in the Lower Mainland.

And take a look at those toes!

Headless prowler.

I'm still sorting the ten-lined June beetle photos; I took 'way too many.

Snail at midnight

I've been out in the cool of the night with the camera and a flashlight. This snail was eating the leaves on a hanging flower pot. (How did he get up there?)

Who wants to eat in the daytime when it's so hot? Not this guy.

More later. I just went out again and discovered a ten-striped June beetle floundering in a bucket of water. And, of course, there are slugs. There always are.

Keeping an eye on us

These critters all dropped in to visit this week.

Hornet under glass

Hundreds of eyes, and toothed jaws.

Winged ant termite*. Running.

Not running.

Crane fly on carpet. Sleeping with his eyes open.

1/3 of the crane fly. I cropped out miles of leg.

Shot in the dark. Fly on outside of window, 10:00 PM.

Mosquito, with double reflection from glass door.

June bug. He came to help with the watering.

And a cute jumping spider, very small, was running around on my kitchen stove. Luckily for him, I wasn't cooking.

Such nice fuzzy pedipalps!

Eyes in the back of his head. Very useful.

Sitting up to beg like a puppy. Sorry, I had no spider treats for him.

I took him outside; the stove is no place to practice your jumps on.

*See comments. Thanks, Christopher!

So laser eyes are hereditary!

Proof:

Mother and kits, getting a drink and practicing crab catching. Caught on the BirdCam.

It's been so hot and dry here that I've been making sure there is fresh water available for this little family every night. The kits can't reach the birdbath yet, so I leave a metal basin on the ground for them.

The mother drinks; the kits not so much. They're still nursing, so they get their hydration from poor, thirsty Mommy. But they're learning to search underwater for goodies. Last night, one stepped into the basin with all four feet, felt around, then went on his way. Nothing there but water; what a disappointment!

I wonder if they'd like some mussels? I've got spares.

Beware of The Cat!

Another midnight visitor, captured with the BirdCam; a cat with laser eyes.

Chasing a moth, maybe?

Midnight raiders

I've been working; Tuesday night, it was too late when I stopped to even consider blogging. Tonight (well, this morning), I called it a day around 1 A.M., and went out to look at my garden. Even in the middle of the night, I love it.

It's been a bad year for slugs. They've been eating my young hostas as fast as they sprout. They ate half of my lupin seedlings, and every single lettuce that dared to raise its tiny head above the soil. I don't mind a slug or two, but - three separate plantings of lettuce gone? And every morning a new casualty or three among my other plants? This means war!

I found an article on an Irish gardening site, "Slugs ~ 15 ways to deal with them organically". Dee, the blogger, mentions someone who uses my method. I go out armed with scissors, and cut them in half. Sounds terrible, but I think they suffer less than they do with other methods, like salt or boiling water. I've tried eggshells; they only seem to work when there are very few slugs about. I haven't tried drowning them in beer, but that works first by attracting them from farther away; so does commercial slug bait, which I have used.

 Tonight, a big slug was taking advantage of the dark to feast on my new hellebores. Not good. I went for the scissors. And, while I was at it, the camera, set on Scenes: Night Portrait.

Still not full grown; about 3 inches long, and slender.

A smaller slug and an earwig, snacking on leftover sunflower seed shells.

They're beautiful, I know. And normally, I'd let them live. But not this year.

While I was out there, I sat and looked at the flowers. In the dark, they stand out against the black greenery; the background disappears, walling off the pool of dim light, creating a private, intimate retreat. Were it not so cold, I'd still be sitting on my stool, back to the window.

Before I came back inside, I took a few "Portraits" of the flowers.

Pink rhododendron

Bleeding heart, a white columbine propped up with a stick because a raccoon knocked it over, and astilbe just budding. The slugs haven't touched these, so far.

The shy lily-of-the-valley really shines at night. Slugs nibble on the young leaves, but don't usually destroy the entire plant.

Dee lists coffee grounds among the possible slug controls. (Method 9) That, or spraying them with cold coffee. I think I'll try that next. Repelling them makes more sense to me than murdering them.

Flying pearls

I hadn't been outside all day. I'd hardly even spared a glance for my backyard birds and squirrels. There had been too much work to do, some expected, some unplanned for. And here it was, 10 o'clock, pitch dark and raining to boot, and I was heading out to see what was afoot.

Nothing. Not even a slug, sliming its way across the wet pavement. No spiders lurking in corners; no flies or moths clinging to dry patches on the wall. Rain, the sound of drips falling into the bird bath from the rhododendron ... The rhododendron! All those big, solid leaves creating shelter! I flipped one over, and another. On the third, there was a gleaming white spot, just a speck. On another leaf, I found two, another one a bit higher up. I collected half a dozen leaves and brought them inside.

The specks were alive; several of them flew up and away when I turned the light on them. A couple stayed around to have their portraits done.

Looks like a moth. About 2 mm. long.

Side view.

The body is lemon yellow on the underside. The wings are like pearly teardrops; at certain angles of the light, they have the faintest hint of pink, especially in the two dots on the lower end of the wing. I think the wing may be fringed; I can't be sure. I was reaching for the microscope when the last one squeezed under the edge of the container I had trapped it in and flew away to join his family. I left the wet rhododendron leaves laid out on the desk for them to return to, but no, they've found some other haven.

Another one for BugGuide. And a heart for Clytie.

UPDATE: Dave (in the comments) beat me to BugGuide. He has identified the supposed moth as a whitefly, from the Aleyrodidae family.

Thanks, Dave!