Rose hips, Baikie Island

 A bit of warm colour on a cold, blue-lighted day.

Rose hips, some ripe, some past their prime.

And a small wild rose bush under a foot of snow. My footprint off to the right.

One rose hip. The stems are still green, and wearing the buds of spring leaves.

Year after year, I tell myself I'll collect a bunch to make myself some rose hip tea, a good winter drink, full of Vitamin C. And every time, I leave it for later. Some day ...

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En un dia de luz azul, por la nieve, hay unas gotas de color cálido. Escaramujos, el fruto de la rosa silvestre.

Fotos:

Escaramujos en la isla Baikie, un arbusto pequeño bajo 30 cm. de nieve, y un escaramujo a solas. Se ve que el tallo sigue verde, y ya lleva los botones de donde brotarán las hojas cuando llega la primavera.

Año tras año, propongo cortar suficientes como para hacerme un buen té de escaramujo, que es una bebida muy buena en el invierno, ya que contiene gran cantidad de Vitamina C. Y año tras año lo dejo para otro dia. Algún dia será ...

Better late ...

Shut up in my house, without all the busyness that took up my time before the virus struck, I've turned to catching up on all those "when I get a round tuit" tasks. One has been sorting and culling over a decade's worth of photos on my hard drive.

I found these photos, taken in the Campbell River aquarium three summers ago, and never converted from the RAW files.

Lion's mane jellyfish

All the species in this aquarium are found locally and captured in the spring of the year. The lion's mane is commonly seen washed up on our beaches. Those long tentacles carry a sting; never pick up a lion's mane with bare hands!

Coonstripe shrimp, commonly found beneath the docks next to the aquarium.

Orange sea pen. This is a sub-tidal species.

This is not a single animal, but rather a colony of polyps arranged along a common stalk, the first polyp. (See Biodiversity of the Central Coast.)

Red sea urchin, on kelp.

At the end of the summer, all these critters were taken back to their respective homes and released.

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Ahora que estoy encerrada en casa, sin todos los compromisos que me mantenían ocupada en los dias "antes del virus", he vuelto a todos esos quehaceres que había dejado para mas tarde. Uno de estos es revisar y seleccionar las fotos guardadas desde hace hasta diez años en la computadora.

Encontré estas, tomadas en el acuario local hace tres años, y abandonadas desde ese dia.

La primera es una medusa melena de león, muy común en nuestras aguas. Esos tentáculos llevan nematocistos venenosos. Nunca hay que tocar una des estas animales con las manos sin protección.

La segunda es un camarón rayado; estos viven debajo del muelle al lado del acuario.

La tercera foto es una pluma marítima; se encuentran debajo del nivel de la marea. No es un solo animal, sino una colonia de pólipos.

Y la cuarta es un erizo de mar rojo.

Todos estos animales fueron capturados en los alrededores de esta ciudad en la primavera. Cuando se cierra el acuario para el invierno, se les regresa a su lugar de orígen.

Ahead of its time

There was frost on my driveway yesterday morning. Ice on a few cars, snow on one, probably from out of town. My summer tires spun on the hillside. I went to get the winter tires put on; late, but I'm a procrastinator; it's what I do.

Tonight it's 5 below zero, Celsius. A normal temperature for this time of year, but it won't hold. They're promising us warmer temperatures for the rest of the week. And rain, of course.

BC fall/winter weather. Can't make up its mind.

A hawthorn tree at Oyster Bay, out on the headland, exposed to the worst of our weather, is confused. Is it winter, or spring? Hard to tell, so the tree is putting out its spring flower buds.

"Yay, spring!"

"Or is it winter?"

Green and yellow spider

Another tiny spider. This one was on the wall over my kitchen sink. I saw him this afternoon as I was dropping off my coffee cup on the way out the door, and stopped to take a few fast photos. Good thing; when I came home, he was gone.

He's somewhere around 1/4 cm long. I postponed taking a measurement until I came home. Too late!.

#Arachtober

Green tree jackets

In the lower stretches of Woodhus Slough, where the trees spend the winter with their feet in icy water, they wear thick, shaggy jackets.

Good insulation!

Dressed for the winter.

Our weather is changeable, even in mid-winter. At times, after a week or so of warm, sunny days, the temperature will drop suddenly, overnight, and howling winds will drive the chill even lower. At these times, sap that has been rising in the warmed trees suddenly freezes, splitting the bark, killing saplings.

In our gardens and yards, we rush out (if we have been procrastinating, as usual) and wrap our young trees in burlap or plastic or whatever we have on hand to cut the wind. One year, I used leftover carpet cuttings. Whatever works.

In the wild, the trees are on their own. A thick lichen outfit is a lifesaver.

Worth waiting for

Sometimes procrastination pays off. I had been intending to follow the trail that goes upstream along the Campbell River to a suspension bridge, but the summer went by too quickly, and here we are at the end of September already, with uncertain weather and busy schedules. This Tuesday, I found myself at the north end of town with my errands done, the sun shining, and several free hours before the evening activities, so I went looking for the trail head.

And it was the perfect day for it. Sunshine and shadow, deep browns and eye-watering yellows, the rumble of the highway above on one side, the river alternately murmuring or roaring on the other, as it ambled between islands or leapt over rocks in a deep channel. And an intriguing medley of scents; spicy evergreens, nutty mushrooms, dying skunk cabbages, crunchy, tangy maple leaves underfoot, and once, half a dead fish, left behind perhaps by a surprised bear. (I found several piles of bear scat, but it was dry and scentless.)

Near the starting point. A well-maintained trail. The river is on my right.

Here the river is shallow, but the current is strong in spots. I met several fishermen, none with fish so far. The river is home to several species of salmon and trout.

Further upstream, logs and rocks make a dam and a calm pool, glowing where the sun shines on it.

Looking straight up; green leaves, yellow leaves. And blue-green evergreens.

Another quiet pool, with a maple leaf floating slowly downstream.

In deeper shadow, sunlight picks out a few orange leaves.

Just trees, with their yellowing leaves.

Looking upstream. The trail goes up this shady side, then crosses and comes downstream in the sunshine.

The circuit, trailhead to trailhead, upstream and back down the far side, is about 4 km. long. A couple of women I met on the trail said it would take about an hour and a half to walk. (Plus another 1/2 km hike to get back to the car.) But I was poking along, looking at mushrooms and spider webs; it would take me much longer. Too long for that day. I turned back after the first kilometre; I'll be back soon, at least to reach the bridge.

Canyonview trail. I walked the south side from the parking lot to the next marker. There is another bridge further upstream, unmarked.

Some of the mushrooms, tomorrow.

Colour sampler

I am so organized! (And a serious procrastinator.) I have an entire folder of photos, each small group in their own folders, labelled, resized, and sharpened, ready to post, but "later". Photos that someday I'll have a use for. The folder is named "Hold for blog," and it moves forward from year to year.

I went to add another few photos a couple of days ago, and realized that now the folders filled the whole screen, and I had to scroll down to find the end. Time to use them, and/or downsize.

A bit of both. I deleted half, and here's the first instalment of the ones I decided to use.

Colours:

Blue and cerise: back door of Sybil Andrews' Cottage on a rainy afternoon.

Green and white: tiny flowers in a ditch.

Green, pink and yellow: garden, Strathcona Park Lodge.

Red and green: unidentified tree, down the street from home.

Orange: rotting stump.

Rainbow garden: marine worms, under the Campbell River docks.

More worms and sponges.

Red, grey, green: Val, my survivalist anemone, in the aquarium.

Green: Woodhus Creek, from the top of a cliff.

Mostly green: I call this "Dirty window bokeh." Blame it on Chia; I did wash that window, not so long ago!

More coming up, tomorrow. Water transport.

A Round Tuit

I've been holding onto this photo since last September, waiting till I got around to searching BugGuide for a match. It's a moth that I found on the wall by our door in late afternoon.

The wing pattern echoes the feathery antennae motif.

Enough procrastinating! I spent the evening on it tonight. And after scanning all the "white moths" (2933 moths) and all the moths with a mention of feathery antennae (only 52) on BugGuide, and umpteen more on Google, I gave up and submitted my photo.

Which I should have done to start with, long ago.

The feathery antennae mark this moth as a male. He uses them as a "nose"; they're loaded with olfactory receptors - up to 60,000 in some species. And what he's smelling is a female, emitting her alluring pheromones. Somewhere, maybe miles away.

So sensitive are these organs and so characteristic and powerful is the scent, that a female has been known to summon a male from eleven kilometres away. At such a distance there must be as little as one molecule of scent in a cubic yard of air, yet it is sufficient to cause the male to fly in pursuit of its source. (From AskNature)

UPDATE: The BugGuide people are so quick! The moth is a Phantom Hemlock Looper;  Nepytia phantasmaria. Here's a link to a female: note the straight antennae.

Productive procrastination

I've been procrastinating. I've got a video to do; I promised it sometime last week. Instead, I've been sorting old photos, rearranging my storage drive, looking for photos for #BirdPoker on Google+, and basically being very busy not doing the video.

And tonight, I discovered a whole folder of intertidal critters from July of 2010. I remember that I had intended to clean them up and discuss them here, and somehow they got forgotten. There are scale worms, polychaetes, flatworms, assorted snails, tiny hermits, baby shrimp, and some critter that I don't recognize at all. I'll post at least some of the worms tomorrow, the rest as soon as possible.

More great excuses to procrastinate! I'm good at this!

For now, here's a quick clean-up of one of the baby shrimp photos.

Two survived and grew up in my tank; they proved to be coonstripe shrimp.

It was cold and grey all day Sunday; maybe today, if it rains, I'll get the video finished, too.

Just my style! Structured Procrastination!

Since I have a couple of urgent files to tackle tonight, I have been reading the news. And sorting Laurie's poems, which I had been putting off.

And browsing through blogs. Where I found a brief essay that justifies it all. See "Structured Procrastination" by John Perry, a Stanford philosophy prof. A man after my own heart!

And more essays of a similar nature on a second page. I have bookmarked "A Plea for the Horizontally Organized" to read next time I get an urge to do my filing.

By the way, here's a photo I had been meaning to post back in October, but somehow put off until too late...

Back to those poems. I still have tomorrow night to get the files edited.