If the light is just right ...

Reflections are strange beasts. These are from the slough at Terra Nova.

Squiggles and loops:


The wall that made the squiggles:


We couldn't find the source of the loops.

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Lazy afternoon

We weren't feeling ambitious; it was a day for dawdling along on flat land, on easy trails. So we went to Richmond again, and ambled around the tip of Terra Nova Natural Area. We parked at the dead end of Westminster Highway, and followed the dike to the end of River Road, then back across the fields just inside the dike; a short walk, but full of discoveries.

From the dike, we look west across Sturgeon Banks; marsh, mudflats, and shallow waters of the Fraser River estuary. The cattails here were hopping with male redwings, each proclaiming his territorial rights. We took oodles of photos, all alike, of pale brown cattails with black silhouettes enlivened with one or two sparks of brilliant red.

On the landward side, three headless mallards floated in the ditch:

Maybe a mallard/ostrich cross.


New fertile heads of giant horsetail, on the banks of the ditch.

There used to be farms just inside this dike, and here and there the plantings of old homesteads mark the boundaries. Just beyond this tree, a bit of yellow in the shrubbery is an old forsythia.

Yellow tree.

Atop a hill of dirt and gravel dredged from the newly-cleared slough, a stream-side flower blooms:

American brooklime. Usually found on the edges of slow creeks.


Twinberry leaves and flower buds.

The twinberry, Lonicera involucrata, is a native plant, usually seen in sunny areas near water. We found them thriving on Finn Slough, and I was familiar with them on Vancouver Island years ago. I always thought the shiny blue-black berries were poisonous; somebody must have told me this early on. I did try one, when I was a kid. It was very bitter, and I spit it out. Now I read that they are edible, and sometimes palatable.

"Fruit - raw or dried. A pleasant taste. Not tasty enough to be widely sought. The only form we have tried has an incredibly bitter taste."

I'll have to repeat the taste test this summer.

Unidentified weed, going to seed.


Rich brown trunks and branches. Beauty that will soon be hidden under a green blanket, also beautiful.

At the tip of River Road, a slough divides presently occupied land from heritage sites. We turned here and followed the slough back to the new pond.

Terra Nova Slough.


New buds.


Apple blossoms in an abandoned garden.

In a grove of trees beside the mound of dirt, several Yellow-Rumped Warblers teased us, always being just behind a branch, directly between us and the sun, or not where they were when we pressed the shutter. Not even in the same tree! I got this male from the top of the hill, getting up at eye-level to the trees. He didn't give me a second chance.


Back along the trail on the landward side of the ditch, clumps of garden plants, daffodils and tulips, more forsythia, Pieris, marked the location of long-forgotten front stoops . Under the protection of nettles and blackberry canes (Vicious! One jabbed a thorn deep into the top of my scalp.), we found these Spring Snowflakes, Leucojum vernum:

About a foot tall, slightly fragrant, glowing white bells with green pinched petal tips.


One was handily turned face up.

I had never seen these before, and was awestruck. So elegant, so graceful, so modest withal! I am going to be looking for some for my shade garden.

And to top the afternoon off, a flock of geese flew south overhead, honking and chattering among themselves as they travelled.


Time for tea in Steveston! Well, tea and a muffin for Laurie, coffee for me. And then home, well content.

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Captain's Cove, Ladner

A quiet, sunny afternoon:

Captain's Cove Marina

Weeds along the breakwater


And grasses below the high water line


Wildlife habitat in the estuary


Reflections; greens, blues and browns


Skiff 17


Sleepy duck.

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Green and yellow

Beside the slough in Elgin Heritage Park, at the end of the Nicomekl river:


Shallow, muddy, slimy water, with the invasive but beautiful yellow iris.


Mama and her five little ones. And green reflections.


These flowers will continue to thrive, if I can judge by the pollinating activity around them. They were swarming with bees.

A bee enters the flower on the marked pathway, nosing under the upper petal, and scrambling down the tunnel into the centre. He stays there barely a second before he backs out again, to fly immediately to a different flower, on a separate stalk. I watched for a while, and never saw a bee go to the next open throat on the same stalk.
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Mobile homes, of a different sort

Living in a tidal community has unique challenges. Things don't stay put. Floors slant off in odd directions, according to the time of day and season of the year. Unanchored items, left on solid ground in the morning, may have just floated away by mid-afternoon. Even your house might up and leave in the spring, when tides run high: I have seen this happen.

In Finn Slough, the effect is multiplied by the narrowness of the waterway. Houses anchored side by side may tip in opposite directions. Walkways twist and gap. Steps down become steps up. Boats lie like logs on a beach, wherever the water left them.

Houses and sheds built on pilings stay at a permanent level, more or less horizontal. Only more or less, because over the years, currents have pulled and pushed at those pilings, yanked them out of plumb.

The blue shed is fairly recent and on pilings.

Detail of a shed up against the bank.Ancient pilings and sagging platforms.

One handy thing about living almost on the water; boats can be parked at your doorstep.

The little dock will float when the tide comes in. So will the boat.The Mermaid III. Unlikely to be putting to sea anytime soon, I think.

And one unhandy thing: you won't have a garden, unless you put it on a float. Or hang pots off your crowded deck.

Pansy, anchor, fishnets and raingear.

Finn Slough: First, the Flowers

... and I do love alliteration!

A fascinating find; a chocolate lily. We finally made it to Finn Slough yesterday, and it was all that I hoped, and more; no wonder they make it the topic of an annual photo and artists' competition!

Painting the slough, the first necessity would be to lay in a good store of green. Reeds and grasses cover every flat spot; along the slopes, shrubs tower overhead.

Here's Laurie, down one of the walkways. At the entrance to this walk, among the rampant grasses, salmonberry bushes and roses, I discovered these.Chocolate lilies! Fritillaria. I had never seen them before; that's a lifer, as birders say.
These used to be eaten by the BC natives, who dug up the bulbous roots and boiled or dried them. Now, of course, we wouldn't dare; they are "shy-flowering", meaning that they don't flower for the first 3 or 4 years, and the land available to them is always at risk of being paved over. This could happen in Finn Slough; the residents are fighting a desperate battle to keep the developers out. (More on this later.)

Black twinberry, Lonicera involucrata: the yellow flowers have gone and the berries haven't shown up yet, but the bracts look like flowers themselves.
And red osier dogwood, Cornus sericea. Not a dogwood, though. I read that the name comes from "dague" or "dagger", because the wood supposedly makes good skewers. I am not exactly convinced.
Comfrey. Probably a purposeful import. Often used as a home remedy for what-ails-you.
Skunk cabbage. No longer in flower, but I couldn't resist photographing it from the vantage point of an elevated walkway. It's not often I get anything but a side view.
The grey around the base shows the high-water level for the slough.

Next: history and old boats. And older buildings.

Great Blue Heron, Gunderson Slough

These are the last of Laurie's photos from Gunderson Slough:

I mentioned the heron, in my earlier post. We were walking down the trail behind the old float-houses when the heron flew past, over the water. He disappeared behind a mass of blackberries and nettles, out of sight, but just a few feet away. I held my breath while Laurie cat-footed along the trail, camera primed and ready. I heard the camera click, then a great flapping of wings as the heron took off. And this is what Laurie had captured:
Herons fly with the neck folded back on the shoulder, and the legs streaming straight back. This one had barely leapt from the water; he still hadn't gotten into proper flying position.

Full-size, you can see how slender, almost scrawny the bird is; the long, skinny body a mere connecting rod between muscular thighs and neck. And all dwarfed by those astonishing wings.

I think he's a juvenile, because of the brownish streaking on the breast, and the lack of the "bib", those straggly breast plumes worn by the breeding adult. Here's a closer view:
Another view, a bit farther away. Isn't he elegant?
And a couple of general shots of the slough.
This is the same scene that Laurie photographed last December. How different it is in the sunlight!
I love these rusty pilings, supports for something long disappeared. And some of those boats look like they're back in the bushes, on land. They aren't. The slough meanders along, narrow and ringed by rickety docks.

One more: rotting wood pilings. With the remains of the deck above. Parts of it still in use.

Diatoms and dandelions

At the edge of the Horseshoe Slough parking lot, a middle-aged man stood staring intently at a dandelion gone to seed. After a long while, he lowered his hand and blew away the fluff. We stopped to chat for a minute or two, standing looking down at the chocolate water of the slough. He asked if we knew what made it that colour. I had a vague idea that it was algae, but no more information. He mentioned several other sloughs he had seen with similar colouring.

He started me wondering. So I've been Googling.

Brown water can be a result of several things; golden-brown algae, a conifer-dominated watershed, peat run-off, oxygen depletion, acidity. (I think there is some cross-over in that list.)Brown water in a ditch near the slough.

I Googled golden-brown algae. They grow in fresh and salt water; Horseshoe Slough would be brackish -- freshwater with an occasional influx of salt at high tide. They include thousands of microscopic species, and are an important foundation of the food chain. They include beautiful diatoms, which are said to be responsible for a large proportion of global CO2 fixation.

So: good stuff, it seems.

What may make this slough so unusually chocolaty is that it is a part of the Richmond bog system, which covered at one time about half of Lulu Island. The creek that feeds the slough runs down from the ancient bog, now mostly cranberry and blueberry fields, but still based on red-brown peat.
Browns and greens.
A trail follows the creek back into farm lands. Those are stinging nettles at the left, burdock at the right. Left to themselves, they would close off that path in short order. Behind them is a wild cherry tree, loaded with still-green cherries. Bird heaven!
And smaller weeds. I don't know what these pink flowers are. Some of the leaves look like creeping buttercup. Next: tiny blue flowers, hiding in the grass.