Summer at Eve River

I knew I had it somewhere!

This is a photo of the Eve River bridge, taken from the same point as the rainy day photo I posted a couple of days ago. But this one was in mid-summer, two years ago.

Huckleberries, Eve River.

Grey, rainy, gloomy days have an end. Sunshine always comes back. Today's news is a reminder of that.

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Sabía que tenía esta foto en alguna parte, pero me tomó hasta esta tarde en encontrar donde la había puesto.

Es la puente sobre el rio Eve, tomada desde el mismo punto de la foto que subí el otro dia, del rio en un día de lluvia. La saqué a medio verano, hace dos años.

Los días grises, tristes, lluviosos tienen fin. Saldrá el sol otra vez, siempre. Las noticias de hoy son un recordatorio.

Stalks and leaves

Because I loved the colour:

Beet greens

In my landlady's garden.

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Betabeles (remolachas) en el jardín de mi casa. Porque me gusta el color.

Ripe berries!

It's huckleberry season!

I tried a few. They're sweet and juicy now.

Tiny red jewels in an emerald and lime-green forest.

And I saw my first Saskatoons of this year.

Serviceberry, aka Saskatoon, almost ripe.

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.

In a playful mood

Clouds over Boundary Bay, last week:

Sometimes we forget how tiny we are, how puny!

But we huddle together for protection, and smile when the clouds are playing.

A Skywatch post.

Laconic

Because I can't do wordless.

Deer Lake, Burnaby, on a sunny Sunday afternoon

And white water lilies.

Telegraphic post

Too hot. Too, too hot.

Colours to go with:

Hot.

Remembering a Chilcotin summer

I don't think I ever posted these photos of a lake by the side of the road to Bella Coola.

Unnamed lake, near Nimpo Lake, Bella Coola Highway

Yellow scum and brown ducks

The ducks and waterlily leaves

I can't identify the ducks; they're mostly brown, with darker brown heads, dark bills.

Moment under the sun

It's midsummer on Reifel Island, and in spite of the spotty, off-and-on, sort-of-summer weather we've been treated to this year, luxuriant vegetation lines the waterways. Head-high grasses, brilliant green leaves, juicy berries and little green apples, mounds and fields of flowers in glowing pink, yellow, white, and thistle-purple, drifting seed parachutes; a new glory appears at each turn of the pathway.

Along one of the inner trails, swarms of skinny bluets darted from thistle to grass to loosestrife, back to the grass to rest, briefly.

Bluets, about 1 1/2 inches long. Possibly Enallagma sp.

I couldn't get close enough to them to see clearly; in all the movement of grasses blowing in the wind, tree branches waving overhead, they somehow always noticed my cautious easing forward and darted away.

There were two colours. The males are patterned in crisp black and neon blue, females in neat brownish-black, glinting green when the light strikes them at just the right angle. I didn't see any mating couples; it's the season for love, but they would have been on the far side of the greenery, at the water's edge.

I had given up on seeing any bluets up close, and was turning to leave when I saw this:

A spider in the act of subduing a female bluet.

Zooming in. She is still moving, feebly, but her head is hanging down. I don't recognize the spider.

And in the grass behind them, the dance went on.

Update: Rebecca in the Woods has posted an amazing video of a spider wrapping up a big dragonfly. Go watch it!

Red Umbrella: Wordless

Life's a beach.

What do you do on a hot Sunday afternoon in July, when the sun blazes down from a cloudless sky? In the Lower Mainland, everybody (well, almost everybody) heads for the beach.

We're no different. We joined the mob on White Rock beach.

Crowd on the beach, the pier, the promenade. Can't see the mass of shoppers and snack-seekers across the street. And snowy Mount Baker to create an illusion of coolness.

There are tide pools to dance in,

Sand castles to make.

I stopped to watch the waves lick at the base of this kid's pile of sand and eelgrass. "The tide's going to wash it away," I said.

"I know," he answered, slapping on another handful of sand.

His brother came up with another load. "Can't give up now!" We all laughed, and the boys bent back to their task.

Later on, we passed them again, farther up the beach:

"This one is going to last!" big brother said. "And look! Our other pile is still there!"

Sure enough, it was. Deep in a tide pool, slimmed down to a hand's width, and a few inches above the water, true. But it was still standing.

Some people headed, for coolness maybe, or for solitude, out to the blue water.

Sparkles

Lift that sail!

This guy's set up his three-room homestead. With a drydock.

Sails on the horizon.

Two lone waders. And a long, slow slope.

Blowing up the furniture.

This couple had a pair of comfortable seats that joined together to make a short sofa. The white object is a floating cooler for drinks, with drink holders in the lid.

Moving in.*

Two's company.

For beachcombers like us, there is always something to find:

A green-eyed gull.

A clowning gull, dancing from foot to foot. (Really just scratching his neck. Both sides.)

This gull found his own treasure. Pudding in a plastic cup. I wanted to remove it; I hate to see plastic left on the beach, but the gull objected. I left him to it, eventually.

"Mmmm, vanilla!"

A little red crab moult.

Coconut. We must be in the tropics!

This is the third coconut I've found in piles of seaweed cast up by the tides. Where do they come from? They sure don't grow here.

I say Hawaii, Laurie says, "Impossible!" But where else?

The milk inside the coconut sloshes back and forth. I take it home and wash it. When it's completely dry, I'll open it up to see if it's still fresh.

Umbrella, chair, magazine. She needs a coconut with rum to make it perfect.

*Faces altered and blurred, in case of privacy issues.

All sewed up

Hay bales in their plastic wrappings, looking like oversized spools of thread:

Lower Delta, second haying.

Heat wave, remembered

Such a short time ago ... It's raining now, has been at it all day. I'm wearing a sweater and have the heater on. But in that last week of July, every day was hotter than the one before. In Powell River, waiting for the ferry, I was dizzy and headachy from the heat; we were drinking salt water and draping damp cloths over the car windows.

We had over an hour to wait, lined up alongside monstrous trucks with heat waves floating above their engines. Ahead, though, beside the loading dock, was a wharf with boats and blue water. It looked cool, so we abandoned our makeshift shade and walked down the pier.

Shimmering waves.

It was cooler down there. Marginally. But the sun was glaring off the white boats and bouncing off the water. Our eyes rejected the light; so did the cameras. At least, we could wear sunglasses. And squint.

White-out.

Tank on the shore. One of a pair.

Red and black boat, detail.

Red is not the most comforting colour on a hot day.

Reflections work better; the light dims.

Light patterns reflected from the water to the hull of a boat. With rope.

The gas station, detail. Too hot at the moment for music.

Laurie challenged me to read this sign, using only the reflections.

Can you?

(Hint: look at the previous photo. No, the original is not there. It's overhead.)

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Everything's Skookum

Just another perfect summer afternoon on Boundary Bay ...

Imagine

Honeysuckle

It's cool in the shade.

Lonely waterski

Lonely boat. Or at least, alone for the moment.

Hammerhead shark. Good with children.

Incoming tide.

King Canute.

Afloat

Skookum

Chase. The rubber dinghy's catching up.

Captain Intrepid in a kid's plastic kayak.

Back to shore: super-orange nasturtiums.

Lily says hello.

Glowing lily.

A Skywatch post

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