30 orange beaks on a rock

On a big rock near the shore today, a small flock of oystercatchers huddled together against the cold, keeping to the downwind side. It was a warmish afternoon, barely below freezing, and the sun sometimes peeped out briefly from behind the clouds, but not enough, never enough to warm that big rock. All the oystercatchers were standing on one foot (each), keeping the other one warm.

30 oystercatchers and one two-footed gull.

Zooming in. I think one of the birds, centre back, is changing feet.

After an hour on the beach, my fingers were aching, and I was holding a hand over my frozen nose. How do these birds handle bare feet and long noses, standing out in the cold all day and all night? 

Purple

Hellebore in the rain

Whatever the weather ...

Hellebores are like the postal workers:

Neither snow, nor rain, nor heat, nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
Inscription, New York City Post Office, adapted from Herodotus
Greek historian & traveler (484 BC - 430 BC)

It's rained steadily all day and night. My poor primulas are all tattered and moldy. Not the hellebores, though! Tough as nails, and not as prone to rust.

Brown squirrel

... with stone angel feet.

I love those pink ears!

And it just stopped raining. For now.

Virtual heat

A pipe burst in our building last night. Water soaked the ceiling until great gobs of wet drywall splattered the carpet. The plumber came and went, but our heat went off and refused to come back on. All day, with front and back doors open to the cold wind outside, a big rental fan roared, drying the carpet and the insulation in the ceiling, and chilling the whole place. I have a little 6-inch cube heater; I've been staying close to it.

On a day like this, it's been good to look at the flowers now warming my garden:

The native bleeding heart.

Deeper pinks on another plant.

My neighbour put in this fruit tree two years ago. I think it's a pear, but so far, we've just had flowers.

Deep pink stamens, white petals.

Pink heather. This is the plant I moved recently because it wasn't doing too well where it was.  Now it's growing.

And right on schedule, the first of our rhododendrons burst into bloom. The pink ones come a week or so later; some of them are showing bits of colour now.

Not exactly a flower, but still warmly welcomed:

Fat robin, resplendent in his best duds.

I feel warmer already.

And the heat has come on! Hooray!

Warm colours on a grey day

As I usually do when I go up the Fraser valley alone, I took the freeway. There's always a deadline to meet. But coming home, my time is my own, so I cut across farm country, following empty roads alternately south and west, never the same route twice, arriving finally at home sleepy but refreshed.

This afternoon, coming back from Chilliwack, I meandered down to the skirts of Vedder Mountain, then across Sumas Prairie. The sun was hidden behind thick clouds and there was an occasional spatter of rain; colours were muted and the hills hidden in the mists.

Last year's corn stubble and a hay field to the east. Taken through the car window, since it was raining at the moment.

Red paint peeling off an old barn, exposing older yellow underneath.

In Sumas Prairie, I found a field of tulips; a spot of colour in a grey and brown landscape.

Long rows and a full ditch.

The rain more or less held off until I got home. Now, in the middle of the night, it's pouring cats and dogs. And slugs. I just found one getting a drink in the bird bath.

The growing of the green*

My garden lies in deep, deep shade; at the height of summer the outer edges get sunshine for a couple of hours a day. In the winter, nothing. What sunlight does appear is reflected dimly off the tops of the tall cedars on the far side of the lawn. So as spring approaches, I watch as the sunlit area moves down and down, a few inches of cedar branches per day. When it reaches the lawn, I celebrate; suddenly the days seem brighter, the yard seems wider.

Friday, around 6:30 in the afternoon, a stray ray of sunlight fell along a strip of grass at the base of the evergreens. It stayed only a few minutes, but it's a start. So yesterday, we were out arranging hoses, checking on garden tools, cleaning up fallen leaves, checking the compost, making shopping lists: manure - chicken, mushroom and steer , slug bait, a few more plants for Laurie's newly-cleared (and mostly sunny!) patch, maybe some more hostas for my shady corner.) Gardening fever is upon us again.

In spite of the weather and the lack of sunlight, I have flowers; hellebore in full bloom, pachysandra, heather. And the new stalks of Dutchman's breeches are six inches tall, bright yellow-green and strong.

Western Bleeding Heart, leafing out. Near the roots, there's a mass of flower buds.

Hellebore in a bare garden.

This one lives in a pot in an even darker corner, so the sepals are green-tipped. Those tiny green things around the center are the petals.

Around the corner, in Laurie's new garden, the sun has been shining (when it isn't raining) for well over a week. There, he has well-established Oregon grape, rescued from under a tangled mass of long-abandoned cotoneaster last summer; it's loaded with buds already. The perennials we planted last year are looking good; pachysandra, various small evergreens, camellias, ferns, mint, a rosebush, and more. Everything is budding and stretching.

Last fall we bought these winter pansies. Half went in my shady spot, half in Laurie's semi-shaded area. Mine died under the onslaught of snow and rain; his are thriving.

Some animal broke a stalk off the white hellebore, months ago. Laurie stuck it in water at the base of an empty pot for protection. And now, it's blooming!

And wonder of wonders; the Swiss chard in the 6 by 8 foot vegetable garden, cut down in December, is sprouting new leaves!

Ah, the season of dirt and rakes, slug wars and vanquished roots, seedlings and fish fertilizer! Aching back and all, I love it!

*Title: the Irish in me coming out.

Hopeful beginnings

The sun came out! And out shopping, we saw a flower bed covered with new shoots. We went to Home Depot and looked at mini-greenhouses, and bought more paving stones for the garden walk. It felt so good!

And then I came home and glued myself to the computer, trying out all the buttons and boxes in Element. I worked on 3 photos, one with a hard colour adjustment, one noisy squirrel, and one easy crop-and-sharpen job. The squirrel photo proved hopeless, but here are the other two.

Miniature harvestman. This had a distinct orange cast; Element took it out nicely. The background colour now matches the original piece of wood.

An older photo; the sky reflected in a corner beside the Ladner docks.

I used auto-adjust on the reflections photo. This almost never works in Picasa or Picnik, but with Element it did, at least on this photo. I don't like their sharpening tool, though; it's too small to control properly.

A Skywatch post.

A rainy season grumble

Weather! A BC winter, at it's nastiest. Rain on Friday washed away most of our snow, left the lawn full of slush. Saturday was windy and far too cold for poking around the beach. Sunday, it poured rain. They're promising us more rain for the next week, and there's a wind warning for the Vancouver area for today.

We're getting cabin fever already.

And to think; just a week ago, these were our skies:

An eagle basking in the sunshine. White Rock beach.

Crows, rocks, paddleboarders under fluffy clouds. White Rock.

There's ice on the water, but the sun warms us. Cougar Creek.

Reflections of bare alders, blue and white sky. Cougar Creek.

I'm hoping the weather people got it wrong again. Another week of rain, and I'll start to mildew.

A Skywatch post.

Wakey-wakey, little ones!

While I was looking for springtails, I rousted a bunch of other animals out of their cold-weather naps. There were slugs, of course; dozens of them. Sleepy sowbugs by the handful. And a few unexpected critters:

On the dry back of an old, crumbling planter box, this small spider was out hunting, still awake in spite of the below-zero weather.

She's another to identify. Ozyptila, a crab spider. Notice the interesting dotted lines on the sides of her thorax.

It was hard to imagine this delicate creature wandering around in the cold.

A lizard bark louse nymph, about 2mm. long, with undeveloped wings. The adult's will be longer than the body. I love the glassy legs.

Here's one on the rotten wood of the bottom of the box.

Blaniulus millipedes. Update: I forgot to add this: look for the tiny white critter at center left. I didn't see that until I was cropping the photo.

These were sound asleep, but as soon as they warmed up a bit, they uncoiled themselves and started to explore.

Every deep crack sheltered a few of these beetle mites.

I have to add at least one sowbug. Check out the antennae; they look as if they're made of metal pipes!

The cold snap has ended. It is now raining hard on top of the snow. The slugs will be waking up, hungry enough to eat the remains of my garden, in the morning.

Snow!

It's about time.

Just getting started.

My long-suffering wood heron getting a beak full.

A grey day on Reifel Island

We had a young relative from Guadalajara, Mexico, with us for the day. "If it doesn't rain, we'll take you to Reifel Island," I promised. And though the clouds hung low overhead, the rain hadn't returned by noon; we made sure she had a thick, warm, wool sweater and a tuque, and went to Reifel.

The lagoons were quiet, even empty in some places. In the absence of sunshine, all the colours were muted. .

First lagoon, around 2 PM.

The highlight of the afternoon was finding a barred owl sleeping in a tree not far from the trail.

Eagle watching the horizon.

Bufflehead, the brightest sight of the day.

Mallards sleeping on a background of swirly shadows.

Ah! Stained-glass colours. All they need is a ray of sunlight.

The male wood duck was happy to pose. His mate, not so much.

A timid towhee dashes out for a seed, then hides in the underbrush again.

A bit of warm colour, mini suns on a mossy log.

In the parking lot, I made our visitor wear that warm sweater. "I'm fine," she said, but I insisted. We compromised on the tuque: it could stay in the car. An hour later, walking in a stiff breeze on the outer trail, she admitted, reluctantly, that she was beginning to feel the cold. We headed back, and I walked her into the warm sanctuary store to recover.

Much later, after I'd posted her photos on Facebook, she commented. "Ohhhh my God, it was freezing!!!"

It's all in what you're used to. I have been complaining that it's too warm. Maybe I need to adjust my expectations.

A Pollyanna-ish* post.

One week into January, and it's still warm and raining, all up and down the coast. If the snow doesn't start building up on the mountains soon, we will have a dry, dry summer. And more forest fires.

One good thing about the weather, though. (Always look on the bright side, they say.) I bought this plant in April, last spring:

Bacopa sutera

It's still flowering.

*Pollyanna

The game consists of finding something to be glad about in every situation.

Yes, I read this when I was a kid.

2012: so far, so good.

We stood at the window, around noon, pondering: "Will the sun come out? Does it look more like rain? Will it, won't it ...?"

We decided to risk it, and drove down to Crescent Beach. And the sun came out!

Facing into the sun, the camera rebels. But this silvery sea is the result.

The rest of the photos will wait for tomorrow.

(If I believed in omens, I would say this presages a good year in 2012. But maybe it at least hints at the possibility of sun tomorrow, too. One can hope.)

Back-door diner

It's been raining steadily since Sunday, and it will keep it up all week, according to the weather people. It was too wet to feed my birds on their usual tray. They don't appear to mind, but to me, it doesn't seem right to pile seed in a puddle, so I put a couple of handfuls of sunflower seed on a broken chair by the door and the small stuff around it on the dry ground.

Then I stood a couple of feet away, at the door, with a camera.

The juncos, assorted sparrows, and towhees didn't appreciate this; they stayed out on the lawn until I'd given up. But chickadees are supremely self-confident; they sized up the situation, decided I was inoffensive enough (anyhow, they were quicker than any lumbering old human) and then went to work hauling the goodies out to the cedars to be shelled and eaten.

Dropping in

"Hello up there!"

"What's for dinner?"

"This one's a good size."

"Thanks! Bye, now!"

You're welcome, little one.