With our backs to the sea

Friday was a sunny day, for a change. We went to our usual spot on Crescent Beach, but in the spirit of change, we turned our back on the water, and explored the weather-beaten logs and weedy banks at the top of the beach. So many colours and textures! So many hidden corners! Here's a sampler:

Dying blackberry leaf

Graffiti on a silvery stump

Old, rotting root wood. Looks like some tortured painting by Van Gogh.

Crane fly. I had never seen one like this, and it wouldn't stand still for even a second. I chased it all over an upturned root of a tree, and then lost it. I think it's a Tiger Crane Fly.

Wild apple or crabapple blossoms

An unidentified plant growing out of dried eelgrass on sand

Lichens

I went around poking the camera into holes in stumps to see what the flash turned up. This was a spider's lair; the entrance was almost two inches across. I couldn't see a spider.

Laurie says this is a red-spined long-tailed salamander. I have my doubts. In a puddle caught by two adjacent logs.

Maple flowers. So tiny, so red!

Just a split stone, on a rotting log. The outside of the stone was nondescript; just a smooth greyish stone.

This was another hole in a stump. We could see the white slime mold, but only discovered the large cup mushroom when we looked at the photo at home.

Split stump. I like the texture, and the caterpillar-y incurled edges of green bark. The black circles are some kind of mold or lichen.

Spirea.

A tiny plant, blowing in the wind. I haven't identified it yet.

Another heart for Clytie.

And we were so engrossed in our pokings into cracks that we ignored the cries of a pair of eagles circling overhead. A man in the lane later told us that there's a web-cam over their nest. I looked for it on the web, and may have found it, at Hancock Wildlife. I think it's Delta #2. We'll look for it in the trees next time we visit.

Green-eyed seahorse

Seen a few metres from the shore at Crescent Beach:

That's above the shoreline, not below. Rusty iron and green glass on a garden gate.

On a rainy morning ...

In my garden :

Bleeding hearts. I love the little frills around the lips.

Dripping begonia

Volunteer ferns.

Something a bit different ...

I promised you recipes, didn't I? This is what I gave the work crew for lunch last weekend: albóndigas en chile verde (that's meatballs in green sauce), white Mexican rice, and frijoles de olla (beans in a pot, literally). Salad, veggies, cheeses and cold meats, blue corn tortilla chips and chipotle/raspberry dip (Mrs. Renfro's) on the side.

Albóndigas en chile verde

This is an old family favourite, simple to make, good cooked ahead, and an easy dish to modify according to the spiciness tolerance of the guest list.

You will need tomatillos, serrano peppers, fresh garlic, and onion for the sauce, lean ground beef and ground pork, an egg, and "filler" (I like to use raw rice, but oatmeal will do) for the meatballs. Fresh cilantro is nice with this, if you can get it.

Sauce:

You need about a double handful of tomatillos for 4 people. Check under the husk, and pick ones with firm, smooth skin, preferably of the paler, yellow-green shades. Darker green ones work, but will not be as sweet.

Tomatillos, or tomate verde, as they called in central Mexico.
Image from Wikipedia

Green serrano peppers. Must be fresh, not pickled. You can substitute with fresh jalapeños, but the flavour will be different, and they will not be as spicy. Three large serranos usually are enough for that double handful of tomatillos.

• Remove husks of tomatillo. Wash. Put in roomy pot with water to cover.
• Wash serranos and remove stem. Add to tomatillos.
• Peel several cloves of garlic, to taste, and add to the pot.
• Bring to a boil and simmer until the tomatillos are soft. Cool.
• Put tomatillos, garlic, and one* of the peppers in a blender, blend until only the seeds are visible.
• *If you're not worried about spiciness, add the lot. Otherwise, taste the blended sauce, and add the other chiles one by one, blending and tasting after each addition. You can go a bit spicier than you want the finished product.
• In  a dry pot, heat a tablespoonful of oil. (Mexican cooks may use pork lard instead.) Do NOT use olive oil; it kills the flavour of the tomatillos.
• Add a few tablespoons of finely chopped onion to the oil; stir until it starts to brown on the edges, then add the tomatillos, all at once.
• When this comes to a boil, simmer for a few minutes, then add salt to taste.

(This basic sauce can be used with many dishes. Try it drizzled over tortilla chips, topped with a bit of grated cheese, and zapped in the microwave for a quick appetizer. Or pour it generously, boiling hot, over fried eggs. Yum!)

Now for the meatballs:

• Combine more or less equal amounts of ground beef and ground pork. Exact proportions are not necessary. Quantities vary; about a quarter pound per person serves my family. Heavy meat eaters, add another 50%.
• Add one raw egg, and a good handful of raw rice. Mix well by hand. (Wash your hands first, of course.)
• Form into smallish balls and drop gently, one by one, into the simmering sauce, making sure the sauce keeps just on the boil. Stir occasionally, very gently, so as not to break up the meatballs, just enough to let them all settle into the liquid. Add a bit of boiling water if the sauce becomes too thick.
• Simmer until the rice is done, or about 15 to 20 minutes. Add salt to taste.
• Done! Either serve immediately, or cool and refrigerate up to 48 hours.

This goes nicely with white rice. A dollop of sour cream and a teaspoon of chopped cilantro on top makes a good garnish.

I cut a few corners this Saturday because we were so busy, and used IKEA meatballs, which are already cooked. They're half pork, half beef, but the filler is too pasty. I had to simmer them for a while to let the flavour penetrate. They worked, but they weren't as good; they added a bit of greasiness and brown colour to the sauce. The crew liked them; 10 people ate most of what I had calculated for 16; but I won't do that again. It's worth it to take the extra time and make the meatballs from scratch, as I usually do.

Now, back to my critters and my garden ...

What's this?

I discovered this beastie in a worm tunnel in my aquarium a week ago. It sort of looks like an amphipod with eggs, but stays in the tunnel like a worm, only sliding up to the surface of the sand, then down again every so often.The legs at the top look like they belong to a spider. At the bottom end, almost transparent appendages flutter constantly, again like an amphipod or the shrimps. I think there may be more than one in the tunnel. They, or it, don't match any of the green amphipods in the tank; it's longer and thinner, and leggier.

I've been spending a few minutes every day since, trying to get a better photo, with no luck. I'll keep trying.

What do you think?

Help!

Abstracts in blue

Wind, sand, water and sunlight make patterns new and old along the dunes at the edge of Beach Grove:

Paint remains on the side of a skiff that's spent the winter on the sand.

The far side of the same skiff.

A glass wall hides a house and garden behind repeating reflections.

A working Mother's Day

We have spent the weekend carrying Laurie's books, bookcases and display cabinets (for antiques and Laurie's carvings) downstairs and setting them up again. The antiques were already down here, packed in boxes that take up a third of my bedroom. They'll get unpacked gradually, over the next few weeks.

The books: sci-fi, history, science, philosophy, art, classics, poetry ... All read, some re-read. Books come, books go, resold or lent or passed on, but the total stays more or less the same; somewhere around 4000. That's a lot of books! It will take us weeks to get them all unpacked and on their proper shelves.

(Here's a (copyrighted) photo of an art installation using 4000 books. 13 feet by 7 1/2 feet by the height of a book. Some of Laurie's art books and dictionaries were quite a bit bigger.)

We had help; willing kids and grandkids, plus two great grandkids to provide entertainment throughout. I couldn't ask for a better Mother's Day gift!

I'll be back to regular blogging tomorrow.

A quick look at the sky

We're very busy today. All we'll have time for is a quick look out the window:

Sky and new leaves.

Three of my favourite carnivals have been posted this week:

• Carnival of the Blue - All things wet and wonderful
• Circus of the Spineless - Wild and wriggly
• And the last, the final, the swan song of I and the Bird, the granddaddy of Nature Carnivals. I'm sad to see it go, but look forward to what the creators come up with next.  Here's #149. And #1, for the record. And, while I'm at it, #76, the first one I hosted. And Clare's Panegyric. Thanks, Mike for all you've done for the birds and the bird bloggers!

A Skywatch post.

Promises!

I've got an extremely busy weekend coming up; my family is having a work party here all day tomorrow, and I promised them authentic Mexican food for supper. There won't be much time for blogging until Monday. To make up for it, I'll post recipes. This time, they're easy ones.

Meanwhile, here are a few tiny flowers from the Oregon grape shrubs next door.

Oregon grape. Actual size, about 1/4 inch.

Back to the kitchen ...

Can Patience tell time?

I always feed my tank critters around the same time; midnight. We got in the habit long ago, when my big polychaete worms would not come out to feed in daylight. I liked to watch them, so the diurnal animals got used to it, too, and I haven't made any changes, even though the worms are gone.

Almost every night, now, starting a few minutes before midnight, I find my grainy-hand hermit, Patience, with her "nose" up to the glass in the front of the tank, waiting. At other times, she's roaming, but she knows supper time.

And, since I handled her so much when she was sick, she takes bits of food directly from my fingers. (All the other hermit crabs either hide or run if my hand gets too close.)

Patience, completely over her illness, eating a dried fish steak.

I find myself wondering, these days, about animal intelligence, about memory. How much of the behaviour of a crab or a shrimp, or of Patience, the hermit, is instinctual, and how much is based on what they have learned about the world? It seems that every few days I find some article about the intelligence of apes, dogs, horses, crows, whales, dolphins, and even little fish. How far down does the chain go?

Did my polychaete worms adjust to me as much as I adjusted to them? Were they waiting for the daily handout, down in their burrows?

Questions, questions.

Red, white and blue accents for the garden

I picked up a few new additions to my shade garden; first, a flat of annual begonias, which always do well here, blooming until the first hard frost as long as they get a touch of sunlight every now and then. Then there are three petunias, red, yellow and strawberry; I've never grown them here, so this is an experiment. And Bacopa, which I'd never heard of, but are supposed to like moderate shade. We'll see.

Strawberry petunia.

Bacopa sutera, "Snowstorm". Likes moist soil, drapes prettily over the edges of pots.

Not a flower. These flies buzzed all over the rhododendrons. Where the sun shone on them, their backs were a brilliant blue.

Heron body language

Have you ever noticed how a blue heron walks? No wonder they're skinny!

Compare these photos, taken about 3 seconds apart; everything is moving. He stands tall, drops to a horizontal stalking position, stretches forward. His neck twists, straightens, bends in a tight backwards S. Even the feather decorations (back of the head,  breast) bounce around from one photo to the next.

Stepping out smartly, self-confident and cheerful, enjoying the sunshine.

Sudden interest, concentration.

In a hurry.

Purposeful. Not wasting any time.

He can stand still for long periods, without moving a feather, when he's watching for a fish, but he makes up for it in transit.

Delicious invader

Yesterday I checked our patch of invasive Japanese knotweed. The new sprouts were a couple of feet high; I cut the lot and brought them home for dessert.

Japanese knotweed, 2010. Edible up to this stage.

The plant is extremely invasive; it will overrun any of our native plants; cutting it doesn't kill it, nor does digging it out. An inch of root or stem left behind will sprout again. The roots spread up to 20 metres, and can break through pavement. The only thing that halfway seems to work is cutting it over and over and over ... It still comes back; I've been cutting ours for 3 years now, but at least it's not quite so enthusiastic, and it hasn't spread.

I think that if more people knew how good it is to eat and how much of a healthfood it seems to be (see reservatrol), it might have a bit less chance of taking over. So here's my recipe:

Cut knotweed sprouts before the leaves have opened completely. A knife helps, but I've been able to snap them off or even pull them up with a bit of root with my hands. Bring in all the cut pieces; do not leave any lying on the ground to root again.

Stems may be from pencil-thin to about 1/2 inch across. After this, they are tough and fibrous. Wash them, then cut them in 1-inch pieces. I usually cut out the "knots", but if the stalk is tender, this is not necessary. If the stem resists your knife, discard it; it will be mainly fiber. Most of it will be crisp and juicy.

Boil the batch or microwave it for a few minutes, just until it turns to mush. It will look and taste like pale cooked rhubarb.

Add sugar or sugar substitute to taste. (Low carbers, use stevia or something similar. This makes an excellent low-carb "fruit".)

Use in any rhubarb recipe. I like to mix it, chilled, into strawberry jelly, or cook it half and half with rhubarb, for added colour. Without the sugar, it makes a good sauce for pork.

Throw any discarded pieces in the trash, or dry and incinerate. DO NOT COMPOST; THEY WILL SPROUT!

Slowpoke garden

I noticed yesterday that our neigbourhood is finally splashed with the bright reds and yellows of tulips, almost, but not quite, out-numbering the dandelions. Up here, on the higher reaches of North Delta, we run a bit late. Beach Grove, on Boundary Bay, is at least two weeks ahead of us. These three are from the 18th of April.

My shade garden, of course, is a couple of weeks behind everyone else, even here. We were out this evening looking for flowers: the London Pride is barely budding, so are the perennial violets, the lily-of-the-valley, the Dutchman's breeches and the pachysandra. The hostas and the astilbe are just leaves, so far. The ground covers, periwinkle flowers and dead nettle have a few blue and yellow blooms. And the native bleeding hearts are opening. There's no sign of the columbines at all.

The rhododendron has buds. That's all, so far.

Even the weeds are slow. I pulled a couple of baby buttercup plants out of the lawn. And a dandelion bud showed up. Just the one.

I compared with last year's schedule; the bleeding heart and the Dutchman's breeches were blooming nicely in March. So we're a good six weeks late this year. I wonder why. The wet spring, the too-long, too-mild winter? Something else?

But the hellebore is still holding its own; that's almost two months of blooms, now. I think I'll plant more.

Way to go, hellebore!

Colt at sunset

I took this photo without flash, hand-held, in the semi-dark as the crowd filed out of Cavalia. Two colts had been left to roam alone freely on the stage after the show ended.

Except for resizing, the photo has been left as it came out of the camera.

Hidden harems

Each visit to the beach turns up a new mix of critters and plants to investigate. This Wednesday, we arrived at the White Rock beach just after high tide, a low high; there was plenty of barnacle-covered stony beach to keep us busy.

Stubby isopods like to hang out where the salinity is low. On this beach, that means around the openings of the culverts bringing runoff from the steep south slope of the town. Usually there are a few there, crawling around the tiny barnacles and mussels on the bottom side of the rocks.

This time, they were everywhere, in great numbers. Every stone I turned over had a busy colony.

Stubby isopods, aka Oregon pillbug, Gnorimosphaeroma oregonense. Look closely; the eyes are visible, mostly on the pale brown ones.

These isopods are very similar to the woodbugs (aka pillbugs, woodlice, roly-polies, etc.) that feed in our gardens. They grow to about 1/2 inch long at maturity, although most of the ones we saw were the smaller harem females. Like the land-based pillbugs, they roll up in a tight little ball if they are disturbed. Just brushing them off a stone will do it; they land rolling.

Pillbug "pill" on the barnacles, lower right.

It's spring; party time, time to find mates and start the next generation. For the stubby isopods, that means sex changes and harems. The baby isopod hatches as a female. She becomes a member of a harem "owned" by one male, produces one brood, then begins a series of molts which transforms her into a male, ready to find his own harem of immature, smaller females. If the harem's male is removed, or dies, the dominant female in the group becomes a male to take his place.

(Most other crustaceans that switch sexes have a reverse pattern; the immatures are male, and they become female at maturity.)

The spring population explosion will not last; crabs and hermit crabs love a snack of unrolled isopod. Like the tides, life on the beach ebbs and flows.

More info: UAS.Alaska, Protogynous Sex Change in the Intertidal Isopod Gnorimosphaeroma oregonense, WSU Beach Watchers.

Blue water, blue birds

I've got the blues ...

Taking photos at a birthday party in a living room with deep red walls and not enough light, I played around with my camera settings and white balance. The photos turned out ok, but I forgot to switch everything back. Oops!

On White Rock beach, the next day, all my photos came out blue, blue, very blue. And all my efforts to fix them only made them harsh and artificial.

Here are a couple of blue gulls, with as much colour correction as I could manage:

I loved the pale browns of the wing pattern. Oh, well.

Blue or not, this guy's happy! A whole big sole to himself!

New addition to check list for each day's prep:

1. Empty memory
2. Recharge battery
3. Replace clean lens cloth
4. Check settings!

Blue bird

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I promised you a "full story" on a walk down False Creek for yesterday morning, and then I got caught up reading the history of the area, and the time just slipped away. I'm sorry: the report will have to wait until tomorrow.

For now, here are a couple of kayakers under the Cambie Bridge in the early evening.

After that lead-in, I'll have to write about the history, too, won't I?

Frogs and tadpoles

... on a manhole cover.

Plaza paving, False Creek, Vancouver

It works as an optical illusion, too. Are all four corners of the photo 90 degrees, or not? Or is it the blog design that's gone crooked?

Full story on a walk down False Creek tomorrow.

Canada geese at sundown

In an artificial "creek" at False Creek, Vancouver