Herring snow

It has been snowing for the past two hours. Snowing I tell you. Why am I surprised?

Around here the joke is that Obama made quick worlk of global warming. Welcome to British Arctica!

Herring rain

The skies are lighter now with the sun rising higher towards the equinox. The rain at this time of year comes in showers or in light spatterings, the first kind of rain I ever experienced here on the coast when I visited Hesquiaht First Nation in 1989. At that time we did some herring fishing, so I have always called this sort of light rain beneath a light grey sky "herring rain."

The Cape at stake

George Zawadski has put together a film for the owners of Cape Roger Curtis that is interesting stuff. Part 1 is a video about what people think about the current development proposal for Cape Roger Curtis, and documents how the owners feel about the process and why they have chosen a deadline of June 1 to have their current plan approved or to develop the original 58 lot subdivision.

You can find out more at their website.

The promise of spring

It is a beautiful day here, by any standard. Sunny, warming, calm.

Was in the garden today puttering around, hoeing up last year's big veggie bed and fixing up the composter to keep the deer out of it. Garlic shoots are coming up and I want to get some spinach and radishes in the ground this weekend.

Still sleeoping on our sleeping porch. Finn and I have been out there most of the year, through the snow and the rain and everything else, and now we are falling in love with the dawn chorus as it swells to life in the morning and builds through the season, birdsong changing to loud brash territorial calls and new sounds joining the mix.

Three weeks until the equinox, and you can feel it in the air. There is very little snow left - just patches in the shade and roadsides, and the ground is warm.

A sign of dry things to come?

There is a high fog lying over the eastern edge of Howe Sound sitting a few hundred feet off the water, and nestled against the east wall of the fjord. It extends a little of the way across the Queen Charlote Channel and peters out in whisps and tendrils opening to a clear blue sky in the west. The wind is calm and frost lies in the Cove, where the fog visited the pool of cold air that accumulated there overnight.

The dawn chorus comes alive on mornings like this, in early March. All the birds are making new sounds, calling to one another, establishing territory, competeing for their futures.

And it's dry. Killarney Creek at Miller Road has pulled away from it's bansk exposing muddy stream edges that we don't normally see until the summer. If it doesn't rain a lot this spring, we are going to have a drought this year, and the cedars and salal will grow thirsty and brown like they did in 2003.

The intimacy of sharing beatuy

Caitlin and I were up at Artisan Square, at the newly opened Artisan Eats, a lovely deli with very good prices and the great view over the Sound. We were enjoying some soup and pasta and rooibos tea and loving looking at the snow covered mountains, still wearing their cloaks of white from Wednesday's snow storm.

I was telling Caitlin about sharing a breathtaking ferry ride yesterday across Howe Sound in which a friend and I waxed about the beauty all around us, how it seemed hardly possible that we lived surrounded by such gorgeous land and sea.

There is something important about the intimate experience of sharing breathtaking beauty with friends, neighbours and even complete strangers.

Snow has returned

A spectacular cold front has made its way down the coast, with a low pressure centre travelling directly down the Strait of Georgia Strait.  At 5:20 I left Victoria in a Sikorsky S61N helicopter and just off Swartz Bay we flew beneath the roiling clouds of the front, forcing us to descend from 2500 feet to only a few hundred.  The seas were calm on one side of the squall line and boiling white on the other.  We flew into Vancouver low, staying below the cloud ceiling, and just above the treetops of Stanley Park and by the time we landed, the rain squalls had quickly turned to snow.  I arrived back on Bowen at 8:00pm and there was a centimeter or two of snow on the ground and the temperature had dropped 8 degrees in three hours.  

A brief blast of winter, just to remind us not to get cocky with the early spring plantings.