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.

Rains have returned

As Caitlin said, we have re-entered British Columbia. It is raining today and thick low cloud hovers in the Sound. It's colder and damper out than it has been since the fall.

We puttered in the garden today, looking for more places to build beds on our cliff face and contemplating this year's crops. Pulled some leeks that overwintered and threw them in a soup pot tonight. Lovely!

Daffodils are peeping up, but they'll hold off for a few weeks now I bet.

Birds of the midwinter

Even though it is technically midwinter, the spring migrations have started. Yesterday down on Mannion Bay I came across this flock of black turnstones hanging out with the mew gulls stopping off here to feast on crabs and sand fleas. They overwinter here on the south coast. preparing to make their way slowly to their breeding grounds on the Alaskan coast. These ones are all done up in their breeding plumage, ready to return to the breeding grounds, but they have a few more months before things thaw up there.

Also on this little walk, a great blue heron and our resident ornery but beautiful swan. Oh and for good measure, our resident fawn, who hangs out with the feral chicken we look after. We had two chickens, but one succumbed to the red tailed hawk that was hanging around here a few weeks ago. All that is left of poor Huckleberry is a pile of feathers and some well picked over shoulder bones.

It's funny weather right now. Along the beaches and exposed roads down low the smells of summer are wafting around - dry fir needles and dust - while in the forest and the low lying meadow in Crippen Park, there is still several inches of snow. There has been snow on that meadow since December 16, and we have had so little rain - less than 30mm this month - that it shows no signs of washing away anytime soon. Usually snow like that, even in great quantities is gone in a few days, but the extended snow falls of Christmas combined with a thaw/freeze cycle and the generally dry and sunny and cold weather has prolonged winter for an extended spell.

Bowen Island advertising

When you live in one of the most artistic communities in Canada, you are bound to get creative advertising. This ad was posted outside The Snug - an artist willing to trade a watercolour for an outboard motor.

Spring is in the air

The dawn chorus this morning, while not exactly bursting with birdsong, had some minor changes in it. For one thing, on this clear calm morning, the birds were very active: Canada geese in the bay were constant, nuthatches going crazy and the juncos were making all kinds of noise. Ravens, crows, eagles, flickers, robins and mallards all joined in the fun. The towhees have started their trilling. All of this is preludes to things to come.

And another ritual has taken hold too, with the replacement of the Queen of Capilano for six weeks by the Bowen Queen. It used to be that the maintenance refits were an annual thing for the Cap, but it seems that they have become less scheduled over the past couple of years. At any rate, she's out for a spell, and the delightful little Bowen Queen is back in the fold. Commuter hell will follow, but I like her.

A crescent moon

Early this morning, about 4am, a waning crescent moon crested Eagleridge and shone with a brightness way out of proportion to it's size. The air was so clear, the nighttime outflow winds scouring the Sound of cloud and rustling the trees.

This morning, hummingbirds fought for territory, but the rest of the dawn chorus was quiet.