The Abominable Snowman Closes His Mouth

Before I run down to the ferry to catch the bus to Victoria, here are a few more pictures. The swoop of snow from the roof, which from inside looks a lot like I'm in the mouth of an abominable snowman with icicles for teeth, continues to close.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and safe travels if you're going anywhere (and I hope you don't have to).

The Snow Out Here

It's been below zero for 10 days now, and snowed a couple of feet. This is totally unusual for the west coast, and so beautiful! I am at the point of laughing each time it begins to snow again. It's like I'm in some sort of groundhog day-like time warp, or a record that's skipping. Are the days really going by and it is snowing again and not melting?

The power went out on Friday evening and didn't come back on until 2pm the next day. During that time my pipes froze along with many other Gabriolans (their pipes I mean, not the Gabriolans themselves, of course). The pump house had no heat and the filter froze and cracked. I think the cistern might also be frozen. With a sigh of relief I am glad to be renting. And thrilled to be saved by the wood stove!

There are other stories to tell, involving shoveling, shoveling, and shoveling to extricate my truck from a snowbank, only get it stuck in my driveway (which I DID shovel). For now, here are some photos.

The snow swooping from the roof (Saturday)

By this morning the snow had migrated downwards (sorry for the dark picture, but I am at work during all daylight hours this time of year). It continues to migrate, and I plan to take another photo tomorrow.

A snowy Saturday scene looking out from beside the wood stove.

Cozy inside

This is fun!

Not as nimble as a deer

The trails around Gabriola make me very happy. One of my favourite things is to go exploring in the forest and attempt to get myself lost. I just got back from a bit of an adventure doing just this, managing to get myself on a narrow deer trail on the side of a cliff with the ocean far below. It was a beautiful gulf islands scene in the evening sun; arbutus and Garry oak, dry grass, and low scrubby plants gone to seed with burrs all over them. My heart rate was up on a couple of occasions as I lost my footing, slipped, and had nothing to grab onto except thistle. I decided to scale the cliff and get to more solid ground above, which proved to be much more difficult than it looked from my eroding footing below. I have a new appreciation for the benefits of four legs and the hill climbing skills of deer.

Other recent joys include planting a wee fall container garden consisting of kale, chard, two kind of lettuce, and basil (which is indoors for now in a very sunny window where I think it will do alright). As the fall weather sets in and I am less likely to spend my time kayaking, swimming or otherwise just being outside for the sake of the weather, I am beginning to dream about other projects. Knitting, sewing, cooking... But I am trying so hard to focus on this small matter of graduation that is looming over me. I worked on it all afternoon (before the cliff-side adventure, which was my reward). It's getting there.

Mermaid Tears or Nurdles

Floating out in the ocean, and washing up on our beaches, are tonnes and tonnes of mermaid tears, also known as nurdles. Sounds cool? Strange? Like I'm really gullible?

Well I found it on the Internet so it must be true.

Mermaid tears or nurdles are the tiny bits of plastic broken up from plastic garbage that finds its way to the sea. It doesn't biodegrade, but instead just gets broken down into little, well, nurdles. And there is a lot of plastic in the sea. Check it out.

A Weekend in Gibsons

A few weekends ago, I took a much needed break from Vancouver and a busy schedule to visit Sheena and Matt on the Sunshine Coast. It's a good thing I got some fun times in then, because I've been insanely busy since (AND came down with the flu, which I am still battling).

Sheena and her mom picked me up from the ferry Saturday evening and we went straight to a potluck to celebrate a citizen group's victory over "the [evil] developers". Go citizens! This is what gets me excited about planning; grassroots struggles over top-down planning. Yeah! Someone had actually cooked an entire turkey for the potluck, and it was then we realized this was "grown ups" potluck, which is quite different from the university potlucks we're used to.

Sunday morning was rainy, but we decided to go exploring around town anyway. The chickens didn't seem to be too happy about the rain and sought shelter under a bench.

At the marina we spotted this great blue heron in bright breeding plumage.

At the beach where Sheena learned to drive stick (not on the beach itself, but the steep road down TO the beach), we communed with the sea and basked in the sunshine that decided to arrive.

They're cute!

Returning to town, we walked passed the site of the [evil] development that was stopped by valiant citizen action (below).

The development was to look something like this, and be built on a wetland.

Not too far away is the museum where Matt works, humbly answering emails, vacuuming the floor and aspiring to greater things, if only the museum had more money to actually improve its exhibits. Sigh. Maybe they could get the developer make a donation to the museum...

Believe it or not, we did all of this after a delicious pancake breakfast and before a scrumptuous lunch of oysters at Gibsons' newest, and perhaps poshest, restaurant right on the water.

Back at home Matt baked bread while Sheena and I knit.

And we bottled beer...

...making sure to get every last drop.

What a super day! Thanks for the fun times.

The Beach Crawl

What could be better than a sunny day spent outside with friends? Especially when most of our days are spent in class or writing assignments in our less-than-bright basement suite.

Then we moved on to Wreck Beach,

and frolicked.

What a glorious day.

Victoria Harbour to Sidney Harbour

Two weekends ago Jake (a friend I met in Guatemala, who is from the UK, but is currently living in Victoria) and I embarked on a harbour-to-harbour voyage. It was an epic journey from Victoria to Sidney in three days and two nights

At Ogden Point we encountered this behemoth and wondered at what it would be like to be beside one of these in the open ocean.

This is Jake by Trial Island with the glorious evening sun.

We camped here on Discovery Island the first night, drank some wine, stared at the fire, and went to bed both exhausted (from a week of work) and rejuvenated (from being on the water).


The next day we had a fabulous tail wind and tried sailing. We worked out some kinks along the way and ended up with a pretty decent setup. Always room for improvement though.


This is Suzanne who met up with us for the second night on D'Arcy Island. I'm trying to get her and the rainbow in the picture, but moving kayak pictures are kind of hard.

It was a fabulous weekend of paddling and hanging out. Great to squeeze trips like this in on the weekend so I don't feel like I am wasting my summer sitting in an office.

Spring has Sprung

The cherry blossoms are out...

...and I'm wearing my Chacos.

Day of Destruction

Woah, you'll never believe it. I wrote a great long post about the Day of Destruction last week, and just when I was about to post it... DESTROYED by the Internet gnomes. What could this mean? I'm creeped out.

The Day of Destruction was a fine, cold and cloudy yet not rainy Vancouver day. Bri, Mike and I set out to survey the "destruction" in Stanley Park after a winter of severe windstorms that toppled innumerable ancient trees. We began with a stroll along the seawall, that was cut short by the chain link barricade evidently set up to protect the City from liability. We could have scampered around it but instead elected for the inland path...The Path of Destruction.

There were many more trees over the path than I expected. At times you couldn't even really see the path at all. I didn't cry or donate money to the restoration effort, in fact, I feel kind of proud of "nature" for so easily making nearly impassable a human-made trail. Here's my mini rant: why are people so upset about these trees knocked over by the wind (might I remind you that wind is "natural"), but are not equally upset about the huge amount of logging that goes on in our province every day (might I remind you that large scale mechanized logging is NOT "natural)?

Our Day of Destruction continued with a sighting of a Danger Duck. We were very quiet and didn't get between it and its ducklings so although my heart was beating so hard I thought it would leap out of my chest, we were alright.

The Day of Destruction was going to conclude with a trip to Locarno Beach to see the set of a plane crash for the movie Passenger. But we decided not to go because it was kind of late. Our plans were DESTROYED!

A perfect Saturday morning

I woke up and put the kettle on. I had a look at the weather out the window: cloudy but not raining. I got the paper and read the first couple of sections over cafe au lait and toast.

Equipped with my camera, binoculars and Peterson's Field Guide, I went down to the beach. I had a peaceful, soul-centering time observing what was going on. I saw a pair of Barrows goldeneye, about 50 red-breasted mergansers, a couple buffleheads and some mallards.

Also, to my pleasant surprise, I met Mr, and Mrs. Eagle's new eaglet! They have not brought him/her to the perch tree outside my window, so I didn't know they had a baby.

When I got home I was in the mood for some housecleaning, so our floor is now vacuumed and swept (at long last). After lunch I buckled down to some school work, which has been slow to start but that's okay. There is nothing hugely pressing and I'm having a very nice Saturday.

Eagle Update

Today they are perched higher in the tree. What could this mean? Lisa thinks the male should be called "Flinx". What do you think?

When I am not taking pictures of eagles and spying at them through my binoculars, I am reading about the catastrophic fate of humanity. Well, today anyway. If you don't know how to grow vegetables or hunt wildlife, you should consider developing these skills before it is too late.

Welcome to my neighbourhood

I would like to introduce you to my two new friends. They are a couple, which is unfortunate because I kind of feel like the third wheel sometimes, but when you're new to the neighbourhood you can't be too picky. Okay, so they're not really my friends because they probably don't know I exist, since they are bald eagles and we don't really interact on a personal level, but I absolutely love the fact that they are here. I sit at my comptuer and all I need to do is turn my head less than 90 degrees, and I see what I have reproduced for you in this picture. Every couple of days my study schedule coincides with their perching schedule, and I am reminded of the natural world around me, and that we all are a part of. The red circle is not actually visible from my window, but I drew it around the eagles so that you could pick them out. I have my binoculars at the ready to get a closer look. I hope you don't think I'm being too voyeristic. I considered naming them but then I remembered Sheena's interpretive talk in Lake Louise about why the researchers don't give the grizzley bears human names, and thought maybe I shouldn't. I will ponder that some more and for now they can be "The Eagles".