1567 - Maple Leaf

A colourful study of a maple leaf.  It took little time to make this.  I like the colours, though. 

 

 

 

 

 

1528 - Mrs. Bird's Brood

A junco family nested in our hanging planter out front this summer.  We noticed birds fluttering nervously every time we used our garage, and they were pretty angry when we tried watering the planter.   I shoved my camera into the foliage and was surprised to get this photo. 

Since then, we stopped using the garage and set up a drip-watering system for the plants to be used until the eggs hatch and the young fledge.  

 

1507 - Everything's Bloomin'

For the first time in my recollection, every plant on our property has bloomed all at once.  It's been a dry spring with spikes of heat and humidity, so I suspect the plants have been shocked into producing their flowers.  From right to left: a rhododendron bush, another rhodo, a third rhodo (all different colours), a lilac, some geraniums, and yet another rhodo, although this one is native to the region. 

Generally they bloom from right to left.  This year they are all blossoming, and it's too early for the bees who haven't quite yet started hunting for pollen. 

 

1436 - Hyde Creek In Late Autumn

In late autumn, nearby Hyde Creek is loaded with fall colours.  A tickertape parade of leaves fall from the trees to greet the arrival of salmon which have come to spawn here.  

This is close to the same vantage point I used for my Hyde Creek artwork in JSVB Post #112, way back in May of 2010.  Please click here to see it! 

 

1428 - Autumnal Creek Bed

Hyde Creek, a well-used salmon spawning ground, glows golden in afternoon sunlight. 

1419 - Old Chums

The local salmon have appeared for the purpose of spawning.  These two females seek strong mates and good hiding places for their eggs. 

 

1402 - We Three Bees

Bees took up residence under our compost bin.  Partly this is a comment on how much yard work I have been doing lately, since I haven't been out and Nature is moving in.  

My wife and I decided to look up which species has taken over our garden.  Our guess is Bombus vagans, commonly known as the Half-Black Bumblebee.  It's a species that ranges across both coasts of North America and as far south as New Mexico.  Although considered a common species, all bumblebees are currently under threat from disease and environmental conditions.

My camera has a remote trigger.  I set it up at the entrance to the hive and waited for bees.  I took a bunch of shots but they all turned out blurry and mis-exposed.  I also have a whole series where the bee flew out of the frame before I could snap the shutter.  

This one turned out well, though.  These bees are making good use of the entrance to their hive.  

 

1287 - Peanuts Weather Report

Marshalled by firmament
Sheep-like clouds herd
And cluster darkening:
Overcast chills countryside
And city bounds alike.
Sly Skaði exhales -
Leaves curl, winds howl, 
Flakes drift from a sifted sky
And freeze into manifold
Abundant numbers inversely 
Proportional to their individual size.

Meanwhile, it's sunny and warm here.
I'm thinking the lawn needs mowing,
But maybe we'll just sing and dance.
Just how bad are our aubades anyways? 

---

My brother-in-law went travelling this week and was surprised by snow.  What kind of a Canadian is he, anyways, that snow should come as a surprise?   His online grumblings inspired today's JSVB post, which in turn has us featured at Peanuts-style characters, as could have been drawn by Charles Shultz.  JSVB is indebted to Mr. Shultz' draftsmanship.  

While we can complain about our weather, those stricken by Hurricane Matthew are not as lucky as us.  When the Red Cross calls for for international aid, we can be good citizens and assist them with our donations which will go directly towards life-saving supplies.  We can help!

1203 - Was Missed In The Mist

Fortunately, the dank flesh-eaters of the fog didn't get me, or else how would I be able to present this photo?  Well, I suppose hikers could have found my abandoned camera after the fact, and my wife would have let them make JSVB Post #1203.  Spooky.

 

1201 - Was Waylaid In The Woods

There's nothing like gothic photography to bring the shortcomings of your personal life into sharp focus. 

 

1126 - "Hot Spot"

Here's another photograph I took of the Pemberton fire.

 

Destroying a large chunk of my credibility as a photographer, I did fake a few things in this photo to make it read as more dramatic.  The original picture did have an orange sun, chocoloate-coloured clouds, and the dead trees in the foreground.  

 

I enlarged the sun, added some heat shimmer, and drew in the burning embers by hand.  Maybe the two trees died of fire, more likely they died of disease.  I wasn't particularly interested in getting closer to the Pemberton fire than I already was, so I figured I'd fudge the picture with a little creative post-production.  

 

 

 

 

 

1116 - Slvggvs Maximvs

Friends, Romans, Countrymen... the slug races have begun!

At first my wife and I thought that some animal had double-crapped on our patio.  But then the little piles were seen to move, and as far as turds go that only happens if you eat beans in sriracha sauce.  

These are banana slugs, and right now is banana slug season.  Banana slug racing season, to be precise.  I clocked these speedsters sliming along at the blistering speed of an inch every thirty seconds.  That's just an eyeball stalk over three meters per hour.  What a rush!

Tomorrow, I'll show on JSVB a picture of what this race would look like from the slugs' viewpoint!  Stay tuned!

1110 - Salish Sun

This is a Coast Salish sun symbol.  All I know about Salish design is that I know very little about Salish design, so instead of creating stuff straight out of thin air (and making a mess of it, click here to see what I mean) I simply aped a pre-existing design.  The original pattern was made by Darcy Day, all I did was make a few teaks.  Mostly, I just used Corel Painter's Mirror function to straighten up symmetry. 

1094 - Suction Cup Rodeo

I've been reading some interesting articles on the subject of humour.  Only recently have scientists been able to approach what makes us laugh, and the answer involves an expensive magnetic resonance imager.  

One conclusion is that a sense of humour is proportional to intelligence.  Smart people may not be funnier, but they can convince stupid rich people to buy MRI machines and fund science as to why a fake rubber turd on the boardroom table is hilarious. 

Smart animals enjoy humour as much as humans.  Birds, dogs, and lab rats, among others will laugh when playing. 

The octopus is a remarkably smart animal.  It is sensitive, emotional, and has a powerful memory.  Normally, octopi are solitary creatures and seldom congregate.  However, the octopi of the Italian island of Capri have formed social groups.  Their territory is rich with warm, comfortable water but tourism and fishing have eliminated most of the food, so the octopi have a tough time scrounging enough to live.  Worse, the area is teeming with deadly predators.  

Most of the Capri octopi are around the size of a human hand, so they seldom pose a threat to anything larger than an anchovy.  They will band together in loose groups to "farm" what food is available to them.

My wife showed me an amazing marine biologist's report of these little guys defending their territory.  A predator eel was swimming into the octopus feeding area.  Normally, a solitary octopus would change colour to blend in with the ocean bottom and squeeze into some tight hiding hole.  The Capri octopi were much more aggressive, however.  They formed what I prefer to think of as a "suction cup rodeo".

Working together, a couple of octopi remained in the open to lure the eel into the trap.  From above, the bravest octopus gently glided onto the unsuspecting eel's head and covered the eel's eyes with its tentacles.  Then, it hung on like a rodeo star while the eel tried in vain to buck the octopus off of its face.  The little octopus hung on like a champion!  The eel twisted, turned, and leaped much like a rodeo bull.  The octopus simply applied more suction.  Eventually, the eel had had enough and tried to swim away.  Once the little octopus finally let go, the eel wasted no time in escaping. 

The Capri octopus community watched this action from afar.  Were they laughing?  I don't think that's physiologically possible for an octopus.  But I imagine they were amused!  The plight of the eel, the vicious predator turned into a comic buffoon with an octopus glued to its eyes, is a classic comedy turnabout that occurs when the bad guy gets his come-uppance from the diminuitive hero.  There's a certain amount of class struggle that went along with the actual battle: the octopi worked together to trap the eel, but they also were unified by the spectacle of their hero humiliating and defeating a hated foe that normally would have been much more powerful than all of them grouped together.  Comedy becomes a means of social bonding, although we can only surmise the emotional state of the octopus by observing its skin colour at the time - octopi will change colour depending on mood.  If the octopi found the sight of one of their number glued to the face of an eel funny - and it's pretty funny to us humans - then this would also reinforce their social confidence and create a powerful memory of the event. 

1060 - "Do You Like Our Owl?"

When a cluster of your neighbours gather in a group on your driveway under the pale light of a full moon and gaze up at the sky, it's high time to stop watching that television movie and get outside to see exactly what's going on.

In this case, our local barred owl took refuge in the tree in our front yard.  The neighbours took some pictures and so did I.  The owl was extremely obliging.  Barred owls don't seem to mind humans very much. 

 

998 - My Mt. Rundle

Mount Rundle, Alberta.

This picture has some meaning for me.  There are a million pretty much like it, since this is the view directly from the highway near Banff.   There's even a handy traffic pull-out to see this view.  Canada has no shortage of postcard views you can see right from the comfort of your car.

I'm certain I am standing taking this picture on the same spot my mother must have used to set up her painting easel maybe forty or fifty years ago.  She made a quick painting of this mountain, probably the work of a half-afternoon judging by how she threw her paint around.  There's a negative space caused by tonnes of rock that had sheered off the left side of the peak that my mother depicted with great force.  That part of the painting always disturbed me as a child, since it looked alien and eldritch.  Not until I drove by the mountain as an adult did I see how that shape was supposed to work.  Still, that painting remains in the back of a dark, seldom-opened closet in a room I almost never visit.

969 - "Grasshoppers Doing It"

I've eaten a couple of grasshoppers fried in garlic, but it turns out there are many, many more in the wild than I could ever hope to eat.  News from New Mexico tells us that they are currently enduring clouds of locusts so large and thick that you can see them on weather radar.

Every year, New Mexico gets a lot of grasshoppers.  Yet every twenty years or so, they get an unbearable number of them, a sort of "supercloud" that eats everything in its path and creeps out many folks along the way.  Still, even in a natural disaster someone profits, and Albuquerque windshield wiper dealers must think it's Christmas in June.  

951 - B.C. Beach Panorama

A panoramic vacation picture, taken near Ucluelet, British Columbia.

907 - I'll Be Baa-ack!

The nonsense song goes, "Mares eat oats/ and does eat oats/ and little lambs eat ivy."  Familiar stuff if you're a fan of David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" (1990-91). 

We have an ivy problem in our back yard.  It's encroaching from the forest where decades ago it had taken hold after several people planted it as decorative ground cover.  Now, it's choking out the trees with its thick and intractable lianas.

  

The only lamb that could possibly tackle this creeping mess would have to be sent back to us from the future by Skynet.  

880 - AGID: Avian Gastro-Intestinal Distress



 

 

I was taking a walk, hoping to catch a good picture of salmon spawning in the local stream.  The light was low, however.  Salmon don't like to have sex in broad daylight. 

 

Then, I came across this scene of total horror.  That's not paint.  It's bird crap.  Maybe it was two or three birds, but it could also have been just one miserable bird on the hop with what can only be described as a bomb load that overstressed the bomb bay, as it were. 

 

Why should I concern myself with bird droppings?  For one thing, I feel blessed that the railing took this punishment and not my car or even worse, me.  Please see JSVB Post #533 (please click here) to see more commentary on this topic.  However, the birds that have been hitting my car have been leaving industrial strength flop, stuff that requires soap and hot water and heavy scrubbing to save the paint underneath.  I suspect that some birds are feeding on the salmon that died after spawning, and this is contributing to the white wave of airborne terror that is spreading across my neighbourhood.