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Walking Distance

Sip. After about 65 years of taking pictures I can assure you that it is not about equipment. It is about developing an eye for the simple beauty all around us and understanding the basic science of light. For the last few years I’ve insisted on using a mobile phone to capture images to prove that. Frankly, phones are now much more than cameras used to be but the process is still the same. AI will never exceed human creativity.

Yesterday I was in a recycled furniture shop. Laughing and joking with a group at the till I made a silly mistake and then mentioned a T-shirt for sale that said “ I had potential.” The cashier brusquely replied that I didn’t need a sign for her to see that. Gotta love a girl with a sense of humour!

One more from the notice board. Thar be a push-pin pirate!

Somehow, for me, June has meandered through my existence and we are well into July. I am looking out my office window at the harbour. There is a brassy light as the sun ladders through an overcast sky. The Westerly wind is rising and stirring the water with catspaws. Soon there may be whitecaps in the bay.The temperature is pleasantly moderate. It’s time to get the girls and go see what’s up in the woods before some citiot sets fire to them. Another beautiful day in a wonderful place to live. Oh Canada! Later I’m back sitting again at my desk staring balefully out at the world. This sitting is getting to be a bad habit, one that urgently needs breaking.

An artechoke morning. What an amazing plant! This photo is about life-size.

I try to avoid political comment but I feel the need to say this. I think our current prime minister is doing well. He waded into the Trump swamp, has a mess left behind by dear Justin and is trying to secure his own political future with every step dogged by Mr. Polynever yipping like a jealous puppy. Here’s my thought. Mr Carney has vowed to do something positive about affordable housing in Canada. He has annouced plans to manufacture affordable homes which can be delivered to the jobsite.

I was flummoxed to hear him announce yet more plans to spend $100,000,000 to refurbish 24 Sussex Drive. Apparently no PM has lived there since Stephan Harper’s day. (He must have had some wild parties! The joint is trashed) I’m wondering why pre-manufactured housing won’t work there. A nice double-wide trailer should do the trick and make a noteable political statement. If it’s good enough for the likes of we, then why not he? Just sayin’. Lead by example.The balance of that hundred mil. could build several more shacks for the people. Oh, leave the old stone doorway standing as a monument to an era long gone.

I say old chap, where has the ocean gone?

This baby bunny won a stare-down contest with my dogs. It is about six inches long.

And verily the fir sprang forth from the cedar.

This is the bottom of Haslam Creek. In a few months salmon will spawn in its rushing waters. It is hard to grasp but it IS normal.

So we have teetered over the fulcrum of mid-July and this blog is still sitting on the back of the stove. There is wildfire smoke in there air but not much else is going on in our sleepy little town. I have decided that Ladysmith is indeed the finest community on Vancouver Island. We have small town politics while we continue to sell ever more building permits and then worry about our water supplies. Ever bathed in beer? The City Of Ladysmith just doesn’t have a ring to it. We’re still a town, We like it like that. It is why we moved here. Allegedly voted to have the nicest mainstreet in Canada. Uhuh!

Some days it may best to stay home and smell the flowers.

Today I went to the local harware store. There were some ladies selling donuts for a local baseball charity. A rather rubenesque soul tried flogging me a box. I said, “No thanks, I’m allergic. They make me swell up!” Her response was, “That happens to some people.” So of course I had to reply, “I can see that.” I know why I don’t have many friends. You’ve got to have a sense of humour if you want to hang with me. There is no-one so poor as a person without a sense of humour.

The shameless bather. In the dryness of summer a tiny puddle can mean life itself. The snail is about 3/4.”

A workshop shot. I’m refurbishing an 80 year-old Aldis lamp (Navy signal lamp) for a neighbour. These allowed ships to communicate using Morse Code. No radio signals could be intercepted.

As Vancouver Island closes its pulp & paper mills, toilet paper farming has taken on a new urgency.

Oh Canada! What a wonderful place we live. The mountains of the mainland loom over the mayhem of Vancouver. I’m happy to be an islander. I love that wee wooden boat.

It has occured to me that, with broader thinking, most places are within “walking distance.”

A Perfect Morning

Blooming in the rain. Blackberry blossom in late September.

Thai apple drink in a Creston restaurant.
It was good.

Pub special. Chicken breast in buttermilk batter on a candied dougnut with fries.
Bluuurph!

I was out the door and walking across the parking lot when I realized I had no limp. Wow! First time since my knee surgery three months ago. Funny what happens when you’re distracted from your problems. Swimming some lengths in the local pool fixed that limp; it’s back. I drove home from the pool into a cloudless sunrise. On the corner an old man with a lab pup signalled which way he was going so as to keep me from waiting for nothing. A considerate citizen! He got a thumbs up from me. My morning medication routine produced a blood sugar reading which was lowest ever. Incredible! A perfect morning.

They’re back! Sept. 21st. First day of autumn.

These beauties always appear at the end of summer.

He was the black toadstool of the family.

We’re deep within the rushing current and back eddies of selling and buying homes. A building inspectors is coming in a few minutes to look at our present abode, Monday repeats the process on the new one. Well, it IS 67 years old. Properly built with old growth full dimension wood, (A2x4 is actually a full 2” by 4”). Floors are built with diagonally-nailed planks. Nothing but solid lumber everywhere.

I prefer that to the new slap-dash houses which are built entirely from OSB board, stapled together in the pouring rain and then put up for sale at an unbelievably high price. When we arrived on Vancouver Island forty years ago, houses sold at an average price of $40,000. Now the number has risen to $750,000. Has our money become worth that much less? I guess there is no point in asking questions that have no clear answers. The people we’re told to trust can’t, or won’t, answer them either. I still choose to believe we live in one of the best places on the planet. We’re still free to leave. Nobody is shooting at us yet.

A fashion statement? I have little idea of which fungi are safely edible, so I don’t.

Munch brunch. Before the slug came, a deer has taken a few bites. Interestingly they never eat the whole thing, choosing to take a sample of each. It must be nature’s way of leaving the fungi to survive.

Another peek at the huge microscopic world of the forest floor. There is always plenty going on.

This morning the rain is hammering down. Someone must be building a house out there. Haar! The moving process goes on with one more thing and then one more thing. The tedium builds. There are a few more days until both the sale and the purchase “close” and the agreements are inscribed in stone. Then we sit and wait until moving day when “possession” occurs and we then have a few hours to move our stuff from beneath one roof to beneath another. In the meantime boxes of stuff rise. We’re moving about three blocks. It is as much work as moving across the country. Bets on which day it will rain?

There was a time when all I owned fit in my backpack. Then it got to be the back of a pickup truck and half of that was tools. We’re like crows sitting on a wire. Too busy looking for something else shiny to peck at, we’re completely unaware that fifty thousand volts are running between our toes.

Finally the macrame trail of paper work is complete. I’m now sitting at my desk in someone else’s home. My house is now around the corner and down the street. It is still almost a month until we can make the move. Hurry up and wait. Somewhere in that time there is an election but there is no-one I want to vote for. But I will, if only to renew my bitching license.

Both deals are now fully completed. “SOLD” stickers are on the For Sale signs out on the street. Let the packing begin. What’ve we been keeping these for? Stuff!

Ever get the feeling that you’re being watched?

Home is where the heart is…even if you can’t remember which box you packed it in.

Stairway To Spring

Well there’s not much to say. Spring is flirting with us. Flowers and buds are appearing but the wind can be wild, wet and cold. When the skies clear, snow coats the glistening mountains nearly all the way to the bottom. Certainly, you can smell it in the wind. But there’s not much point in analyzing something we can’t change. This fellow for one, is so weary of all the fear-mongering and perverted information about Global Warming, that I don’t really want to add anything to the babble. It’s what we’ve got, enjoy it or not, that’s up to you.

Slowly grows the fungi. Nature’s way of recycling old wood back to the earth from which it came.

Booger! 100% natural. More winter fungus.

YES AGAIN! Another one sank here about two weeks ago. This time one went down and dragged its buddy boat down with it. The owners will be long gone by now. The price of freedom is responsibility and living off-grid demands avoiding attention. Sadly, this helps build the case against everyone living freely.

Same old view, ever-changing scene. Four deep-seas wait out of ballast ready to take on their cargos.

The evening weather person can’t seem to interpret their scattered bones and pebbles without mumbling some bloody thing about Global Warming or Climate Change. It is just too trendy to avoid. “Wow this is the coldest moment on record….since 1941.” Yes, it is occurring. No we are not helping matters and need to stop talking about it and simply do our best in our own personal patch but… we are not the prime cause of this natural phenomenon. Yes, warming and cooling is a natural occurrence and is part of climatic fluctuations which have been going on for millions of years, up and down, over and over… despite the hard evidence that the paranoia profiteers choose to ignore. We have to learn to adjust and change or we will disappear like the dinosaurs. They could not evolve quickly enough to assimilate a naturally changing environment. Whom will we blame should some asteroid or monster hemorrhoid (Well, I dare say there are plenty of grand assholes out there) slam into the planet and make drastic changes.

Or was it some yuppy SUV back then which brought that change on? And, by the way, why do you actually need a hybrid SUV (Stupid Urban Vanity) at all? Will it ever actually be off-pavement? Most folks still can’t get where they want when there is only an inch of snow. Then, if you do get moving, there is the trick of stopping… something they don’t show you in the TV ads. When I was a kid we all got where were going without SUVs or AWD. Radial tires for any season were unheard of. We filled the back seat with children. They provided the weight for traction and could get out and push if necessary. And of course, many folks knew how to install tire chains. And, often as not, we walked.

A greening beneath the mountain. It’s coming.

I harp on about how there is one life form on this planet which does not fit in anywhere. NIO (Non-indigenous Organism.) We can’t even get along with each other let alone in our adopted environment or with other species. We just don’t fit…although we could. When a parasite begins to overwhelm its host, nature has a way of applying checks. Once, the Bubonic Plague did a great job of culling our numbers. A century ago, The Spanish Flu once again reduced the infection that we had become. There have since been a few viruses which have not really done much to teach us anything or thin our overwhelming presence on this planet.

Now we face the nio-terror of the Coronavirus. In consideration of political correctness, it is being re-named COVID – 19 which will still offend folks, especially if it’s killing them. Frankly, if it is Corona which is the cause of all of this then perhaps we should try drinking another brand of beer. It is NOT a laughing matter. But what is it that we refuse to get? If people are determined to live like a spreading disease then guess what!? For the moment, all trans-continental travel should stop until the pandemic is completely ended. So long as folks can travel anywhere on the planet within a single day, the problem will spread. But, we don’t want to mess with anyone’s commerce. There is no expert intervention which will prevent that. Over-simplification? Nasty cough you’ve got there! Just a bit of snyphlis? OK. When two Boeing Max 8 737s killed far less folks than this virus has already, every one of them was pulled out of service. What happened to that logic?

One final consideration. If the Chinese can build and open a 1000-bed hospital in ten days, what genius maintains housing shortages here or anywhere else?

A mossy peek. Spring is soon to burst out.

We have to consider our lifestyles, population densities, diets, food sources and how all of that is unimportant to someone else’s profits. Last night I tried to cook two salmon fillets which came frozen in a bag marked as wild-caught pink salmon. Only after I opened the bag did I notice the inscription “Product of China.” WOT? That country has never been know as a salmon-producing nation and I can raise several obvious questions. The pieces of mushy, stale-fish-smelling protein came out of the bag appearing to have seen service perhaps as mud flaps on a rickshaw, possibly as far inland as Wuhan. I don’t really want to speculate on where this slop came from but I have seen much better product from fish farms. I am NOT making any Asian slurs here, but damnit! I live in British Columbia, one of the world’s great commercial fishing centres. WAZZUP? Why is finding affordable fresh fish here such a challenge? Is it the paranoia of profits or the profit of paranoia…or both? Why do we live like chicken farmers who go to town to buy eggs?

And here I was determined to provide no more than one paragraph of text and a few spring photos. But some things need to said.

“I marvel how the fishes live in the sea. Why, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones.”
William Shakespeare