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“And all at once, summer collapsed into fall.”
Oscar Wilde
Should there be any doubts as to why Autumn is known as Fall here in North America, these images may well satisfy them.
They also provide an interesting illustration of the fact that – even when one is apparently walking through a forest predominantly comprising mixed conifers – there are always more maples present than appears to be the case at first (or even second) sight.
It feels to me as though it has been quite a long time now since even the blowsy days of August – when everything in the garden wore the appearance of having enjoyed rather too good a night out and was, in the aftermath thereof, trying just that bit too hard to convince that all was still coming up roses (see what I did there?)… Never mind looking back even further to the true highlights of the season (as far as our garden is concerned, anyway) in May, June and early July…
And as I say – even August is now but a memory…
Yet here we are – with the race to the shortest day well underway and nature – if not quite yet in full retreat – certainly considering carefully turning tail and joining the rout.
Kudos, then, to that flora still determined to see things through to the bitter end. Your loyalty is much appreciated and we thank you for yet bringing a little colour and light into our lives.
Some images, by way of illustration:
Tags: Autumn, British Columbia, garden, Photo
‘Tis the time of the year in Victoria that one repeatedly casts anxious glances outside – regardless of the time of day – to see what the weather is doing (or is about to do).
Today – for example – it is (to use the vernacular) tossing it down!
Yesterday was sunny – so we went for a walk and I got out in the garden.
This is the key of course. We venture outside whenever we can – to observe and enjoy the sights – be they what they may…
…like moonbeams – such as those emanating from this big golden full moon over the sea:
…or mushrooms! It is that time of year when the ‘fun guys’ poke their heads out for a few days before going subterranean for another cycle. These are the first of the crop:
…and mountains. This one you probably know already:
…and other magic! ‘Nuff said:
Tags: British Columbia, Fall, nature, Photo, Victoria
“Respect your parents. They passed school without Google!”
Anonymous
OK – so it is college rather than school, we’ve actually been back for nearly three weeks now – and September 2021 is not long for this world either.
Apart from that… you get the idea!
I promised that I would write something about going back to college – as in actually ‘going back to college’ rather than just starting another ‘virtual’ term from the comforts of my studio at home…
…and here I am!
The College decreed that for the new academic year we should all be back face to face in the classroom and lecture hall. This is entirely understandable, given that students had started displaying (along with gratitude that their health interests were being foregrounded) some discontent that they were not getting the full college experience even though they were still being asked to pay for it. In the light of this pressure the College probably had little choice in the matter.
The decision would doubtless not have been particularly contentious had it not been for the subsequent emergence of the Delta variant of the COVID-19 virus. This unpleasantness has inevitably ramped up the risk level again and left us all considerably more concerned as to the best course of action going forward.
Still – face to face it is for now – but with a plethora of precautions to try to keep things safe. Masks must be worn inside buildings – including in the classrooms – and vaccine passports are required for access to sports and some other facilities, though not for the cafeterias and bookshops.
I am all for appropriate precautions and particularly keen to remain healthy myself. There are implications for teaching, however. We are obliged to wear a mask when teaching unless there is at least two metres between us and the nearest student – in which case we can unmask. Two of the spaces in which I operate are large enough that I can – gratefully – go maskless. My other classroom is a pokey little hole in which I have to deliver an eighty minute class once a week. Fun it is not!
My Chair is very keen that we should also make provision for any students who cannot attend classes in person – either because they have had to quarantine or because they do not feel comfortable being in such public spaces. There are – of course – methods by which classes could be simultaneously streamed if required, but this demands additional equipment and configuration which the department – and College – have thus far proved slow to provide. I don’t mean to be awkward, but I certainly have no intention of teaching the classes twice – once for those who are present and again for those who are not.
Oh well! No doubt we will stumble through the term in our usual manner. The odds on the term ending in the same manner that it has begun must reasonably long, I would have thought.
The new academic year stumbles somewhat uncertainly into life, with the Fall term kicking off and hoping – in this semi-post-COVID world – not to fall flat on its face. More of that in a near-future post!
For now though – one last day out before we knuckle down and try to surf our way through the unforgiving swell…
We live (as I am sure I have mentioned previously) near the seaside town of Sidney on the Saanich peninsula to the north of the city of Victoria – which itself nestles into the south eastern corner of Vancouver Island with the sea on three sides (See map for details). We face roughly east – looking out over the Haro Strait.
The other side of the peninsula is a deep natural fjord – the Saanich Inlet. I have previously published photos of the good ship Dignity exploring this impressive waterway.
On the far side of the inlet – and close up against it – is the Malahat mountain. To reach Victoria from further north on the island it is necessary to navigate one’s way down between the mountain and the deep inlet. For many years it was thought impossible to drive a road through this hostile land and it was not until the late nineteenth century that the fore-runner of what is now the Malahat Drive was constructed through the pass.
For those used to the grandeurs of other parts of Canada the Malahat may at first glance appear to be small fry. Looks can be deceiving. Weather conditions in winter can be bad on the Malahat and the road is often closed for periods. At the very least it requires snow tyres or chains during the winter months. The narrow and twisty nature of the highway also renders it vulnerable to accidents – which can easily cut Victoria off from the rest of the island for hours at a time.
The Malahat and the Saanich Inlet are – however – also strikingly beautiful and are now home to a new attraction – the Malahat Skywalk. Rather than me describing the attraction to you the link provided will furnish all that you need.
This outing was our first visit to the Skywalk and we were suitably impressed. I will add some images of it at the bottom of this post.
We also paid a first visit to Unsworth Vineyards at nearby Mill Bay, where their attractive restaurant serves a most acceptable lunch (and – of course – also where wines can be tasted).
All in all – a splendid day out. Thanks to The Girl – whose idea it was.
The views!
I added a small arrow to this next photo to indicate the rough position of our home!
Tags: Malahat, Outings, Photo, Saanich Inlet, Victoria
Regular readers of this cybernated chronicle will be aware that I like – on occasion – to share experiences of the interface between (wo)man and nature that inevitably occur as a result of living in this verdant wilderness.
In other words – I post stuff about the wildlife that we see in our garden!
Having a decent sized plot and being surrounded by trees we are routinely visited by all manner of birds. I posted earlier in the year on the subject of some of the more annoying of these, but we are also graced with visits from larger and more impressive avians. I recorded, for example, the visit of this eagle back in 2017 – a vulture last year and this blue heron earlier this summer.
Our most recent visitor was this beautiful owl – who decided to rest for a considerable period in one of our trees before heading off again to get on doing whatever it is owls fill their days with. Now – owls have virtually no natural predators and thus are afraid of practically nothing – particularly aging gentlemen armed with nothing more offensive than a camera, so this one just sat and watched me whilst I meandered ever closer – taking snaps of him/her.
And now – as is my wont – here are some examples for the gentle reader’s edification. Click on the images for the bigger picture.
Enjoy:
It will surprise the gentle reader not one iota to be informed that the worst time – the very worst time – to seek to purchase an air-conditioning system (be it portable or fully installed) is when a ‘heat dome’ is camped on top of one’s home town – when temperature records are a-tumbling day on day – when wildfires are breaking out faster than they can be brought under control…
…and when the forecast is for more of the same.
Oddly enough one is never the only person in such circumstances seeking to obtain said items or systems.
Nonetheless, on the first day that the temperatures soared unpleasantly towards the stratosphere (as documented in my last post) and we decamped to our basement, I called our heating/ventilation engineers and – when I eventually reached a real person rather than a voicemail box – asked to be added to the list (the long list) of those who would like to talk about air-conditioning. A week and a half later I had a call back and an appointment for a visit was set up – in the middle of August.
Well – we knew that it would not be quick – and also that by the time anything were to be installed it would probably be the middle of winter… whatever that looks like these days!
Now – as detailed in that last posting – when our inherited heat pump gave up the ghost some years back we replaced our furnace but went no further. We did – however leave in place the duct-work and necessary services such that a heat pump or air-conditioner could be added at some point in the future. Well – that point is now – and we are pretty certain that we are going for the latter – though our engineer may well try to sell us the former.
Our rationale is this: The house is good and warm during the winter and the gas bills are very reasonable. During the temperate parts of the summer we like to be able to throw our windows wide without having to worry about interfering with whatever a cooling system is doing. If we have an air-conditioner (which would be much cheaper to install than a heat pump) we can leave it turned off except for those exceptional periods when it will prove a life-saver.
If we only run it when absolutely required it will not only cost considerably less to run, but it will also last a whole lot longer than if we run it all the time.
That, at any rate, is our plan at the moment. I will, naturally, issue an update in due course.
Tags: air conditioning, British Columbia, climate change, heat pump, heatwave, House
A few short posts back I was regaling ever patient readers with a description of life under the great North American ‘heat dome’. My intention to develop that thought into something related (but slightly off-topic) was overtaken by the tragic events in Lytton.
With (as ever) the reader’s kind permission – and given that I am always loathe to leave a notion only half-considered – I will just dot back to that thought now…
OK? Good!…
When we purchased our home here on the peninsula some six years ago it came with a heat pump. For those who do not know what a heat pump is, Wikipedia offers this explanation:
“A heat pump is a device used to warm and sometimes also cool buildings by transferring thermal energy from a cooler space to a warmer space using the refrigeration cycle, being the opposite direction in which heat transfer would take place without the application of external power. Common device types include air source heat pumps, ground source heat pumps, water source heat pumps and exhaust air heat pumps”.
A heat pump, then, is a sort of air-conditioner that works in both directions – taking heat out of the air during the summer and adding it in during the winter. Heat pumps are all the rage in these parts because they can offer considerable potential savings on heating costs in this sort of climate.
I say ‘potential savings’ because the amount of heat that such a pump can produce depends greatly on the type of device that has been chosen – and on that also depends the cost. Air source heat pumps are unable to deal with very low temperatures but are the cheapest to install. The other types do better with lower temperatures but cost a great deal more.
Systems such as the one we inherited use the relatively inexpensive air source pump but supplement it with a backup furnace – ours being an electric one. The problems that can occur with this sort of system became apparent a year or so after we moved in. The refrigerant circuit sprung a leak which went unnoticed until the electricity bill for a couple of months of electric furnace heating showed up, causing us to fall off our chairs with the shock.
We were advised that the old heat pump was not economical to repair (quelle surprise!) so we set about looking for an alternative. This was at about the same time that we were starting on the major renovations that were most fully documented within these pages. Being uncertain as to whether or not a straight replacement for the old heat pump was the best solution we chose instead a sort of halfway-house. We replaced the electric furnace with a modern efficient gas furnace and left space to add either a heat pump or an air conditioner should such prove necessary in the future.
Since then we have enjoyed a lovely toasty warm house during the winters for very reasonable gas costs – helped considerably by the replacement of most of the windows and the upgrading of the insulation during our renovations. Until this year the summers had not called for anything more than throwing the windows wide and turning on the ceiling fans.
This year – of course – has caused us to think again…
…but more on that next time…
Tags: air conditioning, British Columbia, climate change, heat pump, heatwave, House
These long days and concomitant short nights give us opportunities aplenty to observe from our deck the ever changing evening light upon the waters of Bazan Bay and the Haro Strait. We find ourselves particularly enjoying the varied spectacles that are the sunsets which are a feature of the season. It occurred to me that the gentle reader might care for the chance to do likewise – however vicariously…
As ever – click on the images for the full effect!
Two days ago I started a relatively light-hearted post on the subject of having to move into our basement to avoid the worst of the recent heatwave. By the time that I had finished and posted it yesterday the mood and tone of the piece had changed. News of the tragic sudden deaths of an unexpectedly high number of the elderly and infirm of British Columbia certainly put into perspective the trivial inconvenience of having to transfer our sleeping arrangements into our basement.
My post had also made reference to a visit that I paid back in the 1980s to the hill station of Ootacamund in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu. I included a quotation by the first Lord Lytton concerning the ‘English’ nature of the rain and the mud at Ooty. This Lord Lytton was the very same (though I had not noticed the fact at the time of writing) for whom the small settlement (less than 250 inhabitants) in the Fraser valley in BC was named – the which was coincidentally also mentioned in my post yesterday as being the town that had – over the past three days – set three successive all-time heat records for Canada.
It is doubtful that many outside the country had even heard of Lytton – though some may have seen items in the international press on this new and unwanted record.
Today Lytton is gone!
On Wednesday afternoon a wildfire swept through the town so quickly that there was no time to issue evacuation orders. Residents grabbed what they could, took to their cars and fled. Within two hours ninety percent of the town had burned to the ground. Though loss of life is thought currently to be mercifully light, the loss of homes and property is not.
Our heartfelt thoughts are with all those who have suffered and those who will continue to suffer as a result of this climate-related episode and should any others wish to suggest that now is not the time to be raising such matters I can only say:
“Now is exactly the time!”…
Tags: British Columbia, Canada, climate change, Grief, heatwave, Loss
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