The Imperceptible Immigrant

These are a few…

May 8, 2018 in Life as we know it, Photos | Permalink

It is no secret that we have now entered my favourite time of the year – a subject on which I have almost certainly waxed lyrical any number of times in previous postings (at around this time). There are many reasons to delight in the season… nature reborn – the first hints of the summer to come – the warmth anew upon one’s shoulders – the fresh aromas on the balmy breeze – that strange golden light in the sky!…

My first instinct is to break out the trusty Fuji and to document the nascent spring/summer season as I have done so many times before. As the photos attached below will attest I am not about to refrain from so doing on this occasion either.

It is also time for the first Intrepid Theatre festival of the season – ‘UNO Fest’ – a feast of one man/woman shows which aim to amuse, inform, to move and to set the tone for the rest of the year. I am once again on airport/ferry pickup duty – an endeavour that brings me into contact with fascinating artists from around the world – and what’s not to like about that?!

Finally – in response to Aeroplan threatening to expire our precious points should we not have used them by the end of the month, a short but expedient trip has been arranged. We leave on Thursday for Montreal – a city that I have not yet visited but which am very much looking forward to seeing – before heading back to Vancouver early next week in time to catch the Paul Simon farewell concert that was the subject of a previous missive.

Further photographic images are bound to follow…

Tags: Celebration, Gardens, Intrepid, Photo, Spring, Summer

A theory of relativity

April 26, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

As the drear dark days of winter finally pack their bags and grumble off to the southern hemisphere to bother somebody else, nature rubs its sleepy eyes, yawns and sticks its head outside for a quick recce. To its surprise and great delight there is no-one home! The adults are apparently all away and that mischievous little imp has the garden (yard) all to itself.

The results are pretty much in line with the description that the excellent Glaswegian comedian – Kevin Bridges – ascribes to the teenage gangs from his boyhood whenever one of their number discovered that he was the fortunate possessor of an ’empty’* for the weekend!

Mayhem ensues!

By the time the rain has drifted away, the temperature risen to an acceptable level and I get around to dragging my sorry behind out into the garden – it looks as though the rain-forest has dropped by and decided to stay for the duration. There follows a month (and more) of hard labour!

Now – this is where ‘relativity’ comes in.

I am – you must understand – not talking about Einstein here – nor Galileo nor Newton. I am referencing neither the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis nor meta-ethical morality (which turns out to be a good thing as my knowledge of either is limited to the world of Wikipedia!).

I refer to the fact that what appears during the height of the summer (I don’t venture out there at all in winter!) to be a perfectly sensibly-sized plot – just about large enough that the neighbours on either side don’t intrude in any way – metamorphoses in the inchoate springtime into a vast overgrown estate full of fiendish flora resembling nothing so much as Wyndham’s Triffids.

A whole bunch of seemingly endless hard work – in other words.

Worth it though, of course. Best get back to it…

* Parents away – house to themselves – party!!

Tags: British Columbia, Gardens, nature, Spring

The spring is sprung…

April 8, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

…the grass is riz.
I wonder where dem boidies is.
They say the boid is on the wing.
But that’s absoid.
The wing is on the boid!

Anon (as far as anyone knows!)

Three signs that spring is actually already here – however much the weather might be doing its very best to suggest otherwise.

First – the hummingbirds are back at the feeders again. The Kickass Canada Girl calls them ‘the diabetics‘ and observing just how much sugar nectar these tiny creatures tuck away I concede that she has a good point. Anyway – great to see them back again.

We did not have Christmas lights along the front of our house this year, since the upstairs was still in the hands of our contractors when the festive season rolled around. As a result there was no question of the lights being left up late – and thus no possibility of the hummingbirds using the strand again for their nesting ground as they did last year. Apparently hummingbirds like to stay pretty close to previous nest sites so we will see what they do this year.

Secondly – the dogwood tree is in bloom. The Girl has apparently long hankered for a dogwood tree and we now have one. This makes her happy – and that makes me happy.

I read that dogwoods often suffer badly from lawnmower and trimmer cuts if they happen to be adjacent to lawns. If the bark is damaged at a low level the trees can become prone to infestation. Ours is a big tree as set so far back from the grass that it is actually in next door’s yard, so it is not in any such danger. If anything the reverse is the case. When the flowers drop on the lawn they do so in the form of hard husks which very rapidly take the edge off one’s mower blades!

Final sign of spring? The return of the Anacortes ferry! During the winter months of January, February and March the little green and white car ferry – a familiar presence during the rest of the year and regular viewing from our windows and deck – voyages no further than the San Juan Islands, eschewing the last leg of the trip into Sidney. There is always a little quiet celebration in downtown Sidney when it is back on its usual route.

Good to see that spring is here again. Now let’s have some sunshine!

Tags: British Columbia, Celebration, Spring

Wet coast

April 6, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

One of the joys of living on the west coast of Canada – with its moderate oceanic climate and in what the World Wide Fund for Nature defines as the Pacific temperate rain forest ecoregion – is that we inhabit a verdant paradise of lush and abundant vegetation.

One of the drawbacks of living on the wet coast of Canada – with its moderate oceanic climate and in what the World Wide Fund for Nature defines as the Pacific temperate rain forest ecoregion – is that we inhabit a verdant paradise of lush and abundant vegetation!

Though the summers here on the tip of Vancouver Island tend to be dry and delightfully temperate, the winters incline to the aqueous. As I write this post I can gaze out of my studio window at a landscape that is undeniably ‘socked in’. I believe that the landscape is still there – but I cannot actually see any of it.

The result of all of this humectation is – naturally (see what I did there?) – that during the late winter and early spring all of that lush vegetation grows and grows and grows – as though there were no tomorrow! It grows upwards – it grows outwards – and it presumably grows downwards as well!

Nature reveals itself to be the epitome of the doctrine of the survival of the fittest, with each species striving voraciously to overrun its neighbour in the ongoing quest for sunlight, water and nutrients. Left to its own devices the wonderful variety of plants in our delightful garden (yard!) would doubtless whittle itself down to just a couple of bigger, stronger brutes as all the weedy (there I go again!) specimens are trampled underfoot (I think I just stretched that particular metaphor a little too thin!).

The bottom boundary of our compact but decidedly highly-desirable estate is bounded with splendid trees and dense foliage. This latter is mostly – as far as I am aware – laurel of one type or another. Now, apparently the Schipka Cherry Laurel – which appears to form the bulk of this hedge – has the following qualities:

Hardy to minus 10 degrees
Fresh, glossy evergreen foliage attractive all year round
Easily grown even in difficult urban conditions
Can be clipped into hedges and screens
Drought and deer resistant

It also grows around 2 ft a year up to a height of 18 ft! As this boundary growth had not been pruned back for at least two and a half years – and most likely rather longer than that – it was in serious danger of taking over the smaller shrubs in the bed in front of it, not to mention cutting off our view of the sea whilst simultaneously advancing on my croquet lawn!

Fortunately it can also be pruned really hard. Apparently it simply shakes itself off and starts growing again.

I do now have a huge pile of clippings to be disposed of. Any takers?

Tags: British Columbia, Gardens, Spring

(Melo)dramatic melange

March 28, 2018 in Life in BC | Permalink

This is, clearly (in theatrical terms at least) a busy time of the year at the southern end of Vancouver Island. The emergent springtime has germinated the fresh green shoots of a new festival season which will now run (with – admittedly – occasional pauses for us all to catch our breath) right through to the end of the summer…

…and if it is Spring Break (which it is!) then it must be time for the Spark Festival at the Belfry.

This year The Girl and I attended what can only really be described as a vocal workshop (though that doesn’t even remotely get close) which went under the title “Why We Are Here” and was led by Toronto-based company ‘Nightswimming‘. This peripatetic parade of improvised chanting and movement was not to everyone’s taste, but I quite liked the atmosphere elicited by this fair sized group of assorted souls on finding themselves in a darkened workshop backstage at the Belfry, propagating a constantly evolving and distinctly dreamlike tapestry of minimalist harmonic sequences.

Considerably more down to earth (not to mention being on a different planet in terms of quality) was Daniel MacIvor’s “Who Killed Spalding Gray?“. Daniel’s disquisition on the subject of the American monologist, who killed himself in 2004 by jumping from the Staten Island ferry in New York, was thoughtful and touching by turns and is certainly a work of a very high order. Daniel was also in town last May to deliver the keynote address at the launch of Intrepid Theatre’s ‘Uno Fest‘ and I was lucky enough (wearing my Board of Directors’ hat) to have had the opportunity to drive him back to the airport afterwards. A very interested and talented man…

The Spark Festival closed – as it usually does – with a short performance on Sunday last by the youngsters taking part in the Belfry’s 101 program. Wearing a different hat (quite a lot of millinery going on here) as an educator of young thespists I like to attend such events to ~~steal ideas~~ see what other talented young folk are up to. The group had spent the whole second week of Spring Break putting together this divertissement and clearly had loved working together as a group, which is – when it comes down to it – why we all do this thing in the first place.

Finally last Thursday evening to the Chemainus Theatre (my first visit) for the dress rehearsal of Colin Escott and Floyd Mutrux’s jukebox musical “Million Dollar Quartet”, which takes as its subject the legendary session at Sam Phillips’ Sun Records Studio in Memphis on December 4th, 1956 that brought together Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins and Jerry Lee Lewis.

For those that have never heard of the charming Cowichan Valley town of Chemainus a little light reading on the InterWebNet might be instructive. A short crossing (on the Mill Bay ferry) and forty minute drive up island from our neck of the woods it is a bit of a trek for a weekday evening, but we were fortunate on this occasion to have been gifted complimentary tickets by an acquaintance of The Girl’s who is a benefactor of the festival theatre there – hence our preview seats.

Now – not unlike some repertory theatres in the UK the cute and hugely successful Chemainus Theatre knows its audience well and goes out of its way to keep them happy. If that meant that this particular production somewhat sanitised some of the wilder characters and outpourings of 50s American rock and roll (not to mention enabling us to get home early enough for a good night’s sleep) then that took nothing away from a most pleasant evening.

Tags: Spring, Theatre, Vancouver Island

May flowers

May 1, 2017 in Life in BC, Photos | Permalink

“Sweet April showers do spring May flowers”

Thomas Tusser

Well – this winter has turned out to have been endowed with a drearily long tail here in British Columbia. Once the snows and ice had cleared and the winds had receded we all scampered each morning to our windows to gaze expectantly out at the big wide world without, hoping to welcome a glorious springtime. Instead the temperatures remained stubbornly low and the rain fronts continued to sweep in relentlessly from the Pacific.

There are at last – however – signs that the weather is about to pick up now that May is here. In any case the garden (yard!) has decided that it can wait no longer and is starting to burst out in all of its verdant glory. These vernal blooms – and many others – are greeted joyously…

Tags: British Columbia, Fuji x10, Photo, Spring, Weather

Surgery with a chainsaw

March 1, 2017 in Life in BC | 1 comment

“It’s kind of like doing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel. We had pieces and parts flying everywhere. It turned out in our favor. We’ve just got to clean it up the next time around.”

Mike Leach – football coach

I have made reference before in these reflections to the fact that in this part of the world our mains power arrives courtesy of cables strung between tall wooden poles. It is, in fact, not just the power that does so – phone lines, cable television and broadband data circuits are all delivered by the same means, using the same poles. As may be observed in the attached illustration this frequently results in an extensive cat’s-cradle of cables which runs the length of every rural thoroughfare.

The adoption of this delivery mechanism does, of course, make perfect sense. The distances concerned and the lumpy terrain mitigate against the burial of such services, on grounds of cost and practicality, and the ready availability on all sides of tall straight poles makes the chosen solution what is, I believe, oft referred to as a ‘no-brainer’.

The downside – as I have certainly mentioned before – is that the winter winds have a habit of bringing down the branches of neighbouring trees onto said power lines, resulting in outages at just the point that electricity and other cable-borne services would come in particularly handy – for heating, cooking, watching TV and surfing in the InterWebNet and suchlike.

By way of amelioration of this regular occurrence the provincial power company – BC Hydro – engages each spring a clutch of trouble-shooting tree specialists who are briefed to roam the byways looking for potential problems that might be averted by means of a little chainsaw butchery. Any tree branch that so much as glances in the direction of a power line is immediately whacked off and ground up into sawdust.

Thus is was that – one day last week – a sizeable swarm of trucks, pickups, cherry pickers and suchlike descended locust-like onto the verge outside our residence. The sound of chainsaws and chippers being fired up rent what might otherwise have been a sleepy afternoon. Half an hour later they departed like a swarm of angry wasps looking for another target, having committed an act of savagery on our lovely Arbutus and left an integument of detritus beneath it.

On being appraised of this visit The Girl wondered (somewhat provocatively) whether our neighbours might have ‘shopped’ us to the power company. The Arbutus is a beautiful tree but has the unusual distinction of shedding its foliage in the summer months whilst remaining resolutely verdant throughout the winter. One afternoon last summer – as our dear friend from Saanichton was helping us to widen our driveway in anticipation of the arrival of the good ship ‘Dignity’ – the little old lady from next door sidled up to me and enquired hopefully as to whether we were having the tree chopped down.

When I told her that we were not she looked most disappointed!

Tags: British Columbia, Spring, Weather

Where the wild things are

February 22, 2017 in Life in BC | Permalink

Woo hoo!

Today was the first day of the year on which the climactic conditions were conducive to getting down to a little ‘yard work’ – or ‘garden maintenance’ should you prefer. The temperature reached a balmy 9 degrees Celsius, the sun did its best to warm one’s weary shoulders, the breeze was persistently no more than playful and any precipitation that might have been lurked in the vicinity had a change of heart and took the afternoon off. As the forecast suggested that this would be the best day of the week I girded my loins (ooh-err!), pulled on my wellies and ventured forth.

The garden (for garden it shall be, ‘yard’ fans!) is in sore need of TLC, being as it is covered with a veritable layer of winter detritus. I am certainly not going to post any pictures of it at this stage, but will do so (weather permitting) in a couple of weeks when I have knocked things into shape.

Actually, I am posting one photo… that which appears at the top of this missive.

Living as we do in the wild northwest we are naturally accustomed to the indigenous wildlife apparently being of the opinion that it is we who are the interlopers. I regularly look out of the window to see two or three deer using the back garden as a thoroughfare, stopping for a chat and a snack en route. Canadians don’t really do boundaries (fences, hedges, walls and suchlike) in the way that the Brits do. This is probably a good thing because should a deer (or a bear or a cougar) decide that some barrier is blocking its preferred path it is most likely simply to demolish it.

Today, as I ventured outside, I came upon a big fat raccoon ambling across what passes (with a great deal of work) for my croquet lawn. I don’t know how the raccoons get to be so fat at this time of year, but ‘Googling’ “fat raccoon” shows that this particular one was not that exceptional.

As I worked away in the garden I heard an unusual bird call above my head. Looking up I saw that an eagle had alighted on a branch of one of the pines. A steady rain of downy fur-balls revealed that the bird had caught something and was in the process of preparing it for its lunch. I tiptoed inside get my camera and fired off the shot above, the which you will probably need to enlarge (by double-click thereon) if you are to make out any detail.

The eagle felt about being photographed whilst taking its repast much the same as would I and departed for a more secluded spot (with its lunch dangling from one talon) before I could get a better picture. I don’t blame it!

What you can’t see in the image above is the big black crow sitting just out of reach on a slightly higher branch. When the eagle flapped away the crow followed it. ‘Trickle down’ clearly does work in the animal kingdom!

Tags: British Columbia, Gardens, Spring, wildlife

Everything in the garden…

May 20, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam | Permalink

Idioms

“Everything in the garden is rosy”

(British English, saying) “everything is fine”

Oxford Learners’ Dictionary

A couple of weeks back I posted some snaps of the pleasant surprises that our recently acquired garden (yard!) has been bestowing upon us.

Sadly, not quite everything in our little corner of paradise was as gorgeous as those images may have suggested. There was one rather sorry strip just below our patio – about thirty feet wide by ten feet deep – that could only be described as ‘scrubland’.

This patch – which incorporates a fire-pit – may at one point have been graveled. Much of that covering had long since disappeared and whatever it was that remained clearly provided the perfect habitat for every possible variety of weed and couch grass known to man (and a few others for good measure).

As the spring progressed the presence of this eyesore became increasingly irritating until even this minimalist gardener could stand it no longer and decreed that action must be taken.

I spent a considerable portion of two days earlier this week removing the top surface of this blasted heath and winkling out as much weed root as I could bear to do. I discovered that not only was a fair chunk of our garden irrigation system just under the surface of this patch, but that it had several leaks, a couple of redundant spurs and was not laid in the optimal locations. All this was speedily remedied before I levelled the area and laid and pegged down a porous membrane across the whole patch – in the hope of at least keeping some of the weeds and grasses at bay.

Then it was hotfoot to my local supplier of aggregates – Peninsula Landscape Supplies – to order three yards of half inch clear crushed aggregate. I did this at around one o’clock on Thursday last and was delighted when it was delivered to our door shortly before three o’clock that same afternoon. Splendid service!

The dump pickup dropped the load as close to the patio as possible, but that was a good twenty five yards away. It was then down to me – armed only with a plastic wheelbarrow, a shovel and a rake – to transmute the resultant mountain into the rather splendid gravel strip that can be seen in the attached photo – and all before the Kickass Canada Girl arrived home from work!

If I tell you that three yards of aggregate weighs in the region of four and a half tons, you might understand why my body feels today rather as though it has been hit by particularly large truck.

I suspect it would have been considerably worse had I not been attending weights classes twice a week since September last. I knew that there was a reason for so doing…

Tags: Gardens, Spring

Voyage of discovery

May 10, 2016 in Flotsam and Jetsam, Photos | Permalink

“The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes'”

Marcel Proust.*

For each ‘new’ garden (Canadian: yard!) that one inherits there is a marvelous, scary, joyous voyage of discovery – lasting a year – during which time is revealed all that lies concealed within. This earlier post told part of the story of our garden; the images below testify to the fact that there is never (thus far at any rate) a dull moment therein.

* What Proust actually wrote was:

“The only true voyage of discovery, the only fountain of Eternal Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is; and this we can contrive with an Elstir, with a Vinteuil; with men like these we do really fly from star to star.”