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“If you want to test your memory, try to recall what you were worrying about one year ago today.”
E. Joseph Cossman
So very much has happened in the last year; it is difficult sometimes to ‘get one’s head around it’. These photos were taken a year apart! Where would I rather be?…
Tags: Holiday, Mexico, Photo, Snow, Sunshine, Victoria, Weather, winter
“Snow makes a soft bed, but no man wakes from it. That was the wisdom of the North”.
Mark Lawrence
The gentle reader will probably not need me to point out that tomorrow (for I write this missive on Sunday 17th January!) is known in some circles as ‘Blue Monday’… the most depressing day of the year!
It will also hardly be necessary for me to enumerate the more obvious reasons why this year in particular this January day already has a head start – even before taking into account the financial pressures of the festive season just passed – the generally grim weather throughout the northern hemisphere – the dis-incentives to indulge in exercise or to get out and about – the premature failure to keep up with any of the New Year’s resolutions that one was careless enough to make – the glacial pace with which the days grow longer – the seemingly endless wait for spring…
As suggested – I have not even mentioned the pandemic – the disturbing political situations in all too many places – the dismal fallout of Bre*it!
…and so on…
…and so on…
Is it any wonder that many of us find ourselves feeling a little – er… blue!
So – let us consider one or two cheerier things to raise our spirits a little:
OK – enough of that. In my next post I will look forward to the year ahead – something I have been putting off…
Here comes the rain again
Falling on my head like a memory
Falling on my head like a new emotion
Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart
First things first… The Imperceptible Immigrant and the Kickass Canada Girl wish you all a (slightly belated) Happy New Year.
This Christmas period was always going to be an odd one, given that the necessary response to the pandemic was to curtail much habitual yuletide activity. We attended no gatherings of friends or family – we went to no Christmas-tide theatrical or musical events – we entertained no gatherings of like-minded souls for Christmas feasting.
In the circumstances perhaps the only Christmas-related activities in which we might have been expected to engage would have been the bracing and frequently blustery walks that we use at this time of year to help us counteract the expected surfeit of good cheer (too much food and drink!). Regular readers may recall that I normally take a camera with me on such jaunts – the resultant snaps featuring routinely within these postings.
This year – sadly – there have been no such expeditions. Not – I should hasten to add – for COVID-19 related reasons, but quite simply because for the last week (and more) it has not stopped raining…
…and raining – on occasion – in what can only be described as a biblical manner. Well – we do live on the we(s)t coast of Canada!
Bah!
Oh well – one really mustn’t grumble (no – really one mustn’t!). Things could be much, much worse – and at least we get to sleep in, cuddle up in front of the fire and watch old films and satirical reviews of the year (laugh? I nearly… er – didn’t!).
So – that’s all good then…
Tags: New Year, rain, Vancouver Island, winter
‘Aging’ has been bad ever since we figured out it led to dying.
Erin McKean
Yup – growing old is no fun at all… as the saying goes.
Actually – it doesn’t, since if you sell your soul to Google in (pretty poor) exchange for some gobbets of insight all you will find on the subject are remorselessly positive platitudes… as though the ‘quoterati’ run scared of being seen to be ageing anything other than gracefully and with an abundance of hard-earned wisdom – rather than having the tough time of it that some of them undoubtedly are…
…but I really mustn’t sound bitter – because I am not. I am in fact surfing the age-wave like a… like a… surfer ‘dude’!
Hmmm! That didn’t turn out so well, did it?
Anyway – ageing does actually have much to recommend it and I am not complaining… except for the physical aspects. There is sadly no denying that – whatever one does – as the body ages bits of it work less well than once they did.
This is currently foremost in my mind because I have just restarted the fitness class that I have been attending pretty much ever since we came to Canada some four and a half years ago. The class is very popular and I could not get a place for the December or January sessions. What with the Christmas celebrations falling in the interim it has been a while since I put the old ‘bod’ under this degree of stress… and it shows. I have – if I am being honest – never much enjoyed the business of exercise itself – not being one of those odd folk that relishes pain – but I do like the feeling of being reasonably fit. It will take a good few weeks to get back to that point.
There is no avoiding the fact that my body now has a few weaknesses. My right knee starts to complain under repeated stress; my doctor thinking that arthritis is the most likely cause. My right shoulder gives up earlier than my left when working with weights; I know from previous explorations that the shoulder joint does have some bone impingement, which doesn’t help.
I am fortunate in that my hands are not too bad. In the winter I do wake up to find them uncomfortably stiff and it takes a while for things to loosen up, but I guess that just comes with age. I need to be able to continue playing both bass and keyboards for as long as possible, so I am keeping my fingers (ever so slightly painfully) crossed.
No grumbles though. This is just the way the cookie crumbles as one maneuvers oneself into the second half of one’s seventh decade.
There are many far worse off than am I – and I am most grateful not to be in their shoes.
We do not normally get much snow here in Victoria (last year was an exception) and we handle it about as well as does London and the south east of England. Most years the snow experience is similar to that which we have just enjoyed; a brief – if heavy – fall of snow, followed rapidly by recovering temperatures and the associated expeditious disappearance of said frozen precipitation.
We do, however, occasionally get a ‘Snow Day’ – as did we yesterday. It was a teaching day for me and I awoke to the news that neither my – nor my students – presence would be appreciated on campus. College was closed!
Traditionally one emits a loud ‘Whoopee!’ at this point, followed by joining the eager throng rushing out to play in the snow. I restricted myself to the former – any pretence at the latter taking the form of shoveling snow to try to keep our access clear.
Anyway – it looked like this:
One of the big challenges in this sort of weather is keeping the nectar in the hummingbird feeders from freezing. When it does so I have to contemplate venturing outside to whisk the feeders in and try to warm the contents. The birds themselves, meanwhile, are getting in the habit of lining up outside the windows – wings a-flutter – and peering in at us as if to say – “Oy! Get out here and sort this out!”
The first thing that came into most people’s minds (of those to whom I divulged our impending move to Canada some five years ago) was the thought of the Canadian winter – as though that somehow defined the country. Further, it was reasonably clear that their preconceptions ran primarily to winter sports. Maybe in the back of their minds they conjured up this sort of image:
Now – of course – Canadians don’t exactly always go out of their way to discourage this sort of stereotype and it does have to be said that in parts of the land there is a fair bit of winter to be had.
But not so here on the Wet… pardon me… West coast. Our winters tend to look more like this:
Nice weather for the ducks – though the cormorants don’t look so impressed. These photos were taken today in Sidney by the Sea on the umpteenth (seemingly) day of apocalyptic gloom and ceaseless and torrential rain.
With us right through Christmas apparently!
Still – a good excuse to stay indoors and snuggle up…
Tags: British Columbia, Photo, Weather, winter
Down in Sidney-by-the-Sea today was a somewhat blustery day. As may be deduced from a quick look at the accompanying map:
…the Saanich peninsula (on which Sidney occupies a small but growing area near the top and to the eastern side) is fairly well protected from any of the worst of the wild winter winds that might wreak havoc out in the Georgia Strait by the archipelago that comprises the Gulf Islands (Canada) to the north and the San Juan Islands (USA) to the south. As a result the seas in the Haro Strait and particularly in Bazan Bay tend to be placid and even millpond-like on balmy summer days.
There are days however – in winter – when the wind comes directly off the water and the clouds scud in from the open sea. Then – even in the early afternoon – it looks more like this:
Tags: British Columbia, Vancouver Island, Weather, winter
We had – the gentle reader may recall – our first smattering of snow here in Victoria this year on around February 6th. This was just a taster for what was to come over the following period and by February 12th we had experienced what was confidently declared a ‘once every half decade’ level of snowfall.
Should the aforesaid benign bibliomaniac wish to refresh his or her memory as to what that all looked like – then you need go no further than this snow covered post.
And that was pretty much that – at least with regards to the descent of frozen precipitation.
The temperature – however – remained rooted on the lower part of the scale and, as far as the snow that had already fallen was concerned, it stayed pretty much where it had landed.
Now as of today – March 10th – we hear that this week (finally!) – the temperature is likely to rise for the first time since the start of February into double digits!… which means that the remains of the snowdrifts should finally disappear. The small patch of snow in the accompanying image is the very last that remains on our little estate here in North Saanich and I confidently predict that it will be gone within a day or so.
Unfortunately this will mean that I must needs get out and start clearing up the debris that the winter storms have left behind. I spent a couple of hours in our back garden yesterday and it was a far from painless experience.
Ouch!
It is two weeks now since the snows started to fall and the winds started to howl…
Whereas we have certainly had clear and reasonably pleasant days since that belated and unwanted burst of winter, the temperatures have remained low enough that we are still waiting for the last of the snows to melt and/or wash away.
It is fair to say that this quantity of snow is unusual on the island – or at least at this end of it – and that if we have to wait for another seven years or more for a repeat performance that would be no bad thing.
Because the winds came early and were pretty ferocious when they did so a fair amount of detritus was blown from the trees. When the serious snows started two weekends ago they not only covered up the considerable debris field that had by then formed beneath them but the weight of snow on the taller trees brought down a number of larger branches, the which were themselves then buried in the drifts.
To this point there they have remained, since there is little incentive to try to get things properly cleared up whist there is still a great deal of wet snow around.
Foliage aside we seem to have made it through the winter storms relatively unscathed – with one somewhat sorry exception.
The good ship ‘Dignity’ is in most respects well enough designed to be able to brave all that the elements can throw at her. Sadly her canvas top – which has of late in any case been looking as though it were nearing the end of its useful life – was clearly not up to having a foot and a half of snow dumped on top of it. After holding out for a couple of days a seam split and dumped what was by then a fairly serious snowdrift into her cockpit.
I got thoroughly cold and wet cleaning her insides out and now ‘Dignity’ must suffer the ‘in-dignity’ of having to be protected by a somewhat ropey green tarpaulin until such point that I can get a replacement top made.
I suspect that she has seen worse!
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