Peace Pond

To escape email and leave the laptop behind. Yes, this is where I can go to leave it all behind for even a moment at a time. The dragon flies, the birds chirping or taking a bath, the koi, the little frogs, the garden kitties basking in the tall grass, and the lovely sound of the fountain. Hidden behind the daisies, lucifer and grasses, to me it is peace. You can't see the pond from this angle, and that makes it special. It's why I took this shot. The sun's rays bless the spot each day around the time I get home from work.

I never really thought of naming the pond until now. Names should have some sort of meaning. This summer it is the Peace Pond. I may have a different name next year. I'll think about it.

Just Plum Crazy!

I remember how excited I would get when I was a kid and the prune plums were ready in the markets. They were my favorite, but they also arrived pretty close to the time we had to go back to school: the fall! I recall my mom stewing up the plums and serving them with ice cream or making a plum cobbler, and the smell of the cooking plums. Mostly I just remember eating them. Clean and easy to eat, with a cling-free stone, so no mess. Needless to say I was ecstatic when we bought our own little italian prune plum tree almost 3 years ago. Sure, we had a handful of plums the second year, but this year, we have a crop!! Take a look!

Yes indeed, these are our very own prune plums, and boy oh boy are they delicious just off the tree. They are still ripening every day, but there are always a few ready each day. My special treat now when I come home from work is to run out back to the tree to pluck a plum. They have a very short season so we simply must make the best of it! I love to stand under the tree and just look up. It's like Christmas decorations.

And we grew this!! I feel like an orchardist now!!! Clearly what we've learned is that this long, hot, drought of a summer has been exactly what the fruits want. Raspberries, gooseberries and blackberries were and are prolific. My fig tree produced its first few figs this year, all 4 apple trees are loaded and perfect and still ripening, and of course now the plums. Ah yes, the plums. It makes up for the poor veggie crop this year that was starved of water. Time to check out a few Italian plum recipes. Plum cake I think!

Blind but Brave

This lovely doe lives up the top of our road and has two twin fawns. I see her and the twins every day on my way to work. The other day, Chris and I were coming back from the Cove and there she was on the side of the road. Her twins were across the road grazing, but she was just hanging out watching the odd car go by. I asked Chris to stop and I rolled the window down. She turned and looked right into the car window and I realized she was blind in one eye. I snapped this shot, and thought how fitting it was to have a blind doe close by. Here I am with Chris and his funny eye after surgery and Gypsy my kitty with one green eye and one brown eye now. Just seemed ok.

Blackberry Season

This summer drought has been the best thing for our berry crops this year. Our raspberries were never ending, and now the blackberries are starting to be ready for picking.

Blackberries surround our fence line so we are not lacking. I picked our first bowl last night. Despite the prickly stems, when you lift the stalks, the ripest berries just fall without asking, right into the bowl.

I'm not a cook, or a chef, or even a very good baker, but I found a wonderfully easy recipe on the net for a blackberry crumble. Called for 4 cups of berries, and I just happened to have 5. It actually turned out!!! Wow! (It could have had more crumble though). I'll bake another.

I guess that's what we will be living on for the next few weeks. I love blackberries! Blackberries for breakfast in the morning! Yum yum!

Chris's Fabulous Vitrectomy

I know, you have no idea what that word means and you will want to google it, but I'll save you the time. The vitreous is the gel-like substance that is inside the centre of the eye. Its the first thing that gives the eye its shape before birth. So during a vitrectomy, the vitreous gel is removed and temporarily replaced with an aqueous fluid while the vitreous replaces itself. Yuk. Chris had to have this surgery to clear scar tissue that had formed over time from burst blood vessels. The scar tissue was causing blurred vision because it obscured the light from getting through the eye to the retna. Lovely, eh! He was admitted to the day surgery ward of the hospital where they put him in a silly blue suit, with a silly blue shower cap and gave him some really cute little blue booties.

The surgery was about an hour. I was very glad it wasn't me. That's what I was thinking because I just get squeamish when it comes to eyes. When they told me he was done and back in his cubicle, I popped in to see the groggy guy but the nurse was still working on him.

I came back to find that he had survived the procedure but was still a bit woozey.

He told me the surgery was not painful, just odd sensations. There was some conscious sedation, and a needle to numb the eye. A bit of novocaine above his cheekbone underneath his eye as well, so this numbed the eye and kept it from moving and also seeing. He described some kind of stretch plastic wrap covering his whole face so he couldn't even see anything out of his other eye. I read that the surgeon uses needles and scrapers to remove the scar tissue from the eye and then drains the vitreous liquid and fills the eye back up with another liquid which eventually is absorbed away somewhere. His eye was patched and shielded and he was told to return to the doctor the next morning to get the patch off and have the eye dilated and checked. The doc said the surgery was 100% successful, gave him antibiotic drops and anti-inflammatory drops and sent him on his way. So getting to see the unpatched eye was cool. He had a big bruise on his face below the eye and a huge patch of blood on the white of his eye which I later learned was the bruise from where they put the freezing needle in. Yuk!! The poor fellow could not see through that eye. It was like he was looking underwater through that replacement fluid which moved like waves when he moved his head.

It has been one week now since the surgery and the fluid has mostly gone and his sight is pretty much back unless he looks down. If he looks down he still sees the water. His pupil is still more dilated than the good eye but I assume that will rectify itself as well. He goes back to the doctor in another week but I think all is well, or it will be well.

My Amphibious Friends

Ok - the frog farming is over. All the taddies went back into the pond as froglets to fend for themselves. Nature is so cruel. I know there is a snake that visits the pond and I know that the herons pay visits and I do have koi. My only hope is that more of them have a chance to survive now than they would have if I left the eggs in the pond. Since the release, I have seen 6, on different occasions. They were still so tiny that it makes me wonder if the spawn I raised was really red-legged brown frogs or the pacific northwest tree frog. Like this little guy:

He's a regular visitor this past week. Every so cute. I'd like to think he is one of mine. The Pacific tree frog grows only about 2 inches. The males are smaller than the females and have a dark patch on their throats. The dark patch is the vocal sac, which stretches out when the male is calling. They are one of the noisiest little frogs, and are also known as chorus frogs. Pacific tree frogs can be a number of different colors, including green, tan, red, brown, cream, and black, but most are a shade of green or brown, with pale or white bellies. They have a black eye stripe that stretches from the nose, across the eye, and back to the shoulder. They can change color to better match their environments. I witnessed this when I found a tiny brown one in my kitchen sink one morning, and when I released him outside he turned green. Very cool. Their skin is covered in tiny bumps that you can hardly notice. On the end of each toe is a round, sticky toe pad used for climbing and sticking to surfaces. I can watch this little guy for ages. He is just too cute!!

A Fairy Fen

Having lived on Bowen Island for quite some time now, I've heard a lot about the Fairy Fen but never knew what it was or where. My friend Elisabeth had promised to show me where it was, so yesterday she led me through a semi-rugged trail in a dense dry forest to show me the Fen.

Most of the trail looked like this forest, yet I was told that the Fairy Fen has been described by biologists as one of the most undisturbed, biologically diverse, and ecologically rare fens in southern British Columbia (a fen is a wetland fed by ground or surface water and is neutral or alkaline in its chemistry, supporting a high diversity of plant and animal species). The Fairy Fen on Bowen protects unique plants, such as Labrador Tea, bog St. John’s-wort, bog cranberry, and a wide variety of sedges and mosses. Western Bluebirds use Fairy Fen as part of their migration route, Pileated Woodpeckers are often heard in the trees, and Bald Eagles frequent the skies above. Needless to say, I couldn't imagine how there could be such a wetland in the midst of all this dry forest. But eventually we came upon a variety of what I would call "sink-holes" full of water, like these 2 below. These holes were full of water, despite the fact that we have not had any rain to speak of this summer.

The ground around these holes, and there were many of them, felt like a springboard. Perhaps a lot of peat? I was a little nervous thinking that we might be walking along and a new hole might open up. That's just how odd the ground felt as we walked. Still in the forest, we took a few more steps, and voila! The Fen was right before out eyes:

I understand wetlands and bogs, and the differences between them and a Fen, but what I found so odd, is how the dense dry forest could conceal such a unique treasure. Very cool!

Bambi

It's that time of year on Bowen. The little fawns are all about now so cars slow down and dog's are on leashes. This little baby was just on the roadside near our driveway.

His sibing was across the road, maybe with mamma.

Koi Update

Though our pond is desperately in need of water, the koi and goldfish seem to be happy enough with the shrinking space and depth. Fred, our biggest and oldest Koi is 6 years old now and we figure he must weigh at least 8lbs.

The other 3 koi are still nameless and are 3 years old.

Their sexes have yet to be determined, but we are pretty sure this year that we have seen some baby koi swimming among the baby goldfish. My bet is that Fred is really Fredrika, but who knows!

Red-Veined Meadowhawk Dragonfly

These amazingly fast darters are regular visitors to the pond. This one stopped to have a visit on the clothes line yesterday as I was hanging the laundry out to dry.

Boating Crew

The Skipper brave and sure! Chris

The Mate is a mighty boating man! Terry

Passenger Pat - the optimistic fisher of seafood!

She caught a rock cod and a ling cod, both catch and release though. They were too small.

And "moi" - always along for the suntan!

A good day boating just can't be beat!

Rocks, Seals and Birds

The August long weekend brought Pat and Terry to Bowen for a visit and we did what most civilized folks do when the weather is hot and sunny on the west coast. We jumped in the boat with a picnic lunch and off we went. We headed north to Pam Rocks, just a little south of Anvil Island. Pam Rocks is a grouping of large and small rocks right in Howe Sound and is a haven for sea lions who lie on the rocks sunning themselves and staring at the boaters who pass buy.

There was one particular white seal that caught our eye. He was the only white one, so not sure if he belonged to the group or was just passing by.

Next to Pam Rocks is Christie Islet. There are hundreds of birds here as it is a bird sanctuary.

We spotted many noisy Oyster Catchers, like these below:

And the gulls were nesting and noisy as well. I caught this gull on his way out of the water to the islet:

Cormorants were sunning themselves, and on other occasions we have seen bald eagles, puffins and some birds we are yet to recognize. It's one of our favorite spots, and a great place to snorkel or scuba dive as the sea-life below is abundant.

Even Footies Need a Vacation

First comes a salt water soak.

Followed by a salt-breeze air drying.

And a lovely elevated rest in the sun.

Magic!!