Sure Signs of Fall

Friends from back East emailed me some beautiful pictures of the fall colours around their house. Amazingly vibrant reds and such. I do miss the sugar maple's dramatic fire orange leaves of fall. It's much more difficult to find these blazing colours on the West Coast.

Other than the days getting progressively shorter, a noticeable nip in the air and of course, the rains that have started to come more regularly... I decided to go look for sure signs of fall.

Here are a few:

Above, a sample of Oregon grape (Mahonia aquifolia) in the fall. It does go a bit deeper red, in some spots, so it qualifies as a fall colour item...

Then, there are the tall ferns that border the driveway to our place. They die back at this time of year. Before they die back, they go yellow and dry up. Their texture presents a gorgeous light contrast to the dark Douglas fir and cedar forest around here.



Then, there is the Bigleaf maple (Acer macrophyllum, of course). They can be very large, and their wear their name well... Big leaves, you could serve a meal on those.

And finally, the eagles have returned from their fishing holiday near the rivers of Vancouver Island and the mainland. They were gone for a couple of months, but they are back!

This morning, at 8 am, I heard the distinct peeping of an eagle, and looked out the window: sure enough, there he (or she, I didn't ask) was, perched on the tree and surveying the countryside for something to eat. In the background, the neat rows across the water belong to Morning Bay Vineyard, on Pender Island. I plan to make an outing to this vineyard, one of these days...

Mushrooms... Fruiting Around Here

Over the past few days,the sky has been moody around here... The clouds move around in dark groups, with a sunbreak here and there. Love that word, sunbreak. It describes exactly what happens when the sun makes a run for it, among the clouds...

Took the dog for a walk this afternoon, and the camera. The mushrooms are appearing in greater numbers, and lots of variety. Here are three examples... Hope you can help identify them, because I'm too tired to pick up the mushroom book and do the Sherlock thing tonight.

Mystery Mushroom One

Mystery Mushroom Two

Mystery Mushroom Three

And below, here's Mr. Finn, sitting pretty in the hawkflowers, after a half hour of chasing his ball around the Hidden Meadow...

It's a very nice time of the year, before the late fall storms. That's when the wind rattles your windows and you wonder whether the roof will stay on the house... Let's enjoy the calm before the storm.

The Quiet Season Begins

October, after the Thanksgiving long weekend. You can really tell this is the beginning of the island's "quiet season". A time when you recognize the majority of the people in the other vehicles in the ferry line - which isn't very long - and on the ferry. As a matter of fact, you know their vehicles. You know their dogs. You know their dogs' names... You get the drift.

Unless - of course - you are the only car on the ferry (see above). A rare occurrence. I felt like... what was her name? Cleopatra, yes. Except she had a barge, with lots of guys rowing.

Over the past few weeks, we hosted a series of visitors and we all had a good time. Lots of exploring, parties, visiting. Now the time has come for a little introspection. More time for indoor chores and hobbies. And some art.

What am I talking about? This is the beginning of the fall season of parties. The social calendar is about to heat up.

How About a Little Trim?

There's a TV show called Men in Trees. On my island, we have actual men who go up trees, to trim them or - in the case of my neighbours' place last week - to remove some large Douglas firs that were too close to the house. When it gets windy around here, and you see these big trees waving around, although you love trees, you get worried for your roof.

In this particular case, the man who goes up the tree is Dr. Daylight. Yep, that's his business name: Dr. Daylight Tree Service. I am not making this up!

To tackle this task, Dr. Daylight has to get up the tree, using safety gear and a chainsaw, to cut off the limbs that block his climb. Then he cuts up sections of the trunk, starting a good way up the tree, and using wedges to send the massive trunk bits falling in the right direction (away from the house, that is)...


Here he is, after sectioning off the top.

I should have taken a picture of the spikes that are attached to his shoes. The shoes he is wearing are called "caulk shoes", but this is pronounced "cork shoes". Go figure. I am new to this, I come from the East.

Between dealing with the two trees, Dr. Daylight took a break and sat on the deck with a cup of coffee When he returned to the job, he left the deck on hands and knees, to avoid walking on the deck with the caulk shoes. Those little crampons are pretty sharp!

I am still amazed by the strength and dexterity that it takes to do this work. Not for the faint of heart. And of course, if you are afraid of heights, this job's not for you...

A Visitor from England Touched the Pacific

My friend, artist Marie Roper visited Saturna recently. All the way from England, via Vancouver, Seattle and LaConner, where she is in a group show, titled SIX (the show is on till the end of December, another good reason to visit LaConner). It was a thrill to pick Marie up at the Washington State Ferry in Sidney, and bring her to Saturna on our "little ferry", the Mayne Queen. Her travel schedule was pretty tight, but she managed to make a window of 36 hours to spend some time on my magic island in the strait of Georgia...

What do you do with visitors? Take them to the beach, of course. Here she is, touching the Pacific. Testing the waters. Yep, it's frightfully cold water, and very clear too.


Marie and I are textile artists. We are easily fascinated by texture and wandered the beach, taking a long look (and a very close look) at all kind of minute things. It's nice to do this with someone who "understands"... No need to explain why it's taking you soooooo long to crawl around, staring at things. For example, we spent a lot of time holding up this disintegrating bull kelp, held together by encrusting bryozoans. Their skeletons, really. (If you are interested, click on this link, it'll take you to a very detailed page on bryozoans, with fantastic electron micrograph images of these critters.) We wanted to get a good counter lit image of the skeletons. Just one part of the flotsam on the beach at low tide.


And here is Marie, sizing up some major flotsam. BC is a place of giant trees, and their giant bits scattered on beaches around these islands... Brought in by the tide.


While we were looking at the birds at East Point, an otter came by, patrolling the shore for goodies. It was not the least disturbed by our presence. There was business at hand...



Just before dinner, we drove up to the Mount Warburton Pike summit, and had a quiet moment of meditation. The sun was trying to create a bit of drama, among the clouds. And around us, goats. Dozens of feral goats, grazing the grasses of Brown Ridge around us. Sorry I don't have pictures of those goats... it was getting too dark.


All too soon, it was time for Marie to get back to Vancouver, the next leg of her trip. Above, her ride on that morning, the Seair flight from Lyall Harbour, Saturna, to Richmond, near the airport.

Accidental Crash - One Fatality

Earlier in the week, we had a stormy night with fairly high winds. The dog was walking circles next to my bed, too nervous to sleep because the wind gusts were rattling the windows. I moved his bed next to mine, and he settled down. I had a "light night" too... in French, we call that a nuit blanche...

The wind knocked trees down across the power lines, with a resultant power outage. That means internet outage too... So the next morning, I went to work (online) at the Saturna Recreation Centre, where power and internet were still available.

Mid-morning, my friend C. came to see me with a little towel-wrapped package. She said "It's sad, but very beautiful". She unwrapped this lovely little owl, barely 8 inches tall.

A saw-whet owl

The owl had crashed into her window, probably disoriented by the winds. Bad manoeuvre, it proved fatal. Wisely, my friend C. took it to our local ornithologist, H., who identified it as a Saw-Whet owl.

So it's not just trees and houses that are affected by high winds. Birds pay a price too.