 | It's strawberry season here so Fern and I went out to the Saanich Peninsula yesterday and spent the afternoon at the U-Pick place. My back won't take much bending over or kneeling these days but these berries were so sweet and juicy I hardly noticed the backache. |
| Thanks to a suggestion from a visitor to this site, I went to Cuthbert Holmes Park yesterday where some Great Blue Herons (Ardea herodias) are nesting in a group known as a heronry. Local users of the park helpfully guided me to the best location to view the birds. I saw about a dozen of these large nests while I was there but there are probably more since quite a few are located in living trees and are hard to see because they are hidden by the foliage. In years gone by this heronry has been under attack by Bald Eagles who swoop down on the heron nestlings. While I was there an eagle cruised slowly overhead. Though he was a long ways above, sailing peacefully along, all the herons took flight and began circling around their nesting area and making loud calls. A regular visitor to the park told me that she had to curtail her visits to the park last year because of the heartrending scenes arising from the eagle attacks. |  |
| Earlier this year I posted some photos of the Gonzales Observatory, which is no longer functioning as an astronomical observatory. Recently I visited a working observatory, the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, sited on the summit of a small mountain overlooking the city. Above is a view of Victoria from the observatory. (Click here to see a view over the city from Mount Douglas, taken in November last year.) |  |
Last week I spent an afternoon at the Glendale Gardens in Saanich, about a half hour's drive from Victoria. I'm still on holiday so here's another photo from that excursion.
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Victoria lies more or less at the southernmost tip of Vancouver island. The coast line thus spreads away to the northwest and northeast. The west coast of the island tends to be rocky and precipitous, beautiful but not as inviting to the agriculturist as the eastern flank, known as the Saanich Peninsula, pictured above. These are the pumpkin (or squash) fields of Mitchell's farm market where one can buy all sorts of fresh produce.
About 20 kilometers northeast of Victoria on the Saanich Peninsula is the small seaside town of Sidney, a delightful place to spend an afternoon.
Just offshore from Sidney lies Sidney Spit, accessible by ferry from the town of Sidney or by sailboat if you're lucky enough to have one in the family. Below is a video I shot of a sailing excursion we made out to Sidney Spit, starring my two granddaughters, Molly and Rosie.
Linnaea borealis (Gronov.) L. var. Longiflora Torr.
While out at Durrance Lake on the weekend, I chanced across one of my favorite wild flowers, the diminutive Twin-flower. I cannot do better than to share a few quotes from Lewis J. Clark's description in his Wild flowers of British Columbia:
How to write the charms of this exquisite woodlander? Perhaps in no more impressive way than to call attention to the fact that of all the thousands of plants known to him, this was the favourite flower of the great Carolus Linnaeus. And so Fredrik Gronovius, once his benefactor in Holland, in 1737 named the monotypic genus to honour his illustrious pupil.
This dainty plant spreads long runners creeping over the moss, or trailing from rotting logs or stumps, from which at frequent intervals rise 2-4 inch stems. These fork at the top, each branch supporting a single trumpet - a demure, pink, rose-flushed and slender bell. Where a patch of sunlight reaches the forest floor, an elfin troupe of hundreds of these exquisite little flowers fills the still air with an incredible sweetness - surely one of the most enchanting of all plant fragrances.
