Mushrooms

After all the rain, we are growing some fair-size boletus mushrooms in our front annual bed.  Edible but, alas, not choice.  (Twoonie included for scale.)

Heritage Spoons

I was visiting my mother this week and these spoons she gave me came up.  Monogram SB on one side and RS(?) on the other.

Dudelsack

I am spending some time with my Mother up in Smithers this week and we were discussing our recent trip to Spain and Leo's encounter with the Spanish bagpipers.

Then she remembered an illustration she'd seen in her book of Grimm's fairytales that she'd brought from Germany 60 years ago.  

 

How can you top this?  A hedgehog riding a rooster and playing the Dudelsack (German for bagpipe).

Great Day on the Cariboo River

On Tuesday we had our first paddle of the year down the lower Cariboo River.  It was supposed to be a shakedown trip for our 2-week trip on the Snake River in August, but we weren't organized enough to get all our gear together.  The water was pretty high so it was a quick run, over in an hour and a half.  As you can see the weather was fabulous.  

Birgit took this photo of us in our inflatable kayak

Big thanks to newly retired Nola for reducing our shuttle time!

The Birds are Back in Town

Finally, thisweek all our summer songbirds have arrived, including the flycatchers and my personal favourite the northern catbird.

We visited Scout Island several times this week and Leo got some pictures:

Rufous Hummingbirds

One of three wood ducks sitting on a log

On Saturday someone counted 80 goslings (!)

And a cinnamon Teal

Vancouver Island for the Long Weekend

For the Victoria Day weekend, Leo had accepted an invitation to run a marathon in Courtenay and visit our friends John and Janice, who moved there from Williams Lake a few years ago.  The marathon was cancelled so Leo ran the half marathon instead.  Mark and Leah came down with us and here are the 3 amigos after the race.

After the race we drove down to Victoria and spent a few days with my sister Dorothea.  We checked out the Kite festival at Clover Point.  You can't tell from this picture, but there were hundreds of kites in the sky, and a demonstration of 12 kites maneuvering in formation to music. 

The next day we took the pedestrian ferry over to Sidney Spit, part of the Gulf Islands National Park Reserve.

Waiting for the ferry to depart

We walked all over the island through the forest and along its long beaches.  All the weekend campers were going home when we arrived so we had the island mostly to ourselves.

I relied on Leo to take pictures and this is the only remotely landscape he took.

 They put up birdhouses for the purple martins.

The next day we drove out to Point No Point for lunch, stopping at Sheringdale lighthouse

and Fishboat Bay on the way.

The next morning on the ferry back to Tsawassen the captain announced there was a whale on the starboard side of the boat so we ran out and saw first its tail pop up, then it breached right in front of us, but all Leo got a picture of was

It wasn't that large so Leo thinks it may have been a Minke.