A Little Snow

There's not much snow in this photo and that's pretty much the situation here. At this time of year we are usually pitying our friends in the east while they don their parkas and get out the snow shovels and snow tires. This year, however, Ontarians are basking in warm weather while we're suffering from wind chill in sub-zero temperatures. Well, it was clear and sunny yesterday when I took this photo and it almost felt like winter was over. But today....

Winter!

One of the nice touches along the Westsong and West Bay Walkways are the two drinking fountains. As well as providing water to pedestrians there is often a bowl nearby for dogs. The fountain above is located at Songhees Point but the ice that covers it is an indication of the weather for the last few days. Yesterday snow was added to the icy cold and in the morning we had a real little blizzard. I ventured outside long enough to take the photo to the left. Today we still have some snow left on the ground and it is minus 5 degrees Celsius outside. But it is bright and sunny so I'll be going out soon.

The Daily Fungus

I've fallen in love with fungi. They are such wonderful subjects - they are practically infinitely varied (about 1.5 million species); they come in all sorts of interesting colors, shapes and sizes; they stay nice and still and generally grow where the light is soft. What more could a photographer ask? What's more, they are a very weird and interesting life form. The more I find out about them the more they fascinate me. Wikipedia has a good article on fungi and is also host to the Fungi Portal with loads more information.

Crème Brulée

Maybe I'm just hungry this morning but the cap of this mushroom looks to me like some kind of delicious little cake topped with crème brulée or maybe carmelized sugar or... maybe crème brulée drizzled with carmelized sugar. (This probably means it's time to crawl directly to the emergency sugar stash....)

Blue Bridge

Today's photo is just to remind my fellow Victorians that today is the day to decide the fate of the Johnson Street Bridge. The photo was taken in September a year ago when an art event to celebrate the bridge was organized by artist Derek Houston and johnsonstreetbridge.org. Lots of meetings and discussions later, today it all comes to a vote on whether to build a new bridge or not.

---

UPDATE: November 21 - Victoria voted. We are to have a new bridge but since it will take 4 years to build it we will have lots of time to say goodbye the old Blue Bridge. I think we'll lose a valuable bit of our history when it's gone but I look forward to the new span with interest.

Winter

Last night on a national news broadcast about lots of snow in Calgary the announcer mentioned that winter had still not begun. She, along with the rest of the world, seems to think that the seasons begin and end on the solstices and equinoxes. I don't agree. It seems to me that the solstices and equinoxes generally mark the middle of the seasons, not their ends. Take winter for example. December 21 is the solstice that ostensibly marks the end of autumn and the beginning of winter. I don't know where these people live but here, by December 21, it has been cold for some time. November is not exactly t-shirt or bikini weather in Victoria. Another problem with using the solstices and equinoxes to mark the beginnings/ends of seasons is that winter, spring, summer and autumn are not the same length. I'd say winter here is about 5 months long, spring is about 3 months long, summer is about a month long and autumn is about three months long. So, those of you who are slavishly devoted to the calendar can think of this as autumn if you will. As far as I am concerned, this is winter. Above, taken while I braved the icy northern blasts of Pacific gales, is a photo of the strait of Juan de Fuca. The large ship is a container vessel and the smaller ship is the Victoria Clipper, a high speed catamaran passenger ferry that operates between Victoria Harbor and Seattle.

About Fungi

I almost always identify birds, animals and flowering plants that I photograph for this blog. Mosses and lichens and fungi however, are usually not identified. However, I will here share a bit of information about fungi that I have just learned from Wikipedia. Fungi are a "kingdom" meaning they are distinct from the other "kingdoms", animals and plants. One of the characteristics that differentiates them from plants is that their cell walls are made of chitin rather than cellulose. The kingdom contains about 1.5 million species of which only about 5% have been categorized. This makes me feel better about not being able to identify the various fungi I photograph. The fungus above was photographed recently in Goldstream Park near Victoria.