Hollyhock Bloom

    I have blogged a couple of times now about my first attempt at growing Hollyhocks, here is a shot of one of the blooms on the plant.  A lot of flowers are designed to direct bees and other insects to the nectar so they will pollinate the plant.  All the white lines on this bloom certainly aren’t shy about pointing  to where they want the bee to go.

You can take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

Our New Normal Too

    In the photo above you are supposed to see the Cariboo Mountains on the horizon, sticking up beyond the trees, but they are obscured by smoke from faraway forest fires.  Last summer was terrible, with day after day of thick forest fire smoke masking our mountains, and even the far end of my pond.  Already this summer we have had many days of thick haze from smoke in the air, but today when we woke up the smoke was so thick we couldn’t see the mountains.

    We are extremely lucky that so far we haven’t had any really close forest fires.  Valemount, our neighboring village, about an hours drive away, has had one.  I assume that most of this smoke is from the many fires burning in the Okanagan, in the southern part of BC.  We are keeping our fingers crossed through these days of unusually hot temperatures (35C, 95F forecast for Thurs.) and hope that we will continue to be spared a forest fire.

    A couple of days ago, Jerry Brown Governor of California, while talking of the terrible fires they are experiencing in the state, said that was the “new normal”.  It is starting to feel like he is right.

    Below is a photo of our Scarlet Runner beans.  In the background you can see the haze of smoke up on the slope above our house.

View my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

Our Slackard Plum Tree Produces

    We have two plum trees.  One is heavily leaden with still green plums, and the other tree is a slackard that rarely produces anything.  This year, like every other year, I was hoping that the lazy tree would change it’s ways and produce some plums because the first year we had the tree, it produced a handful of really tasty sweet plums, but since then, every time I walked past the tree and looking  hopefully for the fruit, I saw none.

    However, yesterday as I walked past the tree,  I did see a plum, well, sort of a miniature plum, in fact the smallest plum I have ever seen.  There it is in the photo.  It was smaller than the cherry tomatoes in the greenhouse,  but at least the tree did produce something.

Take a look at my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

Pinesap

    I came upon some Pinesap (Hypopitys monotropa) on our walk through the West Twin Old Growth area.  Pinesap is a saprophyte, and if you remember your biology, a sprophyte is a plant that doesn’t have chlorophyll, so can’t make its own food from the sunlight, but instead gets its food from growing on some dead plant.  So they are quite comfortable growing in the low light floor of a cedar forest.  “Hypopitys” in its scientific name is from the Greek hypo (beneath) and pitys (tree).

    It was given the name Pinesap because it is often found growing beneath pine trees.  As you can tell from the moss they are growing in, these examples are quite small, only about 3 inches (8 cm) in height.  The Pinesap above was unusually colorful compared to the other ones I saw, probably because it had just come out of the ground and was still compact, and hadn’t started stretching out yet.  

View my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca

Cat Nap

    It is part of my daily routine to spend a couple of hours every morning painting and then writing this blog.  Our cat Lucifer also has her morning routine.  When I am painting, she jumps up onto the desk, then steps into the cardboard box that I put beside the computer for her, and as I paint, she snoozes. 

    I enjoy observing the positions she assumes when she sleeps.  Here are some photos:

Visit davidmarchant.ca to see my paintings.

Busy Place

    I am gratified and surprised every time we drive into town to see how many cars are parked outside of McBride’s new library.  It was such a struggle to get it, and it makes me happy to see how many more people are using it.  I took this photo yesterday, Wednesday afternoon, not really library prime time, and   you wouldn’t expect to find a lot of people visiting the library then, but as you can see there were quite a few vehicles parked in front of the new facility.

    A couple of Friday evenings ago, Joan and I went into the library to use the internet (our’s being practically unusable) and I was astounded at how many people were in the library.  We had visited the old library many times at the same hour and often found we were the only patrons there.  It was a totally different experience this Friday night.  People were working and playing on the computers, some relaxing in the comfortable chairs reading magazines and newspapers, while others were picking out a DVD or a book.  It looked like a big city library.

    We have our music jam every Tuesday night at the library, and since we play close to the front door, I can’t help but notice how many people (besides our musicians) come regularly on Tuesday to do computer work or do other library things, and there are many others there, that I had never seen at the old library, so can assume that it is our new building that has really generated a lot  new library users.

      Our attractive new library building is right on Main Street, is the first building people see when they come off of Highway 16, and I’m proud of what it says about our tiny, rural, BC, village.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant.ca

Mossy Logs

    I have always loved lush green carpets of moss.  Living on the edge of an Interior Rainforest gives me plenty of opportunities to see moss.  Here are two photos I took at West Twin Provincial Park just west of McBride.  The area used to be a Forest Service Recreation Site, that featured a short loop trail through big cedar trees.  This area is different from the Ancient Forest because instead of a lot of that nasty Devil’s Club, it’s forest floor is covered with moss.

    It is one of my favorite forests to visit, but it’s trail, although still quite good is no longer maintained, and there is no signage along Highway 16 because it is on the curve and hill going down to the West Twin Bridge which is a dangerous turnoff into the parking area.  That means very few people visit it, which is probably okay for the plants and animals that live there.

    Anyway, here are the the mossy log photos.

    

See my paintings:  davidmarchant.ca