November 22, 2009

After high tides, many logs are washed off our beaches, at least temporarily. Harlequin ducks, in my opinion the most beautiful ducks in the world, overwinter here, and like to sit on things often just large stones along the water's edge. But the floating logs, drifting slowly along on the tide, were apparently irresistible, and one of them carried three males and one female, all busily grooming themselves after the storm. The attached photo, taken from our back door, does not do their gorgeous plumage justice, since it was a very overcast day, so I have tacked another one on to show what they really look like close up (this picture by Mike Yip).

Cheers!

November 25, 2009

Our first Rhododendrons have weirdly decided to start flowering, even before we have picked this year's apples. I wanted to grow a Cox's Orange Pippin, a favourite apple from my youth in England. But the nursery suggested that Cox's doesn't do very well here, and sold me a Fiesta instead. They said it would taste rather similar, and they were right. It is having a bumper crop this year, as the photograph shows, and I pick up enough windfalls every day to keep us munching happily. Of course, good crops seem to happen only every other year, so we must enjoy this one while we can. The apples taste wonderful, but they don't keep well. Sorry I can't share them with you and your family!

November 24, 2009

This was a grey day, and I used some of it to start packing up all the books in my office and lab downstairs, because I am going to have the outer wall insulated to R-24 (when we did the energy audit, we found that the wall had no insulation at all - zero), and gyproc-ed, as part of a campaign to use less energy to heat the house this winter. I believe there are about a tonne of books in there, but most of them will fit in the spare bedroom while the job is done. Later in the afternoon, I decided to go rowing, and found that I had to push and pull the boat into the water over a large barrier of bull kelp that had drifted inshore with the high tide. It looked like the revenge of the sea monsters, as the photograph shows.

Cheers!