For you–haiku.
My parched throat croaks out complaints. The smoke blankets the coast and most of Vancouver Island. For several days, until yesterday, our area has been rated as 10+ (very unhealthy) on the Air Quality Index. Last night a little breeze brought the rating down to 2, going up to 4 today. Relief for dry, raspy throats, coughing lungs, aching heads, and itchy, red eyes.
As I researched other areas affected by the more than 560 fires in the province of British Columbia, I learned that some places have far more serious air quality issues than we do here on the coast. Knowing what we are suffering here, my heart goes out to the people who live in those hardest hit areas.
The whitish-gray part of this photo should show blue water of the bay and greenish hills beyond, but none of that is visible here. The smoke hangs in the nearby trees as if someone had a campfire going.
You can see the impact of a long, rainless summer on the grass in my front yard. It doesn’t even look yellowish brown as it should, but has a pinkish tinge from the red smoke-covered sun.
I’ve had my hedge trimmed and the trimmings are yet to be picked up. Just waiting for a slight reprieve from the heat. I feel very lucky to be able to think about mundane things like trimming a hedge when many hundreds of people in the province have had to evacuate their homes and manicuring their yard is the last thing on their mind.
During this summer’s fire season I have definitely learned to appreciate having a home. And having had to do without clean air and enough water, I know how important these things are — the essentials of life.
Generally, I look out my window at this refreshing scene. The air is clean even if it is a bit cloudy.
This morning, I took that same outlook and zoomed in for a closer look. It didn’t help make things any clearer. There are no clouds in the sky. That would be too good as it might mean rain.
Here is another scene (to the right of the first photo) from some time ago when the air was clean in spite of the cloud cover.
The same view but harder to see.
And no wonder we can’t see much. So much smoke in the air from wildfires easily obscures the sun. This photo of the rising sun was taken early this morning. Wildfires burning on the island are less than 100 miles away, and the smoke is drifting into our valley and hanging there.
My eyes are dry, it hurts to blink,
The smoke’s not good to breathe, I think.
My throat is scratchy, as I croak,
My vocal chords are full of smoke.
The Captain calls and asks, “What’s wrong?”
I tell him that the smoke is strong
From fires burning all around,
And ask, when are you homeward bound?
He’ll be home soon, he starts to say,
But then the sat phone cuts away.
We’ll talk again another time,
He doesn’t need to hear me whine.
And when he gets here he will sigh,
For misty isles of Haida Gwaii.
No smoke or drought does plague them there
The constant gales will clear the air.
The last of the evening sun’s rays add a sweet pink tinge to the rare scattering of clouds in the eastern sky. I’ve been watching for clouds, desperately hoping for a few drops of rain to end weeks of sweltering heat and parching drought.
I turn to the southwest. The glow of sunset touches clumps of cloud and wisps of smoke that have drifted into the valley from faraway wildfires.
I turn a few more degrees to the west and I’m left wondering if this is a sunset or another of those raging wildfires I’ve seen too much of on the television news. But yes, it is the sunset, searing us for a few more moments before allowing us to recover from yet another day of being barbecued.
We’ve been promised rain for today, but somehow, I don’t think it’s going to happen. The clouds that have moved in are way too high and way too thin. Just a hint of hope for relief someday, but probably not today.
Please remind me of this whining post a few months from now when I complain about the relentless wind and rain.
As one of our bloggers mentioned in the last post, there is another kind of snow lying around these days. I found some just down the street. I believe this huge tree is a cottonwood or its relative, a grey poplar. Its fuzz-covered seeds now fill the air and lie on the sides of the road, looking like real snow.
The black cottonwood that I’ve seen in Montana has darker bark, and leaves that are more rounded than those of this tree. This is why I wondered about it being a grey poplar instead, although they are still related.
The fluffy bits are like cotton balls, and maybe this is where the cottonwood got its name.
I’m so glad this snow will eventually blow away and that we don’t have to shovel it. Quite possibly it makes good fluff for lining a bird’s nest.
Do you have any fake snow where you live?
Have you noticed that your potatoes are full of blemishes? A few years ago when I first noticed it, I thought it was just a bad potato year. Then I thought maybe it was the excessive rain we had another year, and I wondered about disease. I kept thinking that “next year they’ll be good again.” I’m not even talking about potatoes from my garden. These are the No. 1 potatoes that I buy in the store. For several years now the potatoes have had blue bruising. It’s not getting better. On the contrary, it’s as bad as it has ever been.
I thought it might be our local Vancouver Island potatoes and started buying potatoes from eastern Canada and from the U. S., but the problem seems to be everywhere.
I wonder, if I’d been one of the starving Irish in the years of the potato famine (1845 – 1849), how much of the bad (blighted) potato I would have cut away. I suppose it would depend on how hungry I was.
Do you have potatoes like this in your area? What do you think is going on?
What are you looking at here? Let me help you get your bearings.
The hills in the distance, and beyond them the mountains you can’t see because of the low cloud cover, are on the mainland of British Columbia, just north of Vancouver. I am standing on Vancouver Island. You can deduce from that, that the city of Vancouver is not on Vancouver Island. In this photo we are looking to the east.
I’ve climbed up a hill a little way and am now looking to the south. You can see a spit of land that reaches out from the land’s end. The spit has been formed by a gazillion years of wave action swishing the sand along and dropping it to form a giant finger of sand. All the land you can see in this photo, including the mountains, is on Vancouver Island.
Looking to the west, you can see the sheltered water on the inside of the spit, and the harbour of Comox in the distance. Those toothpicks sticking up are the masts and trolling poles of fishing boats and sailboats in the marina. The two boats at anchor in the foreground are getting free moorage.
A few weeks ago, the Captain and I went for a walk that took us to the inside of the sheltered bay. You can see part of the spit in the distance on the far right horizon.
On the way to the trail we noticed the run-off from the excessive amount of rain we’d had. This is not a year-round creek, but a temporary run-off creek. I feel sorry for the large tree that has its feet in water, day and night. It may soon go the way of the broken off tree trunk in the photo below this one.
It may be broken off, but this tree is still serving a useful purpose. It is making many birds happy. Nuthatches and woodpeckers will make holes in the trees to nest in, and the bugs they find in the trunk help give them strength to continue their work and to feed their babies.
Farther along, we came to the boardwalk. I love this scene. You see the run-off creek completing the water cycle as it brings the rainwater back to the sea. It’s great to have the boardwalk and not have to wade through the creek.
The trees along the water are mostly deciduous types. They are probably cottonwoods and a few poplar or alder types mixed in. My guess is they are cottonwoods because those grow taller than the others, and these are a good size.
Even in the cool weather, you can have a great day going for a walk around your neighbourhood.
