Sunshine and raindrops

The sun is just barely up when I start my morning walk to work and it's almost down when I walk home in the late afternoon. Pretty soon it will be completely dark both ways. And today a small cloud scattered it's load of moisture on me as I crossed the Blue Bridge while the sun was shining all around. Just a friendly, puppy dog lick, no need to bother with an umbrella.
On Monday the weather gods were not so benign. I couldn't hold my camera steady enough for a good picture of the waves threatening to put Clover Point awash so this one will have to do. All day the wind pounded the coasts, downing power lines, canceling ferry sailings and so forth. Just a normal November preview of wintry days to come. Last year we had already had our first snow. We don't get very much snow in Victoria and that's a good thing because we are never prepared for it. Although we don't get much snow here (usually two or three spells in the course of a winter) the snow we do get is nasty stuff because it melts during the day- but not completely- and then freezes at night. That makes our streets and roads quite treacherous.
The storm was on Monday but by Tuesday the sun was out again, the winds had slacked off, and the sky was darkened by the odd stray cloud. It was a beautiful day. So I took a little spin around the peninsula in my little car and took a few pictures. The one of Prospect Lake was taken from the Observatory hill. Take a good look at all the green. You are looking at forests that have been logged more than once- clear cut. The trees grow back. The meadows and glades support healthy populations of deer, and the deer support the cougars. Vancouver Island, of which the Victoria area is one tiny corner, has the largest population of cougars in the world. Or so I have read. I've never seen one myself. Bears, yes, black bears, no grizzlies. Vancouver Island is mountainous and heavily forested these days, unlike the situation 10,000 years ago when it was under a mile of ice and only the highest peaks protruded above the glaciers. Isn't global warming wonderful? I wonder how it happened. As one irreverent soul joked, maybe the wooly mammoths were driving SUVs.
Although most of Vancouver Island is covered with coniferous forests of diverse types- cedar, hemlock, fir, spruce, and others depending on soil, elevation and other factors, Victoria and southeastern Vancouver Island have a special ecosystem known as Garry Oak Meadow. The arbutus with its peeling red bark is a favourite tree of mine. It is classified as a broadleaf evergreen and shed its leaves throughout the year. The wood is very hard and will burn well and very hot even when green. I heated a cabin for a couple of winters with arbutus I scavenged from road building crews. That was when I was trying to be a back-to-the-land hippie. I'm too old for those silly games now, but I remember those days with fondness.