Salt Spring Photographer John Cameron
The morning sky at Fernwood Pier, Salt Spring Island
If there’s no breeze, our west facing home doesn’t cool down a whole lot at night. So Saturday morning I woke up early and headed down to the ocean for some relief from the heat. It turned out to be a stunning view at sunrise, lots of great clouds and, thankfully…chilly! Highly recommended.
The Arbutus is Canada’s only native broadleaf evergreen tree (more info). Which just means it looks like a deciduous tree but keeps it leaves all year round. Except when they fall off, which seems to be constantly. It lives within 8 kilometres of the ocean on sunny, very well drained soil.
On a hot summer day you can almost watch the old bark curl up and fall off the tree. Also falling from each tree are about a million leaves…usually just after you’ve swept your deck. And these are leaves with attitude. They’re tough and manage to get an unyielding foothold in the space between deck boards.
So how can it be my favourite tree? What’s your favourite?
*almost forgot: although Arbutus is rarely used as lumber, it’s a favourite of woodworkers
Created by Salt Spring artist, Antonio Alonso
These two had ring-side seats at Salt Spring Slasher 2012.
When we moved to the Island, thirty or so years ago, there were a few deer around. They were small, about the size of a medium to large dog. They were skinny and often had unhealthy looking coats. And they were wary.
That’s all changed. There are a lot of deer around. They’re larger; we have a couple of three point bucks visit these days. They’re big and healthy and they are not in any way concerned about humans. Case in point, this image could have been titled, ‘casual wildlife photo from the deck while enjoying morning coffee’.
As wonderful as it is to have healthy wildlife around, I can’t help think there are problems ahead.
A summer storm rumbled over Salt Spring Island last evening, reminding me of the Ontario storms we used to watch from the screened-in porch at the cottage. The storms seemed incredibly intense, but perhaps were rendered bigger by a child’s perspective.