The sights and sounds portend that we are on the Eve of Spring in Vancouver.
Spring's Face Looks Upward
Still Weighted by Fall
Yellow Harbingers
The statistics for today were: Sunrise at 7:26 and sunset at 17:28.
The shadows are changing.
Hopeful Shadows
I trust these images cheer you on to endure the remaining drear, dark, dank days which will punctuate our procession to spring. YVR weather has several Sun images for the week ahead. February is usually sun-filled. Perhaps the darkest and wettest days have passed.
Sunwatchers’ Daphne
P. S. I’ve just purchased the domain: SunwatchersBulletin.ca in anticipation of the long-predicted move! Warnings, etc. to follow….
Posted in Sun Bulletins | Tagged Crocus | 1 Comment »
Hi Sunwatchers,
Last evening marked a BIG Sunstone in my sunwatching for this season. The sun set around the corner of the building to the southwest for the first time.
Sunset reaches Sunstone Feb 8
I don’t really like to notice exactly when it disappears behind that building on the “way south” but I’m so happy to notice that it reappeared yesterday!! There was a glorious sunset but you’re getting this photo this time.
Now there’s getting to be lots to report.
At Burnaby Lake (right where and when the body was discovered on Monday), I could hear and see the male redwings proclaiming “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here”. Their true spring calls. Not one of them posed for me alas!
However, this young fellow who was caught between me (at a greater distance) and a man on the other side of him was hesitant to maintain his path. But the man clicked his tongue at him a few times, in a friendly and reassuring way, and the coyote went on his route.
Young Coyote Hesitates
I didn’t exactly have my zoom lens on! But at least I got 3 photos of him.
And He’s a good image to go with this passage from David Whyte’s poem, Coleman’s Bed, which I want to quote to mark the beginning of the new season.
See with every turning day,
how each season makes a child
of you again, wants you to become
a seeker after rainfall and birdsong,
watch now, how it weathers you
to a testing in the tried and true,
admonishes you with each falling leaf,
to be courageous, to be something
that has come through, to be the last thing
you want to see before you leave the world.
I have reflected on the notion of each season making a child of us. I do think that’s why you are reading this post. And, I think it’s what people love about living in a place with true seasons (even if it’s only the rainy and the dry ones). It’s a fabulous poem. I have it in his collection River Flow, New and Selected Poems and also on CD, The Echo in the Well, Secret Voices from the west of Ireland. Perhaps I’ll quote the next section in another post! It’s about keeping silent to hear the story. Sorry about the formatting. The limitations (or mine) in WordPress.com! There aren’t supposed to be spaces between the lines like that.
I think that’s enough for today. Oh one of my green photos has to go in here. I got a lot of moss photos too–ones I really am pleased with. Perfect light for them. I think I could have spent at least an hour at one tree since it had so many varieties on it. But these fronds show the new springing light so well, they are the Sunwatchers from the green world for today.
Springing Light
Today’s statistics are: sunrise was at 7:32 and the sunset is scheduled for: 17:21.
Until next time!,
Sunwatchers’ Daphne
Posted in Sun Bulletins | Tagged coyote, ferns | 1 Comment »
Hi Sunwatchers,
We have Beginner Blossoms in the gardens now! Hamamelis is in full flower. See the header, above.
And more colours are emerging now!
Winter Aconites
Pieris japonica
Heather Blossoms
YVR had a record high temperature today (about 12 degrees) breaking one from the early 90s. We have so much to anticipate as spring begins to unfold from the dark damp of winter.
The sun is making so much progress in “returning” to us. It is very close to setting north of the building to my southwest. There was one REALLY bright patch of sun to the north of the building as the sun set this afternoon. A matter of days until the ball is around to my side of the building!
I’m driving to work in light again! Hooray. That is such a relief.
The sun rose today at 7:40 so there is light in the sky by 7. It set at 17:13 today (one minute shy of an hour later than the earliest settings in December). The rise was just shy of a half hour before the latest of them in January.
Until next time,
Your Sunwatchers’ Bulletineer signs off.
Posted in Sun Bulletins | Tagged Hamamelis, heather, Pieris japonica | 1 Comment »
Hi Sunwatchers,
Happy Ground Hog Day!! I haven’t heard Wiarton Willy’s report yet but Punxsutawney Phil says an early spring. I suspect given the big weather system over the eastern part of the continent Wiarton Willy is saying the same thing.
Here’s our next Goal:
Our Next Goal
Some blue skies!
What a day of Sunshine (mainly) will do!
Sunrise today was 7:43 and the sun is scheduled to set on GroundHog Day, 2011 at 17:09! The days are lengthening quickly now.
Cheers,
Sunwatchers
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Dear Sunwatchers,
[This was written, and I thought published, on January 31. Sometimes WordPress has a mind of its own! Sorry about the confusion which perhaps some of you experienced. And now this is in the February archive instead of January where it belongs and it precedes two other short posts made February 1, so please scroll down after reading this one!]
There’s been a lot of progress in the past few days. Today sunrise was at 7:46. The sun set at 17:06. We are just shy of one hour later for sunset (8 more minutes to go!). We have gained 22 minutes in the morning already! I always feel that once the sun is setting after 5 p.m. we can relax again.
I’m afraid I don’t have any really spiffy photos of the local progress toward spring this week. I do see lots of trees in blossom. The kind that make allergy-sufferers suffer. So watch out–here comes the pollen.
I got interested in old photos this weekend and spent my most productive time making them digital.
A couple of cheery items from my distant past (in a place beyond Hope and the Continental Divide).
Hooded Ladies' Tresses Orchid, Ontario
These are tiny little flowers and I think the photo is from the Bruce Peninsula but memory and record-keeping lack perfection. I don’t like it as a record of the flowers but I like its decorative quality.
If anyone has read Jane Urquhart’s newest book, Sanctuary Line, you will have read of this phenomenon.
Monarch Butterflies, Point Pelee, Ontario
Both photos taken in 1979! No, I wasn’t knee-high to a grasshopper then. But I owned a camera distant in memory now. The Monarchs gather at Point Pelee before crossing Lake Erie, the first major physical barrier to their flight to Mexico.
I included these photos with the thought that they would encourage you to think of sun, sunshine, progress, lengthening days, and all good things unfolding.
Until next time, when I hope to have some local and seasonal photos of interest, I remain,
Your bulletineer and friend,
Daphne Sunwatchers.
P.S. This apparently didn’t get published on the 31st of January as I thought!
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The Thin Green Line
Dear Sunwatchers,
In my lunchtime walk today, I found this Thin Green Line pushing upward in the sunshine. Take heart.
Daphne
P.S. For those of you who are bothered by the title, I did your basic research and here’s the critical part of the Wikipedia article:
The Thin Red Line is a term for a thinly spread military unit holding firm against attack. The term originates in a journalist’s description (a “thin red streak tipped with a line of steel”) of the appearance of the red-coated 93rd (Highland) Regiment and parts of the Turkish army as they stood before (and repelled) a vastly superior force of Russian cavalry at the Battle of Balaclava during the Crimean War. The phrase later took on the metaphorical meaning of the barrier which the relatively limited armed forces of a country present to potential attackers.
In film and literature:
Rudyard Kipling wrote the poem Tommy that has the lines “Then it’s Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ Tommy, ‘ow’s yer soul? / But it’s “Thin red line of ‘eroes” when the drums begin to roll,” – Tommy Atkins being slang for a common soldier in the British Army.
end of quote.
I’ve omitted more recent references because I knew my thought dated back in time. I was actually thinking that the reference might be to even earlier military episodes. So, you know… wikipedia goes only so far and I’m no military historian!
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