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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….

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

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.

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