Ron, Nathan and I went downtown today “just because”.  While we were there we walked around the Vancouver Art Gallery and, within this one block journey we encountered:

• The Islamic Cultural Expo
  (at the front, with many tents, music, food, etc.)
• Several old men playing chess
  (They’re always there on the weekends)
• A Zombie Walk
  (with many people in zombie costumes, zombie face painting and more, all to raising money for a charity – I think it was the BC Children’s hospital)
• A Pre-Teen busker who was playing the Bagpipes
  (He was very good. He was also right next to the Zombies, it made quite a bizarre combination)
• A Juggling Troup at Practice
  (They were just in regular clothes and puttering about with different tools – clubs, batons, strings will balls on the end hula-hoops)

Ah yes.  Vancouver.  Can’t get much more multicultural than that. :D

:-j(enni)

As the plums continue to ripen, our yard has started to attract more visitors than just the bear I mentioned the other day.  The shear number of visitors in our back yard simultaneously - especially right after it rains - has increased dramatically.  Whereas you might usually see three or four birds of perhaps two different species or maybe a squirrel and a couple of birds, now we're getting upwards of a dozen individuals and a wide variety of species.

All of "the usual suspects" are still around of course - Crunchy, the grey squirrel; Munchy, the black squirrel; Stellar, the Stellar's Jay; Flicker, the Northern Flicker (it's a kind of woodpecker); the Robin Clan; the Chickadee Choir; and the Blues Brothers, a pair of Common Ravens. However, a few new comers have flown out of the woods as well: 

• The Robin Clan has grown as there are now two or three juveniles hopping about - they look a little plumper than the adults and their underparts (belly and chest) are mostly white with just a tinge of a paler red-brown and are covered in dark brown spots (you can compare American Robin variations here)
  Trivia:  According to the American Robin summary page at whatbird.com, a group of robins are collectively known as a worm of robins!
• A Le Conte's Sparrow (as yet unnamed by Nathan) showed up on Wednesday. It's a small, brown and black bird with a pale belly and chest that somewhat reminiscent of a chickadee but a bit larger.
• Also I've seen two or three European Starlings. I'm actually quite surprised we haven't had any starlings visiting before - they always seemed ubiquitous throughout this area.

The birds are mostly interested in the plums on the ground, though I've seen some of them - especially the Blues Brothers - making moves on fruit still hanging in the trees. The squirrels, of course, always go for the fruit in the trees. Some birds, like Flicker, are also obviously going after bugs and worms and what not.

With all this wildlife hopping about there's nary a moment when I'm not being entertained by something. The only annoying thing is that whenever I try to get my camera out they move too far away from the window or simply fly away before I can get a good picture off!

:-j(enni)

On Saturday August 16th, (day before yesterday) Nathan and I noticed that there were a lot of over-ripe plums on the ground under the three trees in our back yard (two red plum, one yellow plum) and so we spent some time collecting ripe plums from the trees to eat and so I could make some jam (which, considering I haven't tried to make jam in years, worked out wonderfully!)

Meanwhile, Ron spent the day mowing the lawn and digging up the weeds that had taken over the small garden plot right behind the house. He did an awesome job and we just wish we could afford to buy late-summer flowers to replace the crap he dug out.

After all our industry during the day we decided to have a steak barbeque for dinner, which we finished off by roasting marshmallows. We did not, however, bring the grills in before going to bed....

DUHN-DUHN-DUUUUHHNNN!!! (sorry, couldn't resist...)

Yesterday morning (Sunday, August 17) started off with a bang as a thunderstorm, accompanied by torrential rain, swept through the area around 5am but moved on to the east and over the mountains by 5:30am.  We went back to sleep and, maybe an hour or so later Ron thinks he hears a dog or racoon trying to get into our garbage cans.  He rolls over, setting aside the possibility of needing to clean up for later in the day. 

We eventually get up at some not-too-unreasonable hour later (9:30-ish I think) and I've just sat down at my computer when the phone rings - it's my mum calling to see how my jam making efforts went.  While I am talking to her, I mention the great job Ron has done on the back yard garden and look out the window to re-admire his handiwork only to see right below the window, next to the garden plot and barely three feet from our back patio - a big steaming pile of bear poop! :P

I went outside to take a closer look and, yes-sir-ee, it certainly was bear poop - there was about three times as much crap as a dog would dump and it was full of miscellaneous seeds and fruit pits.  Looking around for more evidence of our early morning visitor I found, not one, not two, but three more piles scattered around the yard. One was a big "splat" at the base of the yellow plum tree along with evidence that it had gone splat because it "came from above" – that is, there were signs of poop on the branches and leaves directly above it so the bear had obviously climbed up into the tree and "did his business" while in the middle of his breakfast. :P

The bear also flattened about a third of our hydrangea bush – either because it climbed over the fence into a another yard at that location or because it was trying to get into the red plum tree right beside it. (Speaking of climbing fences, we figured it must have climbed in over the chain link gate right next to our car port which is right beside the garbage cans - which were, in fact, empty and unmolested - and right under our bedroom window.)

After I finished my investigations I called the Dangerous Wildlife/Human Conflict line to make a report. They took the particulars, advised us to clean up everything after having barbeques in the future and not to be surprised it we were visited again as it now knows about the fruit trees and if a bear knows where it can get an easy meal it will go there.

The bear almost certainly wandered into our neighbourhood from the river park that’s about a block to the west of here. The river comes from the north and the nothing-but-wilderness behind the Westwood Plateau in north Coquitlam.  And, to be perfectly honest, this isn’t something to be taken lightly. Recently, some very serious bear encounters have occurred in the north Coquitlam area – in the most dramatic instance a bear mauled a woman who had been gardening in her front yard and only escaped death because passing neighbours quickly came to her defence, throwing rocks and even driving a car into the bear’s side before the Police, who eventually had to kill the bear, arrived on the scene.  Just a day later, a second bear was shot and killed after breaking into a basement suite in search of groceries that had been left on a counter. According to the experts, we can blame a poor berry crop for the uprise in bear/human conflics this year.

Anyway, we're definitely going to be making a much more concerted effort to make our yard less attractive to bears.  Hopefully we won't have another visitation, but I'll let you know if we do.

:-j(enni)

There was a news story a few years ago where a grilled cheese sandwitch was sold on eBay for $28,000.  It was considered so valuable as it showed a woman's face that the owner claimed to be Mary, the mother of Christ, on it and had also not gone rotten after 10 years. While it seems awfully strange that anyone would pay that kind of money for such an odd thing, my Mother and I have something we think is far more compelling, although we have to wait a few years to see if anything "Miraculous" actually comes of it.

Here's the scoop:  Every year, my family creates Easter eggs the Saturday before Easter using a variety of methods - food colour dyes, stamps and stickers for the younger children and traditional wax-resist methods (Pysanky) for the older kids and adults.  This year, just a few minutes after midnight on Easter morning, one of the eggs came out of a food colour dye bath with a large blemish on one side that was decidedly strange: The marking the distinct appearance of a very luscious, voluptuous, nude woman.

Since Mary would never be caught dead in such a risqué pose, we decided that the vision must be of the Goddess Eostre, after whom Easter is named.  My mom took some digital photos (one is included below) and we posted them to a web page we placed under her domain at http://www.byronmania.com/TheGoddessEostre.htm. 

So take a closer look and let us know what you think.  Personally, I think it's kind of spooky how detailed the image is - you probably couldn't create something like it on purpose even if you tried.