Vegetables

Before I went to Canada, I planted the first set of vegetable seeds: rucola, beetroots, fennel, runner beans, potatoes (in a pot) and onions. The potatoes, onions and beans are already making good progress:

Northern Flicker

These photos don't have much to recommend them technically speaking, but I found them a nice series nonetheless. They were taken at 400mm handheld, and have been significantly cropped. A lucky sighting whilst we ate our lunch at a rest area off the Trans Canada Highway.

VNF West - May 2009 - Heempark Arboretum

We began today's photo club meeting with a practical session in the Heempark Arboretum, an area of the Delftse Hout next to the Papaver, where the photo club meets. As it was a windy evening, photographing the plants didn't turn out to be too successful, so I concentrated on orienting myself in the park for a future visit, and trying to find some bird life. As luck would have it, I stumbled upon a pheasant, who didn't seem too disturbed by all the photographers wandering around. With the low light, I decided to the put the 5D to the test, and shot at 2000 ISO, giving a shutter speed of around 1/200 s at f5.6.

The second half of the meeting was "eigen werk", where members have the opportunity to share their photos. My favourites were a collection of bird photographs, including a couple shots of a purple heron, a bird which I have not yet seen, but would very much like to.

Lazy Days on Vancouver Island

Road Trip (9): Facts and Figures

Total Distance Travelled: 2295km


Route:
(I messed up with the GPS, so I had to reconstruct this with Google Maps. Note to self - next time, download the track each day...)


Elevation Profile: Golden to just before we rejoined the main highway near Hope and the batteries in the GPS ran out. The coloring of the tracks indicates the direction we were travelling. Generated by www.gpsvisualizer.com.

Vancouver Island

I stayed in New Westminster just long enough to put a load of washing through, and then jumped back into the car and drove over to the ferry terminal at Tsawassen. I arrived with just minutes to spare before the 5pm ferry, and as I rushed through the terminal, and past the seating area at Berth 3, I was reminded of my 2 hour wait there with Grandmere and Janet on the way to Tofino last October.


On that occasion we had a picnic that Janet had brought with her, and ended up sharing it with a couple Toronto lads that we met on the way (a complicated story involving canceled flights, aborted landings, ferries and minivans that I never managed to blog at the time). This time, I was clutching a care package that Grandmere put together whilst I was busy with my laundry - separate baggies of smoked salmon, cheese, dills and crackers, enough protein content to last a week! I found myself a good spot on the outer deck and enjoyed the sun, and the view of the islands. A perfect day for the ferry ride.


Uncle John met me at the other end, and we drove back to his place, where we met up with old friend, Doug, and cousin James. Dinner was at the Blue Nile, an Eritrean restaurant, where by chance I'd eaten before with Jen, on the night of a poetry reading a couple years ago. (This being the poetry reading where I was persuaded to sing with Jen, and we fell about in hysterics in front of a coffee shop full of people. A Canadian style coffee shop. Not a Dutch one....)

Road Trip (8): Back to New Westminster

A quiet morning at the cabin to finish our trip. I went for a run along the dyke - a perfect spot for running, it has beautiful views, is flat, and even has mileposts (well, technically speaking, kilometre posts). Not that I ran further than the first post :-) I also had another go at trying to find the geocache which I know is hidden in the woods there. The one Mum, Janet and I hunted for last year. Still didn't find it.

I planned to visit the Great Blue Heron nature reserve on the way home, but we couldn't find the way in. Most frustrating. Maybe the next time. Back in along the highway then to New Westminster, the road was packed the whole way home, and we were held up with construction work. A slightly anticlimatic end to the trip.