Raining Today

The tropical entrance to the Hooded Merganser

On the Deck

Wine glasses

It is raining all this morning, earlier we went out for breakfast at our favourite restaurant "The Hooded Merganser" and took a few photos after our strawberry crepes and scrambled eggs. We were hoping for a sunny walk but we shall be content to watch Manchester City beat Manchester United instead....
Words fascinate me. There are a multitude of words circulating about the word "lorry".
Lorry is possibly derived from "to lurry" meaning to lug or pull. A second meaning of lorry is a truck or wagon running on rails, maybe in a colliery? All this came up because there was a big collision on a bridge between two "tractor-trailers" in BC recently, resulting in the closure of the Trans-Canada highway for days, first to clear the wreckage, then more days to repair the bridge. ( Our Trans-Canada highway is a great invention enabling one to drive the whole of Canada from East to West, but it works a bit like the old English A1 plus little bits of M1 here and there, so having mostly only one lane in each direction means it easily gets blocked with accidents, snow- mud-, or rock-slides.)
In UK ,tractor-trailers are called "articulated lorries or trucks". I always thought of a tractor as being a piece of farm equipment. Strange how the English Language changes! So, lorry, wagon, truck, tractor, semi, HGV, flatbed, van, take your pick, they all may pull trailers full of nice things for us all to buy or eat, or in Alan's case, to drink!

More Spring Pictures

No time to get away today, stuck indoors doing Income Taxes. Maybe tomorrow, now that they are all done and filed.... The middle picture is a painting ( out of my head );
The other two are manipulated photos. It is rudely called "Pixel Pushing" but I prefer "digital painting" !

More Spring Photos

Hike Path near White Lake

Just a few images from areas West of Penticton, which indicate more of Spring is coming! These are digital manipulations based on photographs....

Revelstoke BC

Houses in Revelstoke

View to the Bridge over the Columbia River, Revelstoke BC

Calochortus eurycarpus (Mariposa Lilly) ( Thanks to Google Search!)

Revelstoke is a small town in the Canadian Rockies on the Trans-Canada Highway, hence a port of call for East-West travellers, for example going from Vancouver to Calgary. We have visited there on many occasions, and will be passing through yet again on our way to Drumheller at the end of May. It is now famous for a great new ski resort, a railway museum ( because railways are the economic mainstay of Revelstoke), and wonderful scenery. A lovely flower called the Mariposa Lilly grows there, and it has just been discovered that the Three-Spotted variety is completely dependent on a single species of wild bee (out of 400 in total) for pollination. This is quite remarkable, just as remarkable as the discovery of 70+ mills in the Bradford region!

Romance is in the Air

Our Good Friends John and Agnes

Crab Apple Blossom

A Happy Young Lady in Spring

'Tis Spring again, and Romance fills the air,
A certain someone has found her certain someone,
And off they go arm in arm,
Into the sunshine, amongst the flowers,
Over the hills and dales,
The birds are singing loudly too, only the small ones,
Big ones can't sing, they squawk, and screech and caw instead,
"He touched my wing today, my dear" she confides...
Soon the eggs are to be laid,
Then covered in chocolate.

Foot Note:-
Followers of Jenny Freckles may be interested to know there is an article by Martin Wainwright in the Guardian Weekly 1-7 April 2011, featuring Saltaire Mill.
I had no idea there are as many as 50 mills in Bradford!

Spring Photos

Here are three jpg photos from our new camcorder (Sony HDR-CX700V) on our local walk and drive yesterday. It wasn't too bright and we had a few sprinkles of rain. I chose the format 16:9 to fit our TV monitor. It was quite exciting to do videos again after a long absence, especially now in the HD format. The camcorder came fully up to expectations. No more tapes to worry about, all recorded on a flash card. No moving parts. The camera is nice and light, only weighs one pound. Excellent for our planned trip to Alberta in May.

Snowy Hills and Grassy Slopes. (Telephoto)

Weathering on an old pine stump, Skaha Lake.

The House on the Hill

Oh, by the way, Skaha Lake means Horse Lake in one local Indian dialect. Okanagan means "Transport to the top end". Vaseux Lake means Muddy Lake. Just thought you should know!....

We depend on our roots

Pine tree roots, Hardy Falls Walk.

Mallards and Roots. Notice how smartly camouflaged the female is!

The photo of the pine tree hanging onto the hillside on our walk started me thinking about roots. Firstly, how similar they are to our arteries. They both start out big, then subdivide into smaller and smaller tubes, ending up as root hairs or capillaries. But they work in opposite directions. Food and water go up the roots, down the arteries. Also roots function as stabilizers for plants, holding them in one place securely. Our food system is derived from lungs and stomach, because of this, we can move about on the Earth, in our fast cars, unlike the plants which are fixed to the ground. However, we are completely dependent on plants for our food and oxygen. Even if we aren't vegetarians, meat comes from plants originally, doesn't it? Now we just have to stop cutting down trees, multiplying, fouling the air by burning plants (=coal, oil, gas) polluting the water, and we've got it made!

Mexican Roots, Puerto Vallarta

Thought for the day then, we need our roots!