Camping again

Okanagan River South

North

East

Camping Machine

The Easter Long Week-end is upon us, and with it the first chance for keen outdoor camping types. We visited OK Falls Provincial campground yesterday, and took these photos of the river. I am not sure one could call living in these behemoths camping, but at least they could come outside and enjoy the river if they chose to...

April is Different

Alder Ave Kaleden

Athens Creek

Hardy Falls, Peachland

Warren Avenue Penticton

Osoyoos in April

April is definitely trying to be different from March, but the temperatures haven't changed much. Still hovering around zero Celsius, warming up a bit in the afternoons, but never past 10. However, there is lots of activity outside. Baseball and BMX have started ( in winter coats ); the Osprey and Turkey Vultures are back; and some blossoms are out. The honeysuckle is filling out with leaves, and I even found a couple of flies on the floor! Human activity on foot is confined almost exclusively to the ones being taken out for a walk by their dogs. The rest of humanity remains confined to a box on four wheels, clattering about on studded tires. You can tell those people apart because they wear indoor clothes, and only appear in the space between car and store...
Nevertheless we are very glad not to be in Alberta, they had up to 30cm of snow yesterday!

Hardy Falls

On the way home from the Airport we took a walk to Hardy Falls.

Well Watered Tree

Fallen Pine Tree

Hardy Falls near Peachland BC

Here are a few photos...
Yesterday I started a trial on SmugMug! See what you think! 

Airports

Airports are interesting places. People watching, employee watching, aircraft spotting, viewing Art, so on. Lots of business men in their flashy suits, and business women in their high heels, toting wheeled luggage and iPads and iPhones (no hands left for bottled water)....
Airports are so efficient, organized, and spacious.
When I was young, and with large numbers of infants at my heels, I used to take them Saturdays to the new Winnipeg Airport in winter for a good indoor runabout!

Sculpture of Soldier returning from War

Kelowna Control

Hanne with her Plane

Things need Fixing

Hanne at the Airport

Yesterday in Kelowna it was to meet Hanne, who had been in Calgary visiting grandchildren, daughter Karin, and old friends, and was returning home.
Above are a few photos.

Royce Bair

Double Whammy

Driveway to the Lake

White Lake

You must give your attention to Royce Bair's work on Flickr. Some most original takes on the world and what it can present for photographers. Imagination is seriously called for when we take our cameras outside. If you google him you will also see how brilliantly he makes use of Flickr, and how smart that website is!
Thanks go to Johann and Vera Funk for drawing me to his work...

White Lake

White Lake and the area around it is an ecological reserve. It is a place of solitude, wide open spaces, wind through the hair, and glorious views. Part of its magic is that the road there is wild with no fences, moor-like, reminding me of the countryside around Hathersage in England. Yesterday as I wandered, my ears were full of the song of numerous Meadowlarks, and I saw my first sagebrush buttercup.
I could hear also the distant voices of passing bicycle folk training for the Iron Man.
It is amazing how small sounds can travel in a large valley.

Fallen Ponderosa Pine Trunk.

Spring in the valley, Winter in the hills

Meadowlark singing from a fence

Old Cattle Pen

White Lake. Marmots live under these rocks....

Old Cattle Chute with Moss

It was so humbling to be in a place where only Nature is in command of the changes of time...

Lady Holroyd, CBE, DBE, Doctor of Letters, U of C.

Today's post is about Lady Holroyd, who like me was born in Sheffield and went to Cambridge, but unlike me, she obtained a "starred" first in English at Newnham College. Of course I couldn't have obtained a starred first at Newnham because it is a girl's college. And I didn't take English.
I am at present reading and enjoying her short stories.
As well as being a novelist, she is famous for the long-standing feud with her sister ( a novelist too ) over the alleged appropriation of a family tea-set in one of her novels.
She is also famous for being anti-American. " My anti-Americanism has become almost uncontrollable. It has possessed me, like a disease. It rises up in my throat like acid reflux, that fashionable American sickness. I now loathe the USA and what it has done to Iraq and the rest of the helpless world."
I also suffer from acid-reflux.
Her latest book "Palm Sunday" comes out today....

Too Many Daffodils

Must be Easter Soon

Funny Game Cricket