Summer came late to the southwest corner of Canada



Stars in sunlight



Filaments

 


Can you hear me now?




 

 blood veins spiral

 alien vine

gone to seed

macro fern regiments



Harbour Air right on time



 view from the old duffer's bench



basking beach babes




more basking beach babes




 Commander old Duffer's bench




late berry bird snacks



last delicate wisps of summer's promise

puff berries - never eat white berries

legs collecting supper

pecking peeper peeking

a new beach in the sun

framing with gnarled branches

a stair spider

peering out over the cove

green fir starburst

sun dappled maple



Where today's wander took me.. a new path



macro pinecones



crow wingspan ergonomic and fiercely beautiful



lift off

whatcha doon?

and another crossing for the Coho

fluted mushie

After the celebrations are over, peace reigns...

After supper today, I felt the need to stretch my legs. The sun was setting quickly and I'd had the last of the turkey day leftovers and a walk with my camera down to the water and back was the order of the evening. I had to get used to the solitude of the apartment, with Ron out of town, after company and family here for the time since he started all his recent travels... Avona left while I was at work today and I came home to two tuckered out housecats and a sparkling clean home. Wow. (Thanks, A! <3)

It seemed that with Ron so immersed in his old city haunts, he would likely be missing his glimpses of our west coast nirvana setting in the Eagle's Aerie and the water that splashes ashore, just down the block. I hope that these shots provide him with reflections of the sharpened smell of the sea, the breezes coming down from Metchosin, the call of gulls and crows and the cool fingers of dawn fog licking him as he heads out in the dawn, up the hill to the base.

Thinking of my guy...working harder than he ever has...






Dusk in October

 



Saxe Pt after supper

 



Kelp forest canopy

 

unwelcome uncycled ugliness

 (don't ask me why it floated...)




Helijet flyby

 


Just a reminder... sunsets are so serene here...





Caught the swirl

 

Ron's got four women. His office wife, me and these two, his best girls.




Feel like taking me for a ride, Big Guy?

 


Towards the base... stomping grounds, Esq.




Historical buildings everywhere. Just ask Ron.




Another ho hum sunset...





And another angle from the new little park across the street...

 



Can you see Ciao? Bella?

 



Tufts at dusk

 



Seagull Silhoette

 



And then the dazzle broke out...

 


Found these on the way home. Any ideas of what they are? 

 



Windows shoot fire

  

The calm before the storm...

The weatherman says to hunker down tonight, that a big wind is whipping up and to expect a big storm hitting us with big gusts. Today, I gathered up picnic supplies, a thermos of hot coffee, some treasures in a basket and two lovely ladies, and we spent a few hours on the beach down at Saxe Point, the little beach that actually faces where we live. I can see it from our balcony. It was a bit cloudy, but the sun kept breaking through and the dapple of light was so enjoyable to discover things to photograph as it became spotlighted.

Tanis and Avona are friends of mine although they are much younger. Tanis has a bad cold and appreciated the distraction and Avona was happy to come along for the ride, meeting Tanis for the first time, a long standing connection I'm inspired to believe is a for sure for those two.

The view was beautiful, Tanis was happy just watching and meeting Avona and I enjoyed the serene calm cove, as it lapped up on the shore.

We laughed about our technology. Each with our own phones, the way of the world now, such that we all were constantly stopping our interactions with each other, to deal with an incoming text or phone call. When my camera said the disk was full. I pulled my netbook out of my purse, popped the tiny card from the camera, popped it into the netbook, erased a whole whack of stuff in the flick of a switch and was up and running with the camera in no time. That was great until I got the bright idea to put my ipod on its little speaker, playing some Massive Attack out there while we hung out. To find my ipod was c'est mort. Hmph. Technology. I 'didn't' have the white cord to recharge the ipod. grumble grumble

The following is a ponderance of the best shots of the day.

Enjoy~

Slugs amaze me, they are ethereal, beautiful and repulsive at the same time. Yet the closer you get to one, the more incredibly fractally cosmically alien they are, especially with their little eyes that go in and out. This one had four of those poky in and out things... a mutation maybe... * where's Mauldar and Skully when you need them?

You're a big boned girl!
Ma, bones don't jiggle. - Molly

Such delicate ferocity

This was the big picture, looking out. My balcony can see where we are and our apt bldg is hiding in the line of homes.

Random chance, a beautiful background for something...

She's my guardian angel... hovering in the shady brush, staying out of trouble...

Busy little ladybug, 19 spots.





Dazzling mushies kept dancing in front of us as we wandered up the path from the beach.



This is a great example of a spongiform.
The underside of this mushie looks like a sponge...



These were like little fallen nipples...

The beauty of fractal geometry in nature's curves...

Lotuslike petals ply for the sun's attention.

Bursts of life into the light...



The mint has bloomed, seeded and is now ready for the storm...
The winds will carry it's fruit to the four corners of Esquimalt...

Off to fill water bottles, find lighters, candles, prepare to hunker down.



What's the real, what's the deal? How I look or how I feel?

 When I was a young girl, I was all knees and elbows. Then I grew through the awkward age, at a time when I was on the verge of womanhood. My limbs and facial bones were all growing at different rates, I was clumsy and to make it worse, I was living in a home with a mother who was a tyrant. When my tender, creative soul was evolving into a woman, I wound up in a high stress environment and things just got exponentially worse, when I finally mustered enough courage to leave the home and strike out on my own.

 

I was 5 feet 11 inches and close to 150 lbs. I used to think I was fat. I would see myself reflected in my mother's eyes. Eyes who I had no doubt were disgusted by what they saw when they looked at me. Because of that toxic reflection, I grew up with a very distorted self image.

When I was in my 20's, I was under 160lbs., in my 30's, I had a couple of kids and gained about 10 lbs for both of them. I thought I was enormous those days even though we had no wheels, I was working several jobs and raising a mess of kinder, half on foot, half on the back of my bicycle.

In my 40's, I slowly gained about 30lbs every time I menstruated. My water weight would fluctuate ridiculously from one extreme to the other. I was still able to fit in commonly available clothes so I wasn't too big yet. I thought I was obese however. There was always a niggling little opinion in the back of my mind that my imperfections began with my huge size.

I'm in my 50's now, I am no longer chasing kids. I'm not running stairs at the ivy covered halls of learning, and I am in a solid, loving relationship with a stable, providing man just as my body's changes brought my raging hormones to a screeching halt. I'm bigger than I've ever been. I hardly eat, I watch everything that I put in my tummy and I've had my blood tested six ways to Sunday, but I'm still slowly, but steadily growing in spite of my every effort to stay healthy and curb the process of swelling, be it from edema or responding to wheat/dairy/ chemicals in my diet or my propensity for sedentary undertakings

.

Our beautiful Avona and I were talking on the beach as we watched the woman with the horse go by. She was about the same size that I used to be when I was her age, somewhere around 28. Back then, I thought that was gianormous. However, yesterday, at the beach... when I looked at the woman, I thought, 'I used to look like that'... and then I thought 'She's beyoootiful.' and then it dawned on me, that back then I would see myself as I looked like that, as being something else.

It was an aha moment, when I started thinking about how much distortion there was to the lens I watched life through. The current image I have of myself, is oddly, that I am as slim and skinny as I was back then. My self image is offended when I look at a mirror and see this prohibitively big body and realize that what I see is what is real. Even when I look down the length of my body with my own eyes, I don't see rolls and fat, I see big curves and long limbs, a big gal, for sure, but certainly not the woman who must buy clothes marked 5x in Penningtons, their largest size.

Avona and I watched the beautiful horsewoman go by and I played with the scarf in the breezes and got back to what was really important. Honouring myself, and living in the moment. Oh well, I'm a work in progress. If I was perfect with a perfect self image, what would I have to work on? How would I evolve? Why bother? 

So I'm glad that I'm me. Big me. Big Baudacious, Bright, Creative me.

What's the real, what's the deal... how I look? Or how I feel?

Avona and I, keeping it real one morning when we woke up beautiful and didn't need to do a thing to make it better.

Here's my beautiful life partner Ron, when we were in Rhodes in 2008. 50 lbs ago.

I AM having fun however.