Category Archives: Nature

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A Tribute To Our Trees

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When I first moved to Victoria many years ago, among the first things I noticed were these unusual looking trees in my neighbourhood. Well, unusual to me, maybe because of the sheer number of them, but also because of their looks.

They had gnarly, crooked branches, a unique greyish bark, and they were everywhere. I soon learned that these trees were called Garry Oaks. They are apparently found as far south as California, but Garry Oaks were named after Nicholas Garry, the Deputy Governor of the Hudson’s Bay Company. I didn’t know that until just now.

I also didn’t know that Oak Bay was named after the Garry Oak tree. Duh. But then when I learned that my neighbourhood is called Oaklands, it made perfect sense to me. Garry Oaks are all around us.

We live on a corner lot, and there used to be three or four of them on the street corner right beside our house. On a blustery winter day about twenty years ago, one of them crashed down, first hitting our chimney, knocking a part of it loose, and then coming to rest on the back of my husband’s car.

We called the city and when they investigated, they found that particular grove of trees had some kind of rotting root fungus, meaning the rest of them were a hazard to leave there. So, sadly, they all had to be taken down.

But, as they say, the apple (or in this case, the acorn) doesn’t fall far from the tree. Another Garry Oak is now growing in the same spot and is thriving. I’ve made it a part of my little garden there. And we still have a grove of mature Garry Oaks by our back yard.

Right now, trees of every sort are top of mind as communities all over the northern hemisphere deal with high heat, droughts and as a result, forest fires. It’s terrifying.

When fires are caused by lightening or other natural events, that’s bad enough. But why is it that some idiot humans HAVE to have their campfires flaring or absently flick their cigarettes into the bushes? As joke goes, what’s worse, their ignorance or their apathy? (Answer: They don’t know and they don’t care).

The Garry Oak is supposed to be drought tolerant, but lately they’ve been getting a little help from the city, as you can see in the photo above. Portable water tanks have been popping up around my neighbourhood and in others, giving the trees a little extra hydration. Not just Garry Oaks, other trees too.

On a recent road trip through the interior and the Rockies, I found myself marveling at the numbers and amazing varieties of trees we have all around us…deciduous and coniferous. Do you know the difference? That’s one thing I do know!

And when I walk down particular streets in my neighbourhood, I marvel at the size of the trees lining them. Some of the trunks are massive. It makes me wonder what was going on in the world when they were just seedlings.

Most of the oldest trees in the world are in the US, China and Chile, but a Nootka Cypress tree here on the island is estimated to be about 1,636 years old. That means it came to life at around year 390. The Roman Empire was still going strong then…imagine that!

Trees do some amazing things for us that we often take for granted. Globally, they absorb billions of tonnes of carbon dioxide each year. They even produce small amounts of oxygen. You know, that stuff we breathe?

Besides all of that, what’s more wonderful than lying beneath a gorgeous tree canopy on a hot summer day? Or walking through a local forest like Goldstream Park or Sooke Potholes Provincial Park, just marveling at their magnificence? And that beautiful forest scent…wow.

These days, a lot of airports are creating atriums, outdoor places with trees and plants to give passengers a place to hang out for some stress relief. Ahhh…just relax. Because that’s what trees help us to do.

So before we lose too many more of them, I’d like to raise a glass to our trees, to these natural, beautiful skyscrapers that give our lives so much more than shade. Skál…cheers!

IJ

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We Are Stardust – Following The James Webb Telescope

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I sat on the swing set with my best friend Shirley, staring out at the blue, blue sky on a summer day many years ago. We wondered about the stars and the sun and how certain words in our vocabulary came to be. That was the nature of our young friendship – pondering the mysteries of the universe.

Not long after, on July 20th, 1969, I was in Shirley’s living room watching the blurred black and white TV images of Neil Armstrong taking his first step on the moon. “One small step for man…” he began. It was wonderous.

We went outside and tried to find the moon in the day time sky, but couldn’t. Still, we somehow understood that we’d never look at it exactly the same way again, because now we knew human beings had been there. It was forever changed.

I thought about that the other day when I saw the first pictures coming in from the James Webb Telescope on the NASA website. Look how far we’ve come, I thought.

I don’t like saying the word “awesome” too much because it’s overused these days. But those pictures were definitely awesome.

That the James Webb Telescope was even able to blast off was, in itself, a huge feat. Over the years it was being built, there were many cost and scheduling issues. Lots of little things went wrong along the way, and it almost got cancelled completely.

And just imagine the pressure there was to make sure the telescope was as perfect as they could get it before it launched. Because once it was way out there in space, there was no going back.

When it finally left the earth on December 25th, 2021, more than $10 Billion had been spent. And a lot of people were pretty nervous.

Would it get to where it was supposed to go? Would it unfold properly? Would it work at all?

As we saw the other day, it exceeded expectations.

Stephan’s Quintet – Many Million Light Years Away

All of the pictures were spectacular and mesmerizing, but the one that struck me most was Stephan’s Quintet, seen above. First of all, I didn’t realize it, but Stephan’s Quintet is something I’ve seen many times before.

A couple of minutes into the 1946 film “It’s A Wonderful Life”, there is a scene where the angels are praying for George Bailey. The angels are represented by an animation of Stephan’s Quintet, having a conversation.

I never knew that that.

The Carina Nebula photo is also stunning, with sparkling, golden cloud dusts beneath millions of twinkling stars.

The most amazing, mind boggling thing to me is the fact that in those photos, we are looking far into the past. In some cases, we are looking back many millions of light years.

Light years. I’m still trying to wrap my head around that concept.

The telescope’s main mission will last 5 to 10 years, but its expected lifespan will be up to 20 years, similar to the Hubble telescope. Just imagine what scientists, and the rest of us, will learn from it by then.

Maybe we’ll discover all kinds of new things, including ways to help ourselves, and, especially, our tiny blue planet.

As Joni Mitchell sang:

We are stardust, we are golden, and we’ve got to find our way back to the garden.

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Spring Is Coming!

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Sometimes on a dark, damp day in the middle of winter, I think about how wonderful it would be to live on a tropical island where you’d never have to face the doom and gloom of a west coast winter.

Even in other, colder Canadian cities, they seem to get more sunshine than we do. We just get a lot of grey and rain. And more grey. And more rain. This is why many of us refer to it as the “wetcoast”.

For people who move here from other parts of the world, the hardest thing to adjust to is the grey. And the rain. It’s depressing.

That’s why I like to imagine waking up to summer every morning, and living in shorts and t-shirts all year in a perpetual paradise.

But then again, if we didn’t have winter, I’d miss one of my favourite seasons: spring.

Spring means so many wonderful things: new life, new hope, a fresh start. It gets just a little warmer every day as spring approaches. The bees start to wake up, the birds begin to nest, and the air is fresh with new scents and warm feelings. It’s literally like coming alive.

When I was little, my mother used to note the date of the first crocus on our wall calendar every year. “Oh! It’s a day earlier this year!” She’d smile. And then she’d note the first daffodil and the first tulip.

On one of my walks the other day, I was so happy to see a bunch of little yellow crocuses blooming that I took a picture of it. A block or so later I bumped into someone I knew who said she had just sent a series of spring flower pictures to her relatives back east.

We “wet-coasters” love to do that, don’t we? Torture our friends and family back east with flower pictures, boasting of our early spring. We even have an official flower count here on the island, and we love to let the rest of the country know every daffodil-ic detail. Just to rub it in. This year the Greater Victoria Flower Count runs from March 9th to March 16th.

Most of us on the island know about it, but if you’ve never heard of or participated in the flower count, well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. You go outside and count flowers and then you send your numbers in. There were 65+ billion blooms counted last year. On their website, they even have a count down to the flower count.

It feels like a count down to spring, really. When I last looked, there were 29 days, 22 hours, 7 minutes and 53 seconds to go. Sigh.

Of course, real spring starts on March 20th, but sometimes it does show up a little early just to tease us. It can even show up for a few days in February sometimes. Our last couple of weeks have shown us a few lovely sunsets and sunnier days.

But then, all of a sudden, snow can rear its chilly head too…

I don’t know about you, but I need spring really badly this year. Like many out there, my family have experienced some great losses over the past few months, on top of all of the negative news that’s happening in the world right now.

And what with more and more people coming down with COVID, it has been like living in a bad dream. I now know many people who’ve been infected with COVID since the Omicron variant has taken over. Sadly, I even know one person who has died from it. It’s been another very cruel winter.

So how about it spring? Why not show up a little earlier this year just to perk us up a bit? Bring on the daffodils and tulips, the nests full of tiny chirpers, the sun and the new buds. Let’s get back to golf and picnics and…spring cleaning?

Okay, wait…