Tag: camas

Phone Friday V

~ AndyG ~ 1 Comment

Some views, some flowers, but all things I’ve seen in the past week. Wednesday’s trip to Bowen Island was lovely and is the source of several photos, mostly of the mountain range near Brunswick and Harvey but the crescent moon made an appearance as we sailed home. Throw in the usual array of flowers – including one final look at the camas – a campus view, and a rare sighting of one of my favourite animals, the snail.

How am I at week 5 of Phone Friday already?

  1. The view off the back of the ferry to Bowen – how can I resist another photo of that magnificent line of peaks?
  2. We went for a wander from Doc Morgan’s to give our ears a rest from the music session and found this beautiful reflection of those same mountains in the calm water in Snug Cove. Instant photo-op!
  3. As we left I wondered aloud about whether we’d see the crescent moon. I was skeptical given that the New Moon was only a day or so earlier, but I walked out on deck and sure enough the moon was right there, hanging low over Bowen. I lamented the fact I didn’t have a “proper” camera with me, but tried the shot anyway. Needless to say I was blown away by the fact that it turned out so well! Obviously, this is cropped heavily but it’s Instagram so a 12-Mpx image has a lot of scope for that. I’m absolutely delighted with this photo. The original had Venus near the top, but I had to make the difficult decision to omit it from this framing to show off the slender moon in the evening sky.
  4. Buoyed by the success of the photo above, I turned to face the opposite direction and attempted a low light show of Brunswick and Harvey. To my surprise, the camera not only focused but produced a respectable photo. Score two for the Pixel 2! The sea was so calm that night…
  5. I noticed recently that the pine trees were growing their pollen cones again, so here’s a close-up view of an Austrian pine, of which there are quite a few outside our office window. After overnight rain, I saw drifts of yellow at the edges of some former puddles, which meant that the cones were releasing their pollen. I couldn’t resist investigating more closely and tapped the end of the branch to see how much pollen drifted out. Turns out, a lot (depending on how hard you tap the branch)! Multiply that by the number of branches and the number of trees and it becomes obvious why allergy season can be so miserable for some. I looked for a pollen corona around the Sun later in the day but didn’t see one. I’ll keep looking.
  6. I really like geometric shapes, which means I’ve been looking for an excuse to photograph these bus shelters at UBC. I’d tried one shot before, just of the roof with blue sky above it, but wasn’t particularly enthralled with the result. But this day I noticed the shadow on the ground complementing the roof, and I felt that seeing the two in the same image was a much more effective photo. It loses a little in the square crop, but I still like it.
  7. Snail! We don’t see many snails in Vancouver so I was happy to find this one on the steps of a friend’s house. Actually there was about a dozen snails on the steps, but this was the only one I could get the camera to focus on. Fun fact: there was a time when I had a website dedicated to snails, and for a very brief time it was even the top result on Google.
  8. This is the flower of the Japanese dogwood, which we’d noticed a few days earlier and wondered what it was. Thankfully, there’s a specimen (with a label!) right outside the entrance to my building at work. The flowers stand out (literally) as they are on the end of a thin stem that protrudes up away from the branch, almost looking like a fake tree. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed this before…
  9. With a photo of the Japanese dogwood lined up for this week, I had to slip in an old favourite to go with it. The lovely red-tipped bracts on this particular bunchberry plant caught my eye. It’s not quite in focus (I probably got a little too close, or perhaps the focus picked up a different part of the plant) but it’s good enough for this collection, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen one with such lovely coloured tips.
  10. The camas flowers are nearly done – the postage stamp of a meadow has only a couple of flowers still in bloom, so I just had to take one last picture especially as the yellow pollen contrasts so well against the purple flower. It’s been about a month since the first buds showed up, and I’ve really enjoyed keeping track of their growth. Now they’re done for the year, I’ll have to switch my attention to other plants. I think the tulip poplars are due to flower… 🙂

Phone Friday IV

~ AndyG ~ Leave a comment

Another mix of photos from the past week for phone Friday, mostly flowers of course but a bit of nice scenery for good measure. I love springtime.

I’m getting behind on my blog posts! It’s a little bit cumbersome to write about each photo but I hope you bear with me.

  1. I simply couldn’t resist another photo of camas, but this time in the wild! We stopped at Neck Point Park just outside Nanaimo on a whim and were greeted by a gorgeous pocket of coastal Garry oak woodland and meadows dotted with camas, chickweed, and other wildflowers. We even saw a chocolate lily and one solitary remnant fawn lily with the last withered petals still attached. The wind put paid to most of attempts at flower photos but a couple did turn out.
  2. Broad-leaved stonecrop – possibly the first time we’ve identified this flower, it was widespread along the rocks in the park. I didn’t expect to see the familiar yellow stonecrop flowers though, so that was definitely a bonus!
  3. The view from the ferry as we sail for Nanaimo, looking back to the familiar peaks of the Howe Sound Crest Trail. I’ve photographed this view a few times and distant mountains against open ocean and sky tend to look pretty boring, so I was pleased to notice the curve of the ferry railing, which led my eye into the frame more or less straight to the base of the snowiest summits. A beautiful day for a ferry ride!
  4. Something different: the view from the third floor of the student Nest at UBC, looking straight down. The architecture of this (relatively new) building invites the discovery of interesting shapes and angles, but I wasn’t keen to try during term time when it’s full of students. But this night was perfect: we’d just finished our group get-together for drinks and were walking down the stairs. We stopped to peer over the glass partition and swoon at the long drop to the floor, and I instantly saw this composition with its abstract yet patterned feel.
  5. Sometimes you wonder why a plant is so-named. And then you look a little closer and it becomes obvious. Fringecup is now one of my favourite flowers to watch for in the spring and it’s well worth stopping to get a really close look at the flowers with their delicate little fringed petals lining the cup-like flowers. I should get myself a macro lens for these closeups though.
  6. The classic unfurling fiddlehead of the deer fern, I’ve had little luck getting a good photo of them at this stage. Low light and having to crouch or kneel to get the right angle often make for blurry photos so I’m quite happy with this one.
  7. Back to Neck Point Park, this is the neck from which the park takes its name. We couldn’t resist walking out onto the shingle, graded from small to large as we moved away from the shore, to explore the rocks at the end. Alas it was far too windy to hang around to admire the view for long!
  8. Sunset Beach in Neck Point Park, this looks like the perfect spot to watch a mid-summer sunset. The curve of the beach makes for a pleasing view in itself too.
  9. Sand dollar party! To my surprise we saw more live sand dollars on this trip than previously, despite the low tide not being as low as last year. I think we just caught them as the tide was receding and before they’d had time to burrow into the sand. I spent a few moments just watching them, and although I couldn’t see them at the time (I couldn’t get that close), it’s a treat to see all the dozens of tiny feeder tendrils.
  10. And with that I bid you good night. A colourful sunset reflected in a tidal pool on the beach near Rathrevor provincial park. A lovely way to end a glorious day!

Phone Friday III

~ AndyG ~ Leave a comment

The camas is blooming after still only being buds earlier in the week, joined by bunchberry and its showier and blousier cousin – the warm sunshine has worked its magic.

The first four pictures are sort-of looking back in time at the camas. It’s been really nice to keep an eye on it and watch the buds to start out green before taking on a blueish tinge and then finally emerging in their full lilac/purple glory. The fourth photo was taken only a matter of a few days before the others showing just how quickly the flowers bloomed in the warmer weather! I’m not sure if these actually are the usual common camas as they’re enormous, standing a couple of feet tall; the camas I photographed last year in Victoria forced me to crouch down quite low to get the shot I was after.

Equally speedy in blooming was the bunchberry in the fifth photo. It went from leaves to flowers in barely a week, and suddenly it’s everywhere in the native plant garden. Bunchberry is yet another of my favourite springtime flowers and I was pleasantly surprised at the sweetness of the berries when I tried them last year.

Last but not least is the dogwood tree outside our building. The bracts have turned these flowers into saucer-sized blooms, and yet only just now have the tiny central florets started opening up. I’m pleased to have got these dogwood photos as I seem to miss them every year; the bracts start to go brown and die off very quickly which makes them a less appealing target for my camera. Just today I noticed how they were already looking worse for weather around the edges so I caught them at the right time.

(And yes I know it’s Monday but I forgot over the weekend and don’t have a mountain shot for today so this will have to do!)

Phone Friday II

~ AndyG ~ Leave a comment

Another batch of photos from the past week for phone-Friday – watching the trillium change colour, the first violet, dogwood, camas buds, blossom, the last of the blue sky, and trees galore

  1. Western trillium does this neat thing where the petals change colour as they age. For years I thought there were two species with different colours until I read about that in our plant book.
  2. This photo shows a group of trillium with fresh and older blooms. It’s rare to find such a dense group of trillium in the wild so I’m happy to keep taking pictures of all the flowers in this little native plant garden.
  3. The first of the Alaska violets has bloomed in the patch of ground near my office. They’re hard to capture with the phone as I need to get down low to frame up the photo, and I have to try at the right time of day to avoid casting a shadow across them.
  4. The dogwood blooms are coming along nicely! I check on them every day as they’re right outside the entrance to the School of Population and Public Health.
  5. It’s nice to see that the camas buds are beginning to show hints of blue, and I’m hoping to see the first flowers emerge next week after the warm sunshine we’ve had recently.
  6. The wind picked up towards the end of the day, Friday, blowing thousands of cherry blossom petals from the trees. I was struck by the contrast between the fresh pink and the grey of the concrete, as well as the line of the kerb, and it was nice to capture them while they were fresh.
  7. Friday morning was a lovely warm sunny morning, the first day where it almost felt like summer. With classes ended, the UBC campus feels so much more peaceful and I took advantage to capture this view of the Musqueam double-headed serpent post reflected in the still water. You’ll have to take my word for it about the reflection as it had to be left out of the square crop for Instagram.
  8. We went for a walk in Pacific Spirit Park last weekend and enjoyed the sunshine streaming through the forest of tall trees. I really like this effect of the trees filling all the available space even though the forest was bright and open where we were standing. (It reminded me a bit of the Olbers’ Paradox in astronomy, although it’s not really a valid comparison.) The original photo had quite strong perspective effects on the tree trunks so I used DxO’s geometry corrections to straighten the trees and give the photo the appearance I was after.

That’s it for this week. We’ll see what photo-opportunities the next seven days brings… I’ll try to write up the blog post on time too, which means posting the photos on Instagram a little earlier than 11 pm!

Phone Friday I

~ AndyG ~ Leave a comment

A selection of spring scenes taken at various times over the past week, mostly up at UBC. It’s great watching all the new growth appear and develop. Expect to see a few more of these in the coming weeks as I track progress of the trillium, dogwood, magnolia, false lily-of-the-valley, common camas (especially looking forward to seeing this!), and horsetails.

With any new camera comes a honeymoon period of frenzied photo-taking. Since I bought my new phone I’ve been taking many photographs to see how good it really is and to seek out its limitations. So far (as I mentioned the other day) I’m impressed – as long as I don’t “zoom” in too far – and I’ve already amassed quite a collection of photos that I really like.

The question is, what to do with all these photos I’ve been taking that I think are so good? I don’t want to post multiple photos a day (especially with my self-imposed desire to mirror my Instagram photos on this blog), so I thought I’d save up my favourite “random” photos taken over the course of a week and upload them all at once in a single multi-photograph post. That reduces my blogging requirements considerably, and gives me a place to show off a few photos that fall under the category of “things I’ve seen” rather than a specific subject or topic.

Which brings me to my distinctly unoriginal tag for this collection of posts: phone Friday. They have to be photos taken with my phone within the past 7 days. Instagram has a limit of 10 per post; I’ll try and keep it to 7 or so, the equivalent of one per day. The inaugural collection is mostly photos taken around the UBC campus. Well, actually that’s not strictly true but it’s close enough: most of these were taken very close to my office, a couple in the Nitobe Garden, and one near Vancouver City Hall.

  1. Trillium – I recently discovered a native-plant garden at UBC and was delighted to find trillium growing there.
  2. Trillium – not just one flower either, several really nice bunches, with some flowers just turning post-pollination pink.
  3. Dogwood – right outside the building in which I work is a dogwood tree, and the sight of the new growth stopped me in my tracks one afternoon as we headed out for coffee.
  4. Nitobe Garden – a view across the pond towards cherry and maple trees; the Japanese garden is always a serene place to visit.
  5. False lily-of-the-valley & Douglas fir – I really liked the leaves poking up through the moss and the way they covered the ground at the base of this Douglas fir tree.
  6. Magnolia – deep pink magnolia against a blue sky near City Hall.
  7. Common camas – the flower I’m most looking forward to seeing in bloom, I was really surprised to find these at the end of their flowering last year so I’ve been keeping an eye on them for the first signs of buds, and here they are!
  8. Horsetails – in the same patch of grass (“meadow”) as the camas are dozens of horsetails, a mixture of male and female plants that I’m keep to watch develop over the coming weeks as I’ve not paid much attention to them in the past.

So that’s phone Friday the first. Of course I’m a couple of days late with the blog post – oops – but I’ll try to be on time next week! See you then!

Not bluebells

~ AndyG ~ 3 Comments

Fields of camas – I was amazed to see so many around the park! Such a beautiful sight! I think I’ll be spending more time here next spring…

Recently I’ve been seeing lots of camas (and other wildflower) pictures from various Instagrammers and it’s been making me want to drop everything and head over to Vancouver Island (or one or more of the Southern Gulf Islands) to check out the spring wildflowers. Vancouver seems a little lacklustre in the spring wildflower department by comparison, and the only ones I make an effort to photograph are white fawn lilies and trillium.

I hadn’t even thought about looking for flowers at the time we arranged a trip over to Vancouver Island to visit some friends, but the sight of all those Instagram pictures had me suggesting we head into town for the afternoon. And I was really quite blown away by how extensive they were in Beacon Hill Park. I didn’t expect that at all, thinking that with it being a city park that it would be dominated by cultivated flowers and manicured grass. So it was a wonderful surprise to find the park has patches of unmanicured meadows and trees. And the camas was growing everywhere! I’ve never seen such a bloom. My first reaction was that I was seeing a field of bluebells, but I was delighted to find that it was a lovely spread of camas instead. They even look similar when first budding and I really had to look twice in a few places.

So my mind is made up: I think I need to make a spring pilgrimage to southern Vancouver Island every year now… 🙂