A Flower Geek, That’s Me!

I have always loved flowers. I can’t recall our dining room table in my childhood home being without a vase of flowers, real ones from the garden or good-looking silk ones during the winter. Jan being a horticulturist and working in greenhouses, we never lacked for cut flowers and potted plants in our own home. I love receiving a bouquet of flowers, not only because of the joy the flowers give me but mostly because of the thought behind it from the giver.

But there is something about wildflowers that touch me in a way that is hard to express in words. The closest I can come is that my mind is filled with a certain peace and delight when my eyes find the reds, yellows, and blues amid the greens. I am fortunate to have good friends who share my passion, and it was one of them who came up with the term “flower geek” a number of years ago on our annual wildflower trip together. Now that we live in two different provinces our flower geeking is done by sharing pictures online—not the same as discovering the wildflowers together, but a good second. For a couple of years when Life got in the way I missed the peak of the season and it was with a touch of sadness I had to accept that. “Next year” I said to myself…

And then came 2020. Barely into the year the world shut down because of COVID-19 and we are not out of the woods yet—pardon the pun! But as the air cleared around the globe and marine life found old waterways, the wildflowers of Alberta put on the greatest show I have ever seen. I have no idea if the abundance of wildflowers this year has anything to do with the pandemic—probably not, but when I think back on 2020 in future years, my first thought will be of the stunning display of wildflowers, and the corona virus second.

Old man's whiskers and a couple of larkspur. There are fields and fields of old man's whiskers everywhere

Glacier lily. On a recent hike in Kananaskis there were hundreds of glacier lilies in bloom

Shooting star. A friend alerted me to this place where the shooting stars were so plentiful

Star-flowered Solomon's seal. I usually find the false Solomon's seal, so this was a real treat

Common red paintbrush. One of my favourite wildflowers, and I can't get over how many are in bloom right now

Long bracted green orchid. I adore wild orchids! AB is home to 26 species and while I have found many I have by no means seen them all. This one I hadn't seen until this year

Lupines. Another favourite of mine, and they are everywhere right now

Sainfoin. I have never seen this wildflower before. Apparently it's a gourmet addition to hay fields!

Jan and I have been out and about more this summer than in recent memory. The beauty of the abundance of the wildflowers leaves us breathless every time no matter where we go in our corner of the world. While nothing can rival what the eye sees in real life, I do my best to capture some of it in my camera’s viewfinder. I have taken a lot of pictures, and the images shared here are but a fraction of what’s out there. Go see for yourself, if you haven’t already!

A March Like No Other

“We live in exceptional times.” This is a quotation from the book I am reading right now called All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (ISBN 978150117321900). It won the Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for Fiction as well as the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction the same year. It is a story set in WWII told by two main characters, a blind French girl and her father entrusted with a priceless diamond from the Museum of Natural History in Paris and a young German boy who discovers the atrocities of his people through his training and later on the front and is sickened by it. The prose is exceptional and I am at the point now where the two stories have come together. There is still a ways to go in the book and I am anxious to see where it goes next. As war stories go, this one stands out and is well worth reading.

It was earlier in the week I came to the page with the words “we live in exceptional times” and my immediate thought was that those five words describe our current global health crisis better than any other words. As individuals, as a community, and as a society we have changed forever already, and I can only hope some of the good we have learned from this crisis will carry over to when times settle down again and the COVID-19 virus is contained. I can also only hope the ugly side of humanity we have seen from some will be crushed.

Each one of us deals with the crisis in our own way. I empathize with the ones who are stricken with the virus. I empathize with the ones who are panicking and so worried they hide in their homes. And I empathize with everyone trying to juggle child care with working from home or worse, layoffs. As a senior I’m in the high risk category, but that doesn’t deter me from going outside for a walk in the neighbourhood.

In many ways how I deal with this crisis is the same way I dealt with my breast cancer. When I was diagnosed I was headed towards uncharted waters and instead of worrying myself to death I chose to live one day at a time. I didn’t think about what was going to or could happen next week, next month; no, it was what’s happening today, and at the most tomorrow. The word “worry” ceased to exist in my vocabulary and I entered full fight mode from the start. I was very good at following directions from health professionals then, and I do the same now. I feel the same calmness now as I did then. I knew it was a serious situation then and I know it is a serious situation now. But instead of letting it control me, I control my reaction to it. I keep myself informed what happens each day so I can take appropriate action in my little corner of the world. There’s a Danish saying that it takes many small creeks to make a big river… if we all do our bit, the world will be a safer place.

Jan and I have chosen to self-isolate for a while… we don’t even get together with our family next door, for their protection as well as for ours. We meet outside with a couple of meters between us as we talk. I am mindful of how I wash my hands and do it more often. We haven’t yet but will take advantage of early opening hours for seniors at the grocery stores and pharmacies, to limit our exposure to others despite social distancing. Next week our twice-weekly exercise class will come to us in our home from our instructor via Facebook Live. We don’t take walks to the woods with our friends anymore… instead we go separately and compare notes via texts on the birds we see. Getting outside and soaking up the sunshine is more important now than ever before, and it is important to remember it is safe to do so, just not in a crowd. A drive in the country gets rid of cabin fever, just like it always did.

And that’s exactly what we did the other day. I brought my camera and took some shots. Let’s not forget in all the turmoil that the world is a beautiful place.

I can never get enough of this view of the mountains

Gophers are out! And all the colours of the rainbow glittered on the snow in the sun

The shadows make all the difference in this picture

A pair of great horned owls... mama tucked down on her eggs in the nest and papa keeping watch

Another view I never tire of

On the Road Again… and Having Fun

I am what I call an occasional photographer. Very seldom, if ever, is taking photographs the reason I go out, rather I take photographs when I’m out.

I took the opportunity on a September road trip through BC to the coast and back home again via the scenic route to play a little bit with my camera. Mostly I focused on composition and seeing what others might not, but a couple of times I also tried different settings. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. It’s not that I am “not interested in understanding how to make better photographs” as one professional photographer wrote in an article of the most recent copy of Photo News. It’s a case of “use it or lose it.” Because I am not out with my camera every day I have a hard time remembering what to do under certain conditions. So I experiment, but more often than not I let my very smart camera do its thing without any input from me. I get pleasure out of taking photographs, and that’s what counts. Here are a few of my favourites from the trip.

A morning walk in the Great Blue Heron Nature Reserve in Chilliwack didn’t reveal any herons, but this spider web intrigued me and inspired me to experiment with aperture settings. I was thrilled when the colours of the rainbow were reflected in the web even though the leaves in the morning sun are overexposed.

Photographing wildflowers is my passion, and I like this image because of the one flower in focus while the rest and the background are blurry. I have not identified this flower yet, but I find it striking because of the purple and yellow together.

A beach walk on the coast was what we looked forward to the most. The bird life is usually very interesting and entertaining. Even though there were dozens of ravens about, this one was having a crab feast on the boulder all by himself.

I like this image because clearly I am on a ferry and going somewhere, but looking back at where I’ve been. A Bil Keane quotation comes to mind: Yesterday’s the past, tomorrow’s the future, but today is a gift. That is why it’s called the present. So true…

While we were surprised we didn’t see much of fall colours on our trip, the big-leaf maples in Reifel Migratory Bird Sanctuary in Delta were spectacular.

Photographing wildlife is often about being in the right place at the right moment. We certainly were east of Vernon when we discovered first one, then three turkey vultures with wings spread out basking in the early morning sun. A wondrous sight to be seen and many photographs were taken, but when the mist started to dissipate the background made for a whole different picture. Even though two of the three birds no longer have their wings unfolded, this is one of my favourites because of the background.

Rain had fallen shortly before we walked the 3.8 km marsh trail at the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area. Raindrops add so much to a picture.

My absolute favourite image from the coast is this sunset picture taken from our Powell River hotel room balcony. Without the man on the paddleboard it would have been a good picture, but his presence on the water makes it so much better. If you look very closely, you can see his dog on the board with him!

Where will my next adventure take me? Time will tell…

To Edit or Not to Edit… That’s the Question

In the days of film photography I had no way of changing a photograph if I didn’t like it. And I couldn’t afford to take five or six of the same scene and once developed pick the best one. A roll of 24, and even 36, would soon run out, never mind the cost. It was always exciting when I picked up my developed pictures from the photo store, took them out of the little envelope, and saw for the first time what I had captured.

Digital photography changed all that. I know an instant after I take the picture what it looks like and I can take a few with slightly different angles and then determine once they are downloaded at home on the computer what pleases my eye the best. Sometimes, though, none does it for me, and that’s when I open my ancient version of PhotoShop to see if by cropping the picture I can create an image that speaks to me.

The landscape-oriented photos of these wildflowers are the originals I took. While they are not bad, they didn’t really have that "wow, I like that!" factor for me. So in PhotoShop I changed the layout to portrait and cropped the image that way, keeping the dimensions of the original photo. And now, suddenly, I had an emotional reaction to each photo… they now told me their story.

Tall buttercup

Twisted stalk

Twisted stalk

Veiny meadow rue, female

Many years ago I took a PhotoShop class. I’ve forgotten most of what the instructor said, but one thing has stuck with me. He showed the class a picture of an old building in Greece he had taken, and next he showed us the PhotoShopped version. He had removed the drain pipe in the corner, made the bush a little greener and fuller, and spruced up the dull-looking stucco. All of us agreed the second image was much more pleasing to the eye, but it was not a true representation of that building. It was what he wanted to see, and therein lies the dilemma. If you are an artist and use PhotoShop as your canvas, then go ahead, knock yourself out. But if you just want to make your image look nicer by removing or adding things to it, then, in my opinion, it is not ethical.

I have a very old free version of PhotoShop Elements on my computer. I don’t need the newest version with all the bells and whistles as I only do four things with the program: I crop, I lighten dark areas, I darken light areas, and I add my watermark to the images I post here. That’s it. I do not change what my eye saw through the viewfinder, just how it’s seen, to make a more pleasing image. And for me, that’s all I want.

Rejuvenation

What seems at first glance a tragedy can be the beginning of something new, something unexpected. Take the 2017 Kenow Wildfire in Waterton National Park, for instance. I had not been to Waterton since the wildfire until this past June when Jan and I took part in the 16^th Waterton Wildflower Festival for a couple of days. I didn’t know what to expect, really. I wondered if I would feel the same way as I did last summer driving in BC and witnessing the wrath of wildfires there. My heart was heavy as I looked at the black matchsticks on the mountainsides and breathed the smoky air. It was almost impossible to imagine there was any life left, but such is nature’s life cycle. Some cones need the high temperature of a fire to release their seed, and lush green growth appears like magic now that the sun can reach the forest floor.

The Kenow Wildfire burned about 20,000 hectares of the park, and while a significant amount of infrastructure was also destroyed and is now slowly being rebuilt, a surprising revelation was several unknown fire rings and other signs of indigenous presence in the park. Archeologists and members of the Nitsitappii explored these previously hidden treasures, thus deepening their understanding of indigenous life in the area.

I was in awe of the two opposites coming together so beautifully in Waterton—the charred trees amidst the green grasses, bushes, and wildflowers; the ancient indigenous sites hidden again after only a year of exposure. All of it spoke to my soul in so many ways. Sometimes Life takes us through a wildfire, but once the flames die a new life awaits, and it is beautiful, scars and all.

The Sky Speaks To Me

The sky is like a painter’s canvas… ever changing and every colour you can think of, depending on the day, the time of day, and the clouds that drift by. Sometimes the sky is the deepest blue you can imagine; sometimes it is grey and dull; sometimes it is pink or orange; sometimes it is dark and angry; and sometimes it is a combination of them all. The lines are straight or curved, and if you look closely you will see what is hidden in the sky.

Four years ago I started this blog with a photograph of the morning sky. After an absence of more than a year—a life-changing year where all my energy was focused elsewhere—it is fitting I resurrect my blog with pictures of the sky. To me there is more than air between heaven and earth, and I am calmed when the sky speaks to me.

Ice fog hanging in the air created brush strokes on the sky canvas that were incredibly powerful and meaningful. The smiling face reassured me all was well.

A dark and angry sky is frightening, but never forget, above the darkness the sun always shines. And its rays will filter through. So it is with life.

The possibilities are endless… just look up, follow the path, spread your wings, and see where you end up.

A storm never lasts forever… so says the rainbow.

A fiery sunset makes me pause and reflect it was a good day after all, no matter what happened.

The sky… my canvas… my friend… what do you have in store for me tomorrow?

Black and White

Recently a challenge was posted on Facebook to share seven black-and-white photos from your life. No people, no explanations. I chose to make it into a blog post instead. So here are seven B&Ws from my life… no people, no explanations.