Leaving

Part of the swirl that I've been caught up in these months has to do with an impending move.  It was never the plan to live in our current house forever, but the week after New Years we found a notice in the mail box that spurred us to action.  We renovated, spruced, listed and sold.  We explored neighbourhoods and looked into schools.  We hunted, pondered, wondered and finally bought.  All in just nine weeks.  We're exhausted.

As I wandered the backyard yesterday, it hit me.  This is the last time I'll see the blue Muscari under the apple tree.  That young plumb tree might fruit for the first time this year, but someone else will (I hope) harvest its fruit.  When I trimmed back the peonies last fall, I had no idea that I'd never see those deep pink blooms again.  Suddenly all the spring blooms and early green shoots are even more precious than usual.

There will be a new yard, a blank canvas.  But this was my first garden.  I know the ways the light dances through the leaves and I will miss it.

Joining the Sunlit Sunday fun at My Little Home and Garden.

Yellow

I looked out the window this morning and something yellow caught my eye.  I almost dropped by tea.  A crocus.  Just one, sunning itself in a sheltered corner.  Naively stretching up and open like a toddler, up far to early in the morning.  Even here on the west coast this is an unusual sight for January.

I'll be linking to Sunlit Sunday, hosted by Karen at My Little Home and Garden.

Bird Seed

I'm curled up by the fire with a nice hot honey and lemon drink, reviewing the last ten days of pictures.  Christmas.  Then Christmas again.  Happy, wiggly kids hyped up on sugar and festivity.  A few walks to the park or the beach.  Not represented on the memory card: lazy days of reading books and taking afternoon naps.  Tomorrow real life resumes.

One of those little outings included a container of bird seed.  Just shake it and the ducks look up.  Pop the lid and they paddle to shore.  These ducks know the drill.  Tossed seed bounces off their backs.  Soft quacks.  Bobbing heads.  Wagging tail feathers.  The party grows.

Then it's not just ducks.  Seagulls watch from a distance.  This Canada Goose makes his way to the front of the line and sticks his head right into the container of seed.  Bold.

Shoo!  The last sunlight of the day glints off his dark beak and he gives me the stink eye.

I'm linking, with these few precious rays of west coast winter sun. to Sunlit Sunday hosted by Karen and My Little Home and Garden.

Wildflowers

The wildflowers are blooming on M Hill.  That's what a friend tells me.  So I scramble over rocks and up dry stream beds.  I have a camera around my neck and a toddler on my back -- a bit ambitious perhaps, but how else will I see these seasonal beauties?

From the parking lot I start along a forested trail, but it doesn't take long to climb up from the fir canopy into meadows of moss, punctuated by outcroppings of bare bedrock.

There's little soil here, so trees grow small.  Arbutus, twisted and red, was the first coastal tree that I learned to identify.  Garry Oak are less showy, but utterly unique to this region.  These trees are survivors.  Stunted and gnarly, they look it.

But it's the flowers I came to see.  They're subtle, small enough to be missed.  

 

Fawn Flower.  Shooting Star.  Satin Flower.  They sprout from the shallowest of earth and fling their fragile hearts open to the spring blusters.  What brave souls.

I lean over a rock, sprawl on the damp ground, contort myself around a shrub to meet them.  They drip dew and quietly conjure the sun out from behind the clouds.  Hello spring.


Linking, for the last time this season, to Sunlit Sunday at My Little Home and Garden.  Thank you for hosting, Karen.

Sunlit Sunday with Real Sunshine

It's raining again at the moment, but the sun shone this week.  All week.  I'm not talking about a metaphorical sunniness or a symbolic scrap of yellow, not a transitional breath of light between showers.  The sun shone.  All week.  Temperatures crept up.  Spirits soared.  Croci opened wide in their last hurrah and I, shovel in hand, inhaled the aroma of fresh soil and the food that it will grow.  Hallelujah, it's spring.

I'm joining Karen at My Little Home and Garden for Sunlit Sunday.