Surprises

One of the best things about walking around Vancouver is the chance of encountering the  unexpected. You look up and suddenly . . . there is something amazing. A view you hadn't seen before or that is suddenly different. Somebody's sense of humour on display. A flourishing something behind a net, in a garden bed or decorating some garbage cans. Here are a few of the surprises I have encountered in my walks lately:

A sudden burst of purple phlox and foxgloves stopped me in my tracks one day on my regular route down the Dunbar hill.

This ghost-like apparition rose up in front of me one day. 

Under the net, safe from birds, bunches of cherries ripening.

This was a surprise on a route down  the 16th Avenue hill that I hadn't walked for awhile. The house on this lot had obviously been torn down  long enough ago to allow a full field of  foxgloves and weeds to spring up. I was struck by how quickly it had returned to wilderness. The North Shore mountains are in the background. 

I'd photographed these vegetable beds several weeks earlier, but when I passed them again, they had grown so much that I couldn't resist recording their abundance.

Why not make the back lane beautiful, even if it has to accommodate garbage cans?

Somebody couldn't resist turning this stump into a bathroom fixture. It's hard to see in the photo, but there is even a handle for flushing on the square board attached to the seat back.

The Point Grey waterfront is always beautiful, but the combination of lavender and weeds gone to seed caught my eye this spring.