Heat, rain

Every out-of-town visitor to my place eventually ends up touring the Camosun Bog, which is being carefully turned back into a place for native plants. The recent downpours have created quite a little pond out of this area, which is often almost dry at the height of summer. 

These pond areas usually don't even exist. We can thank the fall rains for this calm and lovely view.

Another normally dry spot; the water is coming up through the moss. 

Kids are playing outside in T-shirts these days as Vancouver's temperatures feel more like spring than fall. Or maybe even summer -- with the thermometer breaking records at 19.4 C on Nov. 8. (Perhaps that was heat drifting north from the U.S. election.) But it wasn't a one-off: apparently our average daily high so far this month is 15, six degrees above average. And we're not the only ones. My niece Katherine from Kitchener, Ont. wrote today that she was planting spring bulbs in 15-degree weather.

In B.C. at least, the warmth has come with a lot of rain, with flooding in some parts of the province. The west coast of Vancouver Island has already had more rain -- 400 millimetres -- than it usually gets all month.

All that heat and rain made me wonder what would happen if I threw some grass seed on a bare patch of lawn created by my recent clean-up efforts. I would be quite excited -- and a little alarmed -- if it turned green.

When I was on this boardwalk, I heard  a great "who-who" noise from the trees. I think it was owls having an extensive conversation. There are enough trees and good habitat that the owls and other birds hang out here. 

Another view of the pond with the boardwalk running through it.

The bog is within about a 20-minute walk of my place, at the edge of Pacific Spirit Park. I try to hit it often.

Outside the bog area, a wonderful green ocean of what we could probably call weeds, but I think they are native plants.

I had to shoot this because it shows the sky is actually blue in November here sometimes. 

 I passed this hedge with an arm stuck through it. A last wave goodbye to Halloween.