nature, Photography

Creek Walk

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We live near the Penticton Creek and I love to walk along its length. The trees, birds and sound of the water are all definitely very relaxing.

The creek is beginning to run quite high at the moment and all the nearby trees and bushes have leafed out or turned green, so it’s beautiful to walk there in the sunlight.

This last section of creek before it empties into Okanagan Lake is lined with cement from the early 1950s when the city leadership thought this approach would help to control flooding. That notion certainly didn’t pan out; all it did was cause a serious problem for our landlocked salmon – kokanee – to swim upstream to spawn.

Most of the creek has now been revitalised and returned to its natural state with the rest to be completed in the next couple of years. With ladders in that last bit of unrestored creek, the kokanee are beginning to return home. The picture above from last autumn shows them on their way to mountain lakes. Unfortunately, not all of them make it as you can see, but that’s how it is in the natural world.

Happy May. 🌼

nature, Photography

Okanagan Views

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We took a long-way-around drive in the countryside to visit a favourite winery.

We tried a new production year of a wine we have repeatedly enjoyed and also admired the view from the huge floor-to-ceiling windows of their very comfortable tasting room.

Many of their vines suffered in the unexpected January cold snap and they have been severely pruned back so that the plants’ energy can be diverted into root recovery rather than spent on fruit growth.

This particular winery will get past this difficulty because it has stored juice from previous years and they have survived hard times before by creating (and succeeding hugely with) unique blends. Unfortunately, many others, especially the small ones, don’t have that kind of fallback. I understand that the government will be allowing wineries to buy juice from Ontario (and will also subsidise costs) until this hurdle has been cleared.

On the way home we stopped in several places to take a walk and enjoy the views and although we had a couple of sun showers we didn’t see that as a negative.

Happy Tuesday.

nature, Photography

Arc-en-ciel

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A few days ago I saw a particularly good rainbow. I didn’t have my camera but these cell phone pictures work okay, I think.

We have been having quite a lot of “sun showers,” where there’s a mix of rain-laden clouds together with sunny breaks.

The rainbow was in a perfect arc from north to south.

Rainbows are caused by refraction, the same process that produces sundogs. It occurs when light from the sun changes direction while passing through a medium denser than air, such as a raindrop. Refraction can produce some very beautiful sights.

The picture above shows that there was also a faint, secondary rainbow above the more defined one.

Happy rainbow Sunday. 🌈

Reblogs

Red Hot Pokers

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The hummingbirds and Bullocks oriole share the red hot pokers, but not at the same time.  These photos are from another year, as it’s a bit early for…

Red Hot Pokers

I hope you enjoy these stunningly gorgeous captures from Anneli at wordsfromanneli. Please click the link above to see the rest of the photos and to visit her blog.

Sometimes, life is like that.