Smoke gets in your eyes

I'm afraid I took this picture myself.

When I look back at this summer during which I was effectively locked out of this blog, I will remember three key things.

The third (I may discuss the other two later) is the relentless spread of wildfires across the province of British Columbia, even to the northern end of Vancouver Island -- an American cousin thought the the Straits of Georgia and Juan de Fuca could shield us. Even if the fires had stayed beyond the water, the skies darkened for days at a time. In the Interior, it was for weeks, and is still a problem from time to time.

For the worst of it, we had an Air Quality Index of 10+, which is worse than Beijing.

I kept the windows closed, and didn't stray far. The air had an orange tinge and a taste that scratched the back of my throat, which reminded me of the August smog in Ottawa before limits on industrial emissions largely cleared the skies about eight years ago.

This song by Kate Bush drifted through my mind, like the smoke outside.



She was singing of nuclear fall-out, but really, how hopeful are the implications of what seems to be becoming an annual event?

When spring doesn't

It occurred to me the other day that I haven't strolled out and just taken pictures in ages.  Part of the reason for this is that I'm usually either on my way somewhere and don't want to be carting my Nikon along, or I'm in the company of the Accent Snob who is always anxious to get home, no matter how short a time it's been since we've left the house.

However, yesterday I was short a few thousand steps from my daily pedometer goal.  (Along with "NaBloPoMo"-ing, I'm trying to make 10,000 steps for every day in May.)  However, elder daughter was taking the Accent Snob for his preprandial walk, so I stuffed my camera in a bag and set off along the Rideau River, determined to switch off the auto-focus.

This is, alas, my twelfth spring in Hades, and it's safe to say there's been no other spring like it in my experience.  An Ottawan spring generally lasts two weeks, three weeks tops.  In March (which still counts as winter in Hades), we hurtled into a week of summer temperatures.  It felt damned odd walking in a humidex along streets lined with barren trees and brown grass.  The trees and the grass themselves got wildly confused, throwing out green shoots, only to get flash-frozen when winter temperatures abruptly returned.  Then the temperatures rose and we were surrounded by bewildered Red Monarch butterflies which got blasted by the next cold spell.  By then we were in April, and the daffodils, tulips and dandelions (for Pete's sake) all appeared at the same time.  (This never happens.)

So now it's May and instead of the sudden green hemorrhage that normally heralds the end of the brief spring, we have timid green leaves cautiously venturing out on the branches overhead.


No turning back now.