24 January 2026 – Let us first define our terms.

Winter, not as most of the country is currently experiencing it, but winter as we experience it here at sea level on the Canadian west coast. More precisely, because the quip fits: winter as we experience it here on the wet coast.

While much of the rest of Canada contends with brutal temperatures and heavy snowfall…

our shops run out of umbrellas.

I see this sign in the VanDusen Botanical Garden gift shop, where I loiter awaiting my partner for our planned winter walk in the Garden.

Sun overhead, and hoar frost sparkles on the grass.

Tree trunks and branches flourish their winter coats of moss.

Sometimes in great goofy patches…

sometimes as a shimmering outline, viewed from the shadow side of a tree trunk facing the sun…

and sometimes draped along the branches of sibling Japanese maples, touching fingers above Heron Lake, itself adorned with a rare skin of ice.

That ice, however, is only in the upper reaches of the lake.

Farther along…

the fountain guarantees open water — to the delight of paddling ducks.

We first walk a path known officially as the Winter Walk, because of its plantings, and as we go we tick the list of its star attractions: witch hazel, heavenly bamboo, Japanese laurel, and wintersweet.

Then we veer off, take other pathways across the Garden, and notice their mid-winter palette as well.

A fiery Red osier dogwood, for example, there in the middle distance, with bright Japanese skimmia right here at our finger tips.

Grasses in the perennial beds are neatly bundled up…

dancing their feathery tips over plant stalks in the flower beds. These plants are pruned for winter and currently anonymous, but their time will come.

Tree trunks!

We are drop-jawed at the jewel tones of this Snow Goose flowering cherry…

and then find ourselves equally impressed by the austere tones of this Sichuan birch.

(Enlivened, I feel compelled to add, by a kick of moss in its upper branches.)

Then we’re off, out past the Garden’s rammed earth sirewall, handsome in any season…

and on down Oak Street for a while, prolonging the walk.