2 June 2025 – Only moss is on the agenda. Muzzles & monsters turn up on their own.

Moss is on the agenda because it’s about to go into its seasonal decline. Moss thrives in cool damp, suffers in dry heat. I want one last fix, and the Camosun Bog is the place to pay tribute.

As boardwalk signage points out…

the bog is, literally, built on moss.

Fortunately, despite the glossy new salal leaves and the bright growing trips of the evergreens that encircle the bog and speak of this new season…

the mossy carpet is still green, not yet bleached to its mid-summer pallor.

The moss is not just on the ground, either. Look at these trees!

So, as I leave the bog and start meandering north-east through the neighbourhood of West Point Grey, I am still moss-optimistic. And, despite distractions like this spiral of Buddhist prayer flags on a street-corner shrub…

and this bear-moose duo, endlessly paddling their way across somebody’s front yard…

I do see more moss.

Just look at these sidewalk sentinels, still wearing their winter finery, as they march their way down West 19th Avenue!

After all this, my attitude is: agenda met. No more expectations. I’ll just keep walking for a while — get in those steps — and then catch a bus.

Next thing I know, down by Alma & West Broadway, I’m being muzzled.

This is such good news.

There’s a mural by this artist in my own neighbourhood, one that both pleases & frustrates me. I like it for its own sake, but the style very loosely reminds me of Toronto street artist BirdO…

and I really, really would like to know the Vancouver artist’s name. Can’t get close enough to the mural near my home to look for any ID — but here, there’s a whole wall-full of his images, in an open alley.

Multiple images, and a tribute to Jean-Michel Basquiat (the crown, upper right)… and a plaque identifying the artist. I learn, and it is my pleasure to inform you, that this mural is the work of Tokyo-born, Vancouver-based contemporary artist Taka Suda.

I am happy indeed, as I drop down the last few blocks to West Broadway.

An eye-flick left, into another alley, where the little window in this tired old shed…

suggests it must have started life as a stable. Surely that was the hay loft, above?

After that, my eyes flick straight ahead, on down busy Alma Street.

Another high rise going up, ho-hum. But then eye-flick becomes eye-focus, as I notice the monster riding high at the angle of that top corner.

See it? Shades of Hunchback of Notre Dame…

A passing pedestrian notices my fixed gaze, and nods her head. “Like gargoyles, aren’t they?” she says, her smile showing she quite likes the idea.

“Gargoyles”? Plural? I walk closer, on down Alma. (I feel like I’m stalking the building.)

And yessirree, gargoyles-plural. There are three, one defining the top corner of each ledge.

The closer I get, the clearer they become, and I need to refine my language.

Not monsters. Not gargoyles.

Ravens. (Later online research tells me this building — a luxury residential rental building — is named The Raven.)

I spin around for an angle that shows them in triumphant profile…

and then, finally!, I catch my bus back home.