13 June 2025 – It is all very tidy — you’ll see 13 photos, and this is June 13th — but it is not at all what I thought I was going to do. I had a theme, and then I had another theme, and then it all got away from me.

As tends to happen.

(Not that it matters.)

The first theme announces itself as I walk down Quebec St. toward False Creek, and look eastward into the alley.

Perfect! One photo, a cutesy post title — something like “X’s and Oh!” perhaps? — and I’m done.

Then I see this.

OK! Two images, street theme, call the post “On the Street” — and I’m done.

Then, crossing the Science World parking lot just off the end of False Creek, I see this tired but happy paddle-boarder telling a friend her adventure before packing up.

Three images. But still OK, the Street theme holds.

Ah, but next, heading west along False Creek, I am seduced (not for the first time) by the magic transformation of an ordinary apartment building when it bounces off the mirrored, textured surface of Parq Casino.

My theme promptly morphs from “street” to “surface.” Any thing or any living creature, I decide, on any surface, horizontal or vertical. Suddenly, everything that interest me… qualifies.

One dragon boat and two Aquabus ferries, out there on the surface of the water.

Mussel shells on the Seawall cobblestones, just past Cambie Bridge. (What’s left after a crow hurls a mussel from a great height onto a hard surface, then swoops down to eat the contents exposed to him when the shell splits upon impact.)

Up on Cambie Bridge, the fourth annual Missing and Murdered Indigenous Men, Boys and Two Spirit People Memorial March.

Back under Cambie Bridge, blue rings on the surface of bridge pillars, marking what a 5-metre rise in sea levels will look like, plus paddlers on the water. Plus a crow, swooping through on the surface of the air.

A generous message painted on the back surface of this bench facing Habitat Island: “I love the strange people I don’t know.”

Vivid new growth, on the trunk of this conifer.

Two mutilated crow posters on an Ontario-Street utility box which, between them, almost add up to one complete crow.

My favourite enigmatic Street-Art Girl, a little battered by now (and aren’t we all), but still visible on the wall of that building overlooking the parking lot just off Ontario and 3rd Avenue.

And finally… my favourite birds nest, perched on the surface of this alley fence post, again just off Ontario Street but by this time between East 6th & 7th, as I head for home.

I am still planning a post title to fit my “surface” theme.

Until I count how many photos I’ve chosen, and see they total thirteen. On the 13th of June.

I know an act of force majeure when I meet one. I obey.