All posts tagged winter moss

Of Moss, Muzzles & Monsters

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.

12 Comments
by icelandpenny on 2 June 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 2 June 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/06/02/of-moss-muzzles-monsters/

SeaBus & Showers

16 March 2025 – If my 1 March post was a love-letter to urban clutter, this one might strike you as a love-letter to maritime clutter. At least, while still on the Vancouver side of Burrard Inlet.

I’m in the long approach to the Waterfront SeaBus Terminal, in the connector between Waterfront Station, with all its urban transit links, and the SeaBus Terminal proper, down at water level. It’s a sunny/cloudy/rain-splattered day, with the intervals of sunshine throwing long shadows across the walkway.

But where’s the promised clutter? you ask.

It’s coming.

I slow down. The next ferry will depart in 1 min. 27 sec. time (the count-down screen is counting), and I know I won’t get to the waiting room in time. Nor does it matter — the ferry after that is the one I want to take, the ones my north-shore friends will meet.

With no need to hurry, I look around.

There’s the Vancouver Harbour Heliport, caught in the V-slashes of these window frames, with a helicopter on the pad, and maritime clutter all around — a line-up of harbour cranes, stacks of shipping containers below their voracious grasp, and two crows on the light standard so you know you’re in Vancouver. Plus reflections dancing merrily on the window pane.

Either you think the reflections spoil the picture, or — like me — you enjoy them as part of the moment, more visual information jumping into the story.

Next window pane offers rain splatters as its contribution to maritime clutter, and the view of a laden freighter, just starting to make its way back up the Inlet toward the Pacific Ocean and its next port of call.

Low-hanging clouds in that scene as well, running horizontal streaks across the mountains beyond, and snowy peaks above all that. (Nature’s own clutter.)

More clouds, more containers, more cranes — all caught in a fleeting glimpse as the escalator rolls me past another window on my ride down to sea level.

The waiting room window shows me the back end of the ferry I missed, making her stately way past the nearest cranes…

and the scratched & splattered window of the ferry I catch rewards me with sun dogs that bounce silver across the water. (Brooded over by those cranes.) (And by pale reflections of overhead lights, here inside the ferry.)

No scratches in sight, once I’m off the ferry and halfway up Mount Seymour, going walkabouts with my friends. Rain drops, yes — but as sun showers on our heads, not on a window. Reflections, also — but as rain crystals that turn the winter moss to neon.

Just look at it!

We pass endless happy dogs, whose owners laugh when we apologize to the woofs that all we have to offer is adoration, not treats.

I point out a dramatic tree trunk, beside the path. Wow, says my friend; even more shredded than a few days ago. Those Pileated Woodpeckers have been busy!

Not to be outdone by hungry woodpeckers, we return to their place and show what hungry humans can do to a post-lunch treat of dark chocolate and dark coffee.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 16 March 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 16 March 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/03/16/seabus-showers/

“Today in the Garden”

17 February 2025 – Only a few days since my Frozen post, and the city has unfrozen itself. I’m off to meet friends at the VanDusen Botanical Garden, where we’re hoping for early-spring blossoms.

We arrive with hit lists: turns out we each lingered at the “Today in the Garden” displays on the way in, where volunteers regularly display sprigs of what’s seasonal, and cross-reference their suggestions to map locations.

It gives us a tempting and manageable list: Witch Hazel, Dogwood, Winter Aconite, Cornelian Cherry and the wonderfully exotic-sounding Dragon-s Eye Pine — plus, of course, whatever else comes our way.

The day is mild-ish and misty, with a barely perceptible drizzle in the air. Evergreens are dark against the sky as we veer right at Livingstone Lake…

and head for our first targets, along the Garden’s Winter Walk.

And there they are. Witch Hazel…

fiery Dogwood branches…

and a discovery we didn’t know we were going to make, the Ghost Bramble.

Even pruned back for winter, it’s easy to see how it got its name. In behind, another discovery — at least for me — the American Holly (on the left), with bright yellow berries rather than red.

The buds of the Cornelian Cherry are also bright yellow, though still very small and tightly furled.

We leave the Winter Walk, cut cross-country toward Heron Lake with a further target in mind — but are reminded, en route, that you don’t always need new growth for winter interest.

Sometimes, as the American Beech points out, all you have to do is hold on to your old leaves from summer.

Two more en-route bonuses: mist droplets glistening on the Giant Sequoia needles overhead…

and pretty little Winter Aconite buds bursting through leaf litter underfoot.

Plus — because I always notice — winter moss. This lot is on a wonderfully gnarled Something.

I don’t note the tree name; I’m too besotted with the moss to bother.

And then we’re across the zigzag footpath over Heron Lake, up the trail, and coming out the far end of the rocky tunnel that leads us to the Heath Garden.

Pretty as this garden-room is — and it is very pretty, all those heaths and heathers in all their jewel tones — it is not why we’re here. We’re hunting something at the periphery, over by the Laburnum Walk.

We want the Dragon’s Eye Pine.

And we find it!

With its bursts of green and white, it holds its own against the the birch, holly and evergreen backdrop.

More displays of moody evergreen needles against a moody sky…

and finally we’re circling back along the edge of Livingston Lake, with lunch by now uppermost in mind.

Until, that is, we see what the gardeners have done with the winter-yellowed ornamental grasses that cover the lake-side slope. They could have just let the the weary old blades flop on the ground. Or they could have cut them down and hauled them away.

But, no!

They braided them. Clump by clump, spiral by spiral.

We are properly delighted. We forget all about food as we discover the many varieties of grass-sculpture that inventive weaving can create.

When we do finally head off to lunch, we are in very good humour indeed.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 17 February 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 17 February 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/17/today-in-the-garden/

Frozen

14 February 2025 – Not viciously frozen-frozen — not like most of the rest of Canada, right now — just the benign Vancouver version of frozen.

Just cold enough, and cold enough long enough, that snow still covers the ground, and…

even Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park lies still and silent beneath a layer of ice.

It’s that stillness, that hold-the-breath absolute stillness, that I remember from the colder winters I knew in eastern Canada. It is as much a mood as a physical sensation, and it is with me again as I walk the Lost Lagoon trail, heading from the Burrard Inlet side over to English Bay.

Snow on the ground, long shadows high-contrast black against the snow, snow-shards sitting atop the Lagoon instead of melting into it…

and even an “Ice Unsafe” notice pounded into the ground, this being one of the very rare occasions it needs to be pulled out of storage and put to use.

My trail leads me away from the shoreline, into the woods, shows me yet again how much bright beauty is to be had, when winter sun blazes in the sky.

It sparks against moss on a tree branch…

against this tree trunk…

and it spotlights an impromptu snowman, shining in the field beyond a wayside bench. The bench is currently irrelevant; the snowman is, literally, in his element.

Signage tells me I’m walking through the Ted and Mary Greig Rhododendron Garden. Sure enough, next to this magnificent old tree stump (bearing what may be the cut of a long-ago lumberjack)…

I see valiant little rhodo buds, already peeking out at the world. It seems madness to me, but I’m not about to argue with Mother Nature.

Ice, snow, stillness… and then… and then I’m out the other end of the trail.

Here at English Bay, all is motion.

Melting snow, grazing geese and, below me, tidal waters lapping gently to shore.

Usually I drop down to the Seawall. Today I stay here, on higher ground, taking in a broader perspective. I walk my way back into the city, still with water to one side, but with towers and urban life to the other.

On down Beach Avenue, and the long view opens up before me: Morton Park with its A-Maze-ing Laughter bronze sculptures, its palm trees, its geese, its flags, and, as backdrop, Doug Coupland’s Sunset Beach Love Letter, the mural embracing that refurbished apartment building toward the right.

I cut across a corner of Morton Park. It rewards me with a closer look at the geese, the laughing bronze figures beyond the palms, the flags snapping in the breeze…

and the colours and textures of a sleeping Canada Goose.


A utility box at Denman and Pendrell — all splashy with an Andrew Briggs’ mural — tells me I’m seriously back in the city.

I have plans for Denman Street! Somewhere along here there’s an Aussie pastry-pie place, and I want to find it again. I pass a whole globe’s-worth of culinary invitations along the way, but I keep walking, and I am rewarded.

Because here it is: a café-cum-hole-in-the-wall named Peaked Pies.

The menu offers a range of Savoury Pies (from kangaroo meat to vegan) which, should you choose to pay the premium, can be transformed into Peaked Pies. The term is descriptive. The “peak” is what results when you take the pie as base, and then pile on mashed potatoes + mushy peas + torrents of gravy.

Like this:

I almost can’t believe I agreed to all that — but I did, didn’t I?

Later, back home, I could have cropped this image to just the PP, but I want you to see the rest. It shows how neighbourly this little café was, when I happened to drop in, and I suspect that’s typical.

The elbow in the background belongs to a young mother, murmuring loving silliness at her baby in between mouthfuls of her own PP; baby is gurgling approval back at her. The helmet belongs to the Aging Geezer sitting farther down this communal bench from me, who is deep in conversation with the Younger Tablemate chance-seated next to him. Each, from their very different age-point, is encouraging the other to follow their dreams as they navigate their respective next stage of life. When they part, it is with reciprocal thanks for the conversation.

My peaked pie is good, true comfort food on a nippy day. And the mood in that café is a comfort as well.

We can all use a bit of comfort.

10 Comments
by icelandpenny on 14 February 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Uncategorized, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 14 February 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/02/14/frozen/

Frost on the Shoreline

20 January 2025 – We’re in a cold snap. Nothing like the extremes back East, just temperatures hovering below/above zero from night to day — low enough to set the hoar frost blooming early each morning.

Including along the Shoreline Trail, the pretty little trail in Port Moody that runs between Rocky Point Park and Old Orchard Park, cupping the eastern end of Burrard Inlet as it goes.

As I wait for my companion outside the SkyTrain station, I realize the oak leaf on the artwork at my feet and my own fingertips are in agreement: there’s a bite in the air.

But it dances through a blazing bright sky, and it is magical.

Hoar frost sparkles on the boardwalk across a marshy inlet…

encircles an ice-rimmed pond…

and sweeps across the entire marshland, right to the creek whose waters steam gently in the sun.

We cross mudflats on this rebuilt boardwalk, and agree it is much safer and more accessible than its wonky predecessor and is therefore A Very Good Thing — but also agree we miss the charm of that predecessor.

Then we quite rightly stop being such ingrates, and settle down to enjoy ourselves.

A waterfront blind farther along offers a chance to watch wildlife unobserved…

though at the moment we see only the stumps of old pilings, remnants of the McNair Cedar Mill that once operated here.

I’ve visited the mill site on previous Trail walks; tide is low enough to allow us to explore it today as well.

Only later online do I both learn the name of the mill and also see this 1925 photograph of the mill in operation. (Thank you Tessa Trethewey, for posting this photo on the I Love Port Moody blog on April 25 last year.)

Before we rejoin the Trail, I stop to admire this ziggurat, meticulously constructed from old mill bricks still lying around on-site. (I think for a moment, by ricochet, of the ephemeral clean-fill sculptures created out on Toronto’s Leslie Spit, by visitors who celebrate what lies to hand.)

Back on the Trail, what we have to hand is a collection of nature’s own tree-sculptures.

Companion burls high up one trunk…

and a whole lot of winter moss. An old scar, cushioned in moss, for example…

great rounded folds of bark rising from a mossy base…

and a moss-splattered tree that stands politely to one side as we look across reeds and marshes, across Burrard Inlet itself, to the mountains and distant snow peaks.

Warmed by the growing strength of the sun and also our own exertions, we decide we have more than earned lunch.

We retrace our steps, greeting hikers and patting dogs as we go, and settle into generous servings of Mexican comfort food. Our cheerful waitress, a rose tattoo peeping out from under her left cuff, says it is the perfect day to walk the Shoreline Trail.

We agree with her.

3 Comments
by icelandpenny on 20 January 2025  •  Permalink
Posted in Nature, photography, Toronto, Uncategorized, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 20 January 2025

https://icelandpenny.com/2025/01/20/frost-on-the-shoreline/

Raining Cats & Dogs

29 December 2024 – Also pandas & moo-cows & more, as I have yet to discover. All I know, before I set out, is that it is positively heaving down out there.

But I go out anyway, because, delightful as holiday sloth has been, it’s time to move my body.

Dripping tree against a sodden sky…

but happy ferns, in this front yard…

and happy winter moss on this tree, plus a cheerful ornament hung by some passing pedestrian.

The Vancouver Special is hunkered down, properly stoic — as it ought to be, here in its own native eco-system…

while the vintage green lampshade next door rises to the occasion, knowing it looks better in rain than sunshine.

Out on Main Street, a trio of pandas advertise dim sum…

a solitary cat advertises records…

three dogs advertise their very own bakery…

and an exceptionally silly cow (through this butcher’s doorway, left) advertises which succulent cuts come from which bits of her anatomy.

What is more dejected than a construction site in the rain? Not yet able to advertise the condo delights to come.

But this trio of guitars is warm & dry & a good advertisement for the magic of music…

especially Mr. Heavy Metal in the middle, whose tiny lettered plaque reads:

“Without music, life would be a mistake.”

It’s all very swell, wonderfully diverting.

Nonetheless, I wish to point out that, after all this walking… it is still heaving down out here.

So I go home.

As I bring my dripping self through the door I envy, not for the first time, dogs’ ability to shake themselves dry.

Just look at that spiral shake!

But alas, we humans are not built like that.

So I do the next best thing.

I make myself a mug of spicy Mesoamerican hot chocolate.

(Recipes abound. Mine is 1 c. milk simmered with 1/2 tbsp honey, and a pinch each of ground ginger, cloves & cayenne; and then a generous 1/8 c unsweetened cocoa and bit of vanilla extract whisked in at the end.)

While I’m enjoying the drink — and wiggling my toes to extract maximum flavour — I read more about the long history of cacao & chocolate in Mayan and Aztec cultures.

Oh look, it is still raining. But I no longer care.

2 Comments
by icelandpenny on 29 December 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 29 December 2024

https://icelandpenny.com/2024/12/29/raining-cats-dogs/

The Tilt

21 December 2024 – Today is Solstice, 2024, and the tilt is the story. Twice a year earth’s axis pauses that breathless instant, and then begins to tilt in the opposite direction.

Where the tilt goes, so goes light: strengthening with Winter Solstice in the Northern Hemisphere; ebbing with Summer Solstice in the Southern Hemisphere; giving all of us, whatever our hemisphere, reason to think about light.

I now define “light” very broadly, thanks to a friend who watched children at a Nutcracker performance dance in the aisles during intermission, and observed that light takes many forms, including delight and inspiration.

So I head out in the rain…

planning to walk my loop down-around the Cambie Bridge, and to see how much non-sunbeam light I may discover along the way. For example? Ohhh, whatever seems to provide us humans with inspiration, joy, energy, confidence, courage, resilience and the jolt of the delightfully unexpected.

Since all this is Inspired by my friend’s experience at the ballet, how fitting that my first observation is the window into the iDance studio.

It frames a scene warm with light, creativity, colour, and ways to live up to the studio’s motto, displayed on the back wall: “Don’t ever be too shy to dance your heart out.”

Down and around to the north/west…

and I’m closing in on Science World (L, above the fluorescent green-garbed pedestrian) and its mysterious clanking, whizzing tower of delights (R, with white struts, above the black-garbed cyclist). Still this far away, and I can already hear the sound effects.

Up close to the tower, people peer with fascination at the wondrous gizmos.

I finally decide to stop wondering, and find out. What is this?

I march into Science World and ask the Information Desk to tell me about the tower. Two people later, I learn it is called the Tower of Bauble, and yes it was recently restored, and yes, there is information on the website, and yes, here is contact information for Science World’s Director of Fun Times, who will be glad to tell me more.

I thank everyone for their help, promise to pursue this in January, and head back outside, in very good humour despite the still-pelting rain.

I start down Seawall along the north side of False Creek. Next to a marina building, with Plaza of Nations ferry dock on one side and BC Place Stadium on the other, I lean against a convenient pole under a convenient overhang, and spend a few minutes watching who is out there in all this weather — presumably bringing the light of satisfaction into their lives, as they pursue whatever it is they want to pursue.

In short order:

two runners…

two bicyclists…

two umbrella-ists…

and a motorcyclist.

Back into the rain — time to get on with my own chosen activity! — and more examples of what everybody else wants to do:

man and dog (and thrown stick), at play in the refurbished Coopers’ Park dog park..

passing ferries, at work and on schedule, their starboard and port lights flashing across the water…

three kayakers…

and, as I climbing the north-side ramp up to the Cambie Bridge…

an invitation to smile.

Off the bridge on the south side, heading east again — and more smiles.

It’s a whole convoy of determined walkers, setting themselves an impressive pace. The lead woman, first of all those yellow slickers, throws her arms wide in greeting as they approach.

There’s a place to obtain dog-waste bags, on the western edge of Hinge Park…

and, just a little farther along, a place to deposit your used needles.

(I remember the narcan-kit woman I met recently, and think that, oh yes, light in the darkness takes many forms.)

On Manitoba St. now, approaching West 4th., and I meet a pop-up crafts fair — “bringing [says the signage] the neighbourhood together by featuring local brands, artists & spaces.” Of course I go in.

I don’t buy anything, but I have some great conversations. “They just told me they’re not going to renew my studio lease,” says a potter. “That sucks, right? Except… I was kinda thinking I didn’t like that place any more. So it’s a good kick in the ass. Yah. It’s good.”

I meet Justine., and pause to talk some more. She is Justine Crawford, brand name Justine Crawfart (Crawf-art, get it?), with a selection of note cards that reflect her Asian heritage on her table…

and…

a Western magpie on her tummy.

It really is spectacular! I promise her a copy of the picture; she grins; we chat a bit more, and I’m away.

Fresh new winter moss decorates a tree on Ontario near 5th Ave., and a 2018 VMF mural (by Phantoms in the Front Yard) still decorates the building wall opposite.

Pretty soon I’m home, shaking off wet clothes.

It was a rain-pelting walk, and full of the light I like best — laughter and conversation and physical activity and creativity and surprises and curiosity both satisfied and slated for follow-up.

Sunbeams not needed.

Then, an hour later…

sunbeams all over the place.

May we all have light in our lives — received, created, shared. Of every kind.

Happy solstice.

9 Comments
by icelandpenny on 21 December 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 21 December 2024

https://icelandpenny.com/2024/12/21/the-tilt/

Project Icon

2 January 2024 – The challenge is: how many icons can I jam into my first post of the new year? Icons that say, “Vancouver in winter,” but also speak to my own obsessions.

Off I go.

Start with: alley + street art + H-frame hydro poles + distant mountains fading into the misty drizzle.

Add: False Creek + Science World dome + Aquabus ferry + orange Port of Vancouver “giraffes” + (audio only, take my word for it) the 12-noon Gastown Steam Clock rendition of O Canada.

Add: a dance of lines & spaces.

Add: a surprise. If your eyes are open, there is always a surprise. (Though not always as dramatic, or unfortunate, as this one east of the Cambie bridge.)

Add: the gleam of rust in the rain. (Here, the sewer-pipe “train engine” over a Hinge Park creek.)

Add: winter tree trunk moss, garnished with fernlets.

As I walk back south on Ontario Street, I think: It lacks only a crow.

And then, just north of East 5th, there he is!

Yes, yes, I know. He is white, and painted, and riding a skateboard. But I say he is a crow, and it’s my blog.

My year has begun.

4 Comments
by icelandpenny on 2 January 2024  •  Permalink
Posted in Architecture, City, City Walks, Nature, photography, street art, Vancouver, Walking
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Posted by icelandpenny on 2 January 2024

https://icelandpenny.com/2024/01/02/project-icon/

  • WALKING… & SEEING

    "Traveller, there is no path. Paths are made by walking" -- Antonio Machado (1875-1939)

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