Erratic behaviour

Another week, another park, another walk.

Early in the walk, we spot this.

I have never seen a green pine cone before in my life. When I see them, they are on the ground and they are brown. I guess the ones on the trees on my property are too high up to ever be spotted when they are first forming. Fascinating.

The park we visited yesterday is well sign posted. When we reached an intersection of trails I noticed that the one we were just about to turn onto was called the Erratic, which struck me as odd, given that there didn’t appear to be anything particularly strange about the way it was laid out. I mentioned this to Joe who explained to me that an “erratic” was a large, out of place boulder, deposited by retreating glaciers. Research, when I returned home, revealed: “A glacial erratic is glacially-deposited rock differing from the size and type of rock native to the area in which it rests. ‘Erratics’ take their name from the Latin word errare (to wander), and are carried by glacial ice, often over distances of hundreds of kilometres.” And, on a sandstone island: “These boulders are quartz-diorite, granodiorite,or a fine-grained version of granodiorite called dacite from the Coast Mountains, brought here during the Pleistocene era around 14,000 years ago when the ice was so thick it was moving directly from the Coast Mountains across the strait and over the Vancouver Island Mountains to the sea, ignoring the Strait of Georgia alignment.” Did you know that? I sure as hell didn’t.

Joe points out the first of many erratics on the trail.

Lexi obligingly (in return for a treat) poses on the erratic. You learn something new every day. (Assuming you’re lucky and paying attention.)

Before setting off to meet Joe for our walk, I was reminded by a Facebook photo “memory” that yesterday was the fifth anniversary of the opening night of our little theatre group’s first foray into Shakespeare – A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in which Joe played Theseus and I played Queen Hippolyta.

A friend remarked on how much he loved my sneer, to which I replied that Theseus wasn’t doing a very good job of wooing me at that point, adding later: “Mind you, kidnapping the woman you want to marry after slaughtering her entire family is seldom a good start.”

Back on the road after our walk, I notice something I missed when I arrived: the rear window of Joe’s vehicle.

Well, that does make me smile. Joe claims he only washed the car last week, that it’s only the dust from island roads that left this canvas ready for his artwork. (It’s a pretty good likeness of Lexi.)

Bad news for me: Joe has decided to risk flying and has booked a ticket to Winnipeg, where he grew up, where his elderly mother still resides, and, at the moment, where his partner Diane is residing, having decided when the pandemic first made waves that she wanted to weather the storm with her kids and grandkids. He’s leaving on July 14 and will be gone for a month, taking Lexi with him. Lovely for Joe, but sad for me. Two more walks before I have to find another dog owner with whom I can hit the trails.

On another subject, speaking of erratic things: the bloody weather. There was one day, earlier in the week, a lovely day, so lovely I was actually able to sit outside to have my dinner. I thought to myself: this is it, summer has finally arrived. The next day we were back to Juneuary.

I have actually harvested some strawberries (is there anything more delicious than a truly ripe strawberry straight from the garden?), the peas do seem to still be growing, but everything else (tomatoes, courgettes, beans, etc) seem to be in stasis, wondering when they hell they will ever feel more than a few hours of the sun’s warmth.

I’m glad we’ve had a lot of rain this spring – lessens the risk of forest fires or the well running dry – but it’s nearly July for fuck’s sake. C’mon, summer. We haven’t got all year.