Sew Daphne: June 2022

Windblown George ... & I ...

with Karl Thompson ...& his wife Sarah...

.....all went for a week's stay on Chesterman Beach on the out coast of Vancouver Island. It rained most of the time, but we managed to have a great time & get outside quite a bit.

I had a few bird encounters, starting with a stately Raven.

The 2nd morning I found a hermit thrush that knocked themselves out of this world, alas.

And a small flock of sanderlings with some semipalmated sandpipers, but I only succeeded with one photo. (The trials of a new camera!)

There were California gulls galore & enough eagles to satisfy, but not for me to bother with a photograph.

I developed some pet rocks! Really. I visited them each day.

Another bunch of visual friends I made was with clusters, one of irresistible delicacy to me..

A beach can be a place of minimalism & I fell under the spell of marks in the sand...again...

I have no idea what creature or event made these marks.

But these arcs did reveal themselves.

I found a snail, black bean sized, that made these strange circles.

This sand reminds me of some cloth I like with sateen stripes.

Intense fog.

I knew where the ocean was. The wave sounds were very clear. But I wasn't sure how to angle my walk to hit the woods where our lodgings were. I knew I wouldn't get lost, but I thought about it a lot. The tide was way out, so there was a lot of beach.

There are lots of marvelous things to see out on the outer beach of Vancouver Island. Being brought up on the Atlantic Coast where the "outer beach" meant Cape Cod's easternmost shores I find the far west coast beaches just as sublime, but in different ways.

There were many profiles to capture, but this one with the eagle's nest [lump-in-tree] I particularly loved. These are not seen on Cape Cod. The east coast is not treed like this!

We experienced quite a lot of rain while we were there, so before or after any walks on the beach we could look up into our wet skylight windows to see the trees. I loved the distortions.

Like some Japanese gardener aficionado I was completely captivated on the beach by these large rocks in sand with water.

Rain & fog contributed to a collection of shots of what I called 'gradations of grey'.

Then there were 'special collections'.

My first special one was what I called The Dumped Pocketful. Clearly someone had been collecting & then thought better of it. Sea glass, shells, the lot!