Dandelion

Taraxacum officinale

Sphere of Seeds

I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with dandelions. A part of me really loves their yellow flower heads and fluffy spherical seed heads. And then another part of me has adopted our north american hatred for them in my lawn. For some reason, even though I think the yellow flowers are beautiful, especially up close, I still get irritated when the mower doesn't manage to cut them down.

Dandelions haven't always been a weed. They were once cultivated by apothecaries for their medicinal uses, their roots and leaves were commonly sold in French markets and the Japanese even had a National Dandelion Society with more than 200 varieties of the flower in pure white, copper, orange and deep black. You can make wine from dandelion flowers as the Celts once did and the flower heads help fruit ripen in orchards by emitting ethylene gas at sunset. Pilgrims and pioneers carefully carried its seeds over from the old world and the flower then quickly spread across North America. It reached the west coast in the 19th century and then suddenly became a weed. Now it gets poisoned, dug up and bad mouthed. We humans seem to have a funny relationship with plants that do as well as we do.

Orange

I got slightly obsessed with the rich colour of these orange tulips for a few days.

River Wander

Yellow mountain-avens (Dryas drummondii)

Greeeeeeen

Kananaskis Post-Doc

We went out to K-Country for the long weekend to unwind after the big defense. Hwy 40 over Highwood Pass is closed until mid-June so the elk can calve in peace. This means the cyclists can also cycle in peace (and all over the road).

Bighorn sheep

There was wolf poo all over the road. I was particularly impressed with this log.A ground squirrel den that got dug out by a grizzly.

A closed road is an unplowed road. Luckily the snow patch was only about 300m long and easy to cycle through.

James chased this butterfly with the camera set on macro for a few minutes. I was impressed by his perseverance, there's no way I would have gotten this shot - plants never fly away.

Thesis Defense

James, waiting for the verdict.

At this point in time James had already done a 1-hour presentation and been questioned by five very smart snow/geology/engineering nerds. The questions went very, very well, so he was feeling pretty confident here, but still a bit jittery. I wanted to take a picture of his sweaty armpit, but I thought that might be pushing it a bit.

Some useful drawings James did to respond to some of the questions.

Passed! With flying colours!
Congrats Doc.

The piece of paper James is holding confirms the snow/geology/engineering nerds think his thesis kicks ass. This is also the piece of paper that means the Grad lounge would give us a free bottle of champagne. Note the giddiness apparent on James' face. It resulted in much bouncing about and general goofiness all weekend.

Skaha Lake Tour

James and I circumnavigated Skaha Lake - up the Kettle Valley Railway on the west side of the lake and then along a mellow road on the east side. It definitely made me want to cycle the KVR, or do any bike tour for that matter.

Male cones on a ponderosa pine.

More male cones. James was rather excited about them - these are his macro photos.

Phlox

Yellow bellied marmot

The balsam root was out in full force. James was very patient as I took photo after photo of them.

Balsam root leaf

A good use for old tires.

And I found some prickly pear cactus

Blogiversary

May 4 was my blogiversary. I know it's a nerdy thing to note, but hey, I'm a nerd. Here are some of my favourite pictures from the past year that never made it onto my blog.

Angelique - my sweet niece


Somewhere on the road to Cranbroook

Anemone seeds

ICH

Bunchberries

Before and...

...after

Sweet Elizabeth

Autumn skies

This man likes snow.

Good times at John and Erin's (Photo by Erin)