Oh Canada

I had the lucky combination of a window seat and great weather on my flight from Kelowna to Montreal on Sunday. We started out in a small plane and I was definitely excited about the propellers.

Blue layers of the Columbia mountains.

Columbia River and morning fog.

Somewhere in the Selkirks.

Rocky mountains

Exshaw, just east of Canmore, AB.

Kananaskis Lake on the left

Sprawling suburbia, Calgary

Downtown Calgary and the Bow River
(and we are no longer on the wee propeller plane)

The Prairies

Meandering River

This shots a bit hazy, but if you look closely, you can see the yellow and reds of the deciduous forests of Ontario.

Garden Critters

I fianally took advantage of all the fall sunshine we've been having and headed out to the garden with my camera. I discovered lots of cool bugs about.

Pollen-covered bee

busy trio

funky fly on a mustard flower

Gross aphids that took over my brussel sprouts : (

I harvested our hops today. There were quite a few lady beetles hanging out on the flowers.

And a big spider!

Female cross spider (Araneus diadematus) - apparently the males are a lot smaller.

And yet another funky insect in the hops.

Eating a green alien aphid.

This guy got so excited about eating aphids that he had to stick his bum in the air.

Hmmm, lady beetles, spiders, funky-orange-aphid-eaters... there might be some bug-damage on my hops....

Arse! And the bugs seemed to be associated with some black mold too. Luckily I still got two window screen trays of our own hops and a couple of trays of Steve-and-Catherine hops.

Then I moved onto the wood shed where a wood-stacking critter had done some work.

Funky four-limbed wood-stacker
(I finally got the sweaty armpit shot that I wanted to get here.)