James the Carpenter

Since finishing his PhD James has moved on to building round outhouses.

He bent four sheets of plywood to make the walls. He cut some grooves into the plywood and hosed it down before slowly bending it into shape. It took about half an hour to do one sheet.

A good use for the carshare truck.

Last roof panel

The curved door is very pleasing to open and close for some reason.

I'm hoping James starts building more round things.

In love

James being Canadian on Lake Revelstoke

Mmmm corn.

The music arch

Man Party

Yes, this is the man I'm about to marry.
You boys really shouldn't leave these kind of pictures lying around. They could get into the wrong hands...

James' stag had an impressive amount of redneck items: guns, compound bow, machete, throwing knives, chainsaw, fire, gasoline, beer and meat. Vegetables taken on trip: exactly 2 pieces of asparagus per man.

Apparently they actually managed to scare some real rednecks on ATVs. They did, however lose some serious points with their telemark skis.

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.