Shelagh's Lens
Bringing Vancouver and the world to inspired travellers
Okanagan Sunshine
Did you know you can find desert country in Canada? Contrary to some perceptions of this country, British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley is home to the northern most sliver of the Sonoran Desert, which stretches across the 49th parallel into the South Okanagan.
This bit of sunshine comes from just a couple of hours’ drive to the north, in the Central Okanagan. Here, while winters are real, the summers are long and hot. This hillside is typical of Kelowna, where – amid the sweetly scented Ponderosa pines and dry grasses – these beauties grow wild (as does asparagus), and their return each Spring accompanies the lifting of the winter inversion over the valley.
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Little Copper Dress …
… dresser, that is!
Vancouver’s South Granville area is home to a number of interesting shops, and the manager at the business displaying this creative dresser from Judson Beaumont’s Straight Line Designs was incredibly gracious to this window shopper.
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Street Art
All alone in her little spot on the plaza, this Chaplin-esque young gal was nonetheless in full character and full of optimism, as seen by the tin in front of her box.
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Perspective
Here’s the result of another early morning meander.
While I enjoy photographing people, there are some images that beg to be unbroken by the appearance of others, and this was one such pier.
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Sun Worshippers
Southeast of Seville in late June, we saw field after field of sunflowers in the sun baked soil.
Independent of the sense of flower heads turned in unison and deference, I appreciated the muting of colours to the rear of this particular field.
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In Aid of Romance
I’ve mentioned in an earlier post that the people of Porto celebrate Festa de São João in late June each year.
There are a number of traditions associated with this celebration, including meals centred around grilled sardines, midnight fireworks, fun with plastic hammers (more on that later), the launching of hot air balloons into the sky, and more.
One such tradition is the exchange of basil plants, which a number of vendors sell complete with four-line poems, many of them – I understand – romantic in nature.
What of roses, you ask? Well, in Porto, and for this particular festival, basil is the scent and plant of choice.
Not fond of exchanging plants with your sweetheart? Not to worry; there are other old traditions involving leeks or garlic flowers which, if I have it right, implied luck or fertility.
We saw plenty of garlic flowers and leeks during the celebration, but one contemporary approach is to be sure to also have a plastic hammer – one that squeaks when used – with which to playfully bop others over the head. It’s not difficult to secure one; vendors begin selling them long before the sun sets. Then, all evening long, people playfully tap fellow partiers of all ages over the head with the plastic mallets.
While this particular vendor didn’t have any of the traditional four-line poems tucked into her plants, a couple selling basil plants from their truck were carefully tucking a poem on a stick into each pot. This vendor had a prime spot, though, and was focused on securing the business of some of the many people mingling in the background.
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Pines Over Water
We may have different reactions to waters such as these, but I find them magical. Toss in steep cliffs from which sweetly scented pines bow beneath the sun’s rays, as if to shelter the waters below, and the vignette is complete.
I think, sometimes, that it matters not where an image was captured, so much as that it was. For the curious, however, this was taken on a summer afternoon in Cala Figuera, not far from the south-east tip of Mallorca.
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Bike Stop
I enjoy exploring cities on foot.
You’ll find wall murals on more than a couple of Montreal buildings, and I appreciated the art work on this one, as well as the sense of motion conveyed – all the more so for the bike parked in front.
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Ripples
Do you remember being so young that you thought summer vacations would never end?
Here we have one of a few young boys who were horsing around in the water toward the close of yet another perfect summer’s eve in British Columbia – you know, that beautiful western province of Canada about which I brag ad nauseum (as though I have anything do do with the existence of such gorgeous scenery).
The sun’s parting rays give the water a molten cast, and it’s only this youngster’s footsteps through the water that disrupt the ripples of endless summer surrounding him.
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Skookum
Ahem. It occurs to me that the play on words in the title for this post may be lost on those not from the Pacific Northwest – BC, Washington State, Oregon (think Cascadia) and so on.
Not everyone living in the region will be familiar with the term but, for many of us who grew up here, you’ll know that if someone says something is skookum, that is a positive connotation.
Now that we have this colloquialism sorted out, I can tell you what a treat it was to watch a couple of skilled daredevils tempt fate, and the Skookumchuck Rapids, on BC’s Sunshine Coast. The sense that this athlete is almost cradled in the waves surrounding him defies the real risks undertaken.
I could tell you I took this shot from an adjacent kayak, but that would be a lie. I was safely on the rocky outcropping just adjacent to the rapids, telephoto lens at the ready, and ooh-ing and aah-ing with the best of them.
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