Solstice and strawberry moon

Yesterday I went down to a beach just after 5 am and watched the solstice sunrise with friends. There were seals, possibly an otter, a hummingbird, and passing orcas. There was a faint sundog to one side of the rising sun.

In the evening I mediated and watched the full moon rise just before 9:30. There were seals, an eagle in the tree above us, drummers on the other point, and a collection of people who are good to spend time with.

Solstice and strawberry moon, all at once. I’m told that it will be 70 years till it happens again. I made a conscious decision not to take a camera, in order to be in the moment, but I took some snaps with my phone.

The world is a beautiful place, especially where we live.

Today’s walk

…was rather nice, considering it rained for some of the time.

We found mushrooms. (This one was about 8 or 9 inches in diameter.)

We found a strange white fungus on a tree trunk, oozing liquid.

We found autumn leaves, of course.

We found the edge between sandstone and cedar.

We found apples!

We found one of the most beautiful nurse logs I’ve ever seen.

We found the vegetation at the edge of the marsh, all in layers.

We found autumn leaves in the cleft of a rock.

We found a very good time with friends.

Rockpool curve

A beautiful day for photographing rockpools on sandstone.

Out of focus

Sometimes out of focus photos just look good. I quite liked this one.

And this is what it looked like in focus… I liked it that way too.

Sideways mountains

It was the congruity of the shapes in the reflection and the background that caught my eye.

The window

Formed by a convenient assemblage of rocks.

Streaky mystery

There’s nothing particularly unusual about this picture, it’s just another a scenic beach shot. But when I looked at the photo, what caught my eye were those streaky light effects in the shadow behind the sandstone formation. Now I’ve had light effects appear on shots in the past, they tend to happen when the angle of camera lens is in a particular relationship to the angle of the sun—but I can’t account for the light streaks only appearing in the shadow. That’s a new one on me.

At the beach

Just a short ramble, but lots to see, starting with the blue-eyed mary growing on the outcroppings.

Along with a lot of other plants. I do like the patterns made by the mix of sandstone and vegetation.

But just plain rock is nice too.

This is kind of paintbrushy, but I don’t think it really is paintbrush. Or maybe it is.

Whatever, there was a lot of it.

Not bad for wandering along a hundred feet or so of foreshore.

Water patterns

One of my favourite things for photographing.

Ripples

In the seasonal creek running through our yard.

Water channel

And nice reflections.

Two-toned

An oddity—there usually isn’t this kind of colour differentiation between concretions and the surrounding sandstone. The orangish lichens give it a very idiosyncratic look.

Green things

This is why we don’t walk on the sandstone shelves at the beach very often in winter. It’s pretty, but the algae is very, very, very slippery.

And this is downright scary. This was a freshwater seep (well, it flowed considerably more than seeped) running over the rocks, and it had a whole different but equally green ecosystem.

Reflected rock

I believe the green is algae; I’ve no idea what the white is and why it only appears on one rock in the area.

Crumply ice

More pictures from the batch I took some days ago—it’s looking like that may be the last (and only) ice that I see this year.

Ice edges

Water seeping over sandstone produces some interesting effects when it freezes.