Every Tuesday morning I join an eclectic bunch of energetic volunteers who are dedicated to rescuing/restoring/maintaining the habitats that make up Swan Lake Christmas Hill Nature Sanctuary. Varying from freshwater lake through soggy wetland to bare hilltop rocks and boulders, the sanctuary is just a 25 minute walk from my Saanich home. Yesterday “The Tuesday…
Author: ralphmills
Sweeping away the broom
The views from Millhill Regional Park on Vancouver Island are fantastic, well worth puffing up the steep trail to the top. It’s a journey I’ve made lots of times with fellow volunteers, heading for an area known as the east meadow. For, despite having more rare plants than any other Regional Park, Millhill is at…
Doing the dirty on Daphne
Daphne is a pest. The innocent-sounding alternative name for Spurge Laurel (Daphne laureola) fails to soften my heart as I face this scene, an area of forest floor crowded with what is an invasive plant in Vancouver Island, a “noxious weed”. These Daphne plants have become established in Francis/King Regional Park, on the north-west edge…
A clean install:
It was time to get out the bristle brush and scrub the insides of my old iMac (“old” in hardware terms of course, it’s actually only 2014 vintage). The beachball of death was bouncing around the screen frustratingly often, and my expletives were turning the air in my study blue to the extent that the…