You know you’re sliding toward fall and winter when you make your first batch of oden. It’s a bit late to dig in now (9:30pm) but it’ll be great with a side dish of genmai brown rice in the morning.
Anyway it’s often better when you let it sit for awhile and let all the flavors mingle…
Yumi’s Mom in Aomori (northern Japan) makes wonderful nishime in the fall & winter — I get the impression that her stock simmers for months and she just keeps replenishing veggies and seafood.
Going, going… Whoa!
We dropped by the Nikkei Matsuri Japanese festival at Nikkei Place in Burnaby today. Great fun, good food, and lots of colourful action.
Pamela Zevit of the South Coast Conservation Program led a fun and informative nature tour on Byrne Creek in SE Burnaby today.
Checking out Pamela’s bags of goodies — snail shells, feathers, and other cool stuff.
I’ve been volunteering with the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers for over a decade, and I always enjoy getting out in the park and down in the ravine with knowledgeable folks, be they biologists, or birders, or geologists… There is always something to learn!
Thanks to the City of Burnaby Parks Department for organizing such tours. I’ll be leading one on Byrne Creek on Nov. 14 to look for spawning salmon. More info here.
It was a lovely afternoon for a tour of the working Fraser River with the Burnaby Board of Trade and Port Metro Vancouver. It was sunny and warm, and in addition to the tugs, barges, cranes, containers, and ships, nature put on a bit of a show, too.
I saw several salmon jumping, and a sturgeon rolled just at the surface of the water. An inquisitive harbour seal also put in a brief appearance, not to mention herons, cormorants, seagulls, and more.
You can check out my Flickr album here.
Lovely clouds shot from Ron McLean Park in SE Burnaby on my afternoon walk today.
It was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon for a photo ramble along the quay in New Westminster, BC.
Taking the compost out to the bin this evening I saw this lovely sight. Sure looks like rain, it smells like rain, and I hope it rains. A lot. We need it.
There have been some questions about lamprey on the Byrne Creek Streamkeepers mailing list.
Here’s one that I shot just below the stop log in the sediment pond on July 30 this summer. It was about 15 cm long, give or take a few.
They may seem icky for their snake-like appearance and because many are by nature parasitic, but they are part of the great scheme of things, and have coexisted with salmon, trout and other fish for millennia.
We have observed them spawning in Byrne Creek, in the lower ravine, and in the sediment pond. They are actually quite beautiful to watch when they are mating for they dance and twine together.