Aha! The arrival of May! The arrival of……continuing cool temperatures.
In fact, we
learned the new Anarchist Mountain Weather Prediction: May be spring, May be summer, May be winter….
Let me show
you an example of what we woke up to on May 13:
Wildflowers
are blooming about 2 weeks later than normal, and the cherry growers are
anxious about the slow ripening and potential losses from the cold weather this
month.
Of course,
our in-floor heating system failed on May 7 (inadvertently depressurized) to be
recovered May 9. Temperatures never got
above 10C. Might I suggest that it is
quite unusual to be wearing long underwear in the Okanagan in early May? Fortunately, we had some nice romantic fires
around dinnertime to compensate for not being able to sit outside without a
sleeping bag.
Wildlife
May
featured our regular bears coming out of hibernation. We had one at our bird feeders, but it turned
out to be a different female than we had seen before. This one, called “Cinnamon” was well-known
several roads down the mountain from us.
She had ditched her two juveniles this spring after 2 years of
heavy-duty parenting and was footloose and fancy free this year. The two juveniles were photographed by friends
of ours documenting them licking Gerry’s custom-made Muskoka chairs! He had seasoned them with linseed oil, which
made them irresistible. So irresistible
that one took a chomp out of one chair to get the added benefits of fiber.
On May 19, our
neighbourhood was again invaded by US aliens—cattle! They broke through the border at an unauthorized
crossing, were not wearing masks, were not vaccinated (but probably had been given
antibiotics), and just wantonly toured through several neighbourhoods before
being rounded up to return home. Illegal immigrants pose a big problem here,
The
Meadowlark Nature Festival
After a
2-year hiatus due to Covid, the Meadowlark Nature Festival returned on the May
long weekend to give us a cornucopia of walks, presentations and events
featuring different natural highlights of the area. At least 40 events were offered, and we took
advantage of three of them. Sorry, but I
didn’t take any good pictures because a lot of the information was too subtle
to benefit from my meagre photography skills.
In Osoyoos,
at the Nk’Mip cultural centre, we attended a presentation on the seven snakes
found in our region, with live demonstrations including the Western
Rattlesnake. With other walk-ins,
including a number of children, the presenter did a fabulous job of imparting information,
and ended with a contest of skill-testing questions between kids and adults. The kids won, much to everyone’s pleasure.
Our second tour
took us about 14 km up forestry roads away from a small town to view endangered
William’s Sapsuckers. Our guide had studied them for 27 years, and took us easily to a few sites just off-road
where the birds were nesting. The
terrain we were taken through is being actively forested by companies such as
Weyrhauser, some of whom are more than willing to cooperate to leave minimum
100-acre stands for the sapsuckers.
Others are not willing when there is no money in it.
It seems
Wehrhauser is very concerned with worker safety, and had an impressive safety
sign along their road to reinforce the message.
A final
tour was in the next mountain valley over, conducted by a senior citizen who had
lived there for decades. Her local
knowledge was impeccable, but regrettably the tour was a little slow given that
she had just had knee replacement surgery in November and was dealing with a
muscle injury that had set back her recovery.
The first clue was when she got out of her care, using a cane! Having said that, we still had an insight
into another ecosystem.
Weather
Again
Gosh, the
temperature hurtled up to 17.5C on May 25.
The highest this year! Peel off
the long underwear……
The
Grand Finale
What was
exciting for us was unfortunately a real loss for a couple of people we met on
the 29th of May. A friend of
ours who is married to a firefighter called to say there was an RV fully
engulfed in fire where our road intersects with Highway 3.
We walked
up to find this view.
Although
the fire department was responding at that point, there was nothing to do to
help, and in fact the whole area was dangerous due to exploding tires, the fuel
tank on each vehicle and propane tanks on the RV. We met the owners who mentioned they had just
filled the RV with 100 litres of diesel, and the propane tank on board carried
60 litres of propane. The fire
progressed quickly, with the black clouds of toxic smoke drawing many neighbours in to watch the spectacle..
We ended up
taking the owners and their two little poodles back to our house to wait for
the fire to die down and the RCMP to interview the owners. Apparently, they had just bought the RV
second hand, and were planning for a 5 week-trip through Alberta. Some truckers
honking madly at them alerted them that there was a fire in back. They were basically able to get out with their
wallets and cell phones (and the dogs) and virtually nothing else. The woman was wearing slippers. The RV cost
them almost $300,000, their jeep was destroyed, and they had considerable
belongings in the RV. The shock must have
been almost overwhelming as they watched it practically dissolve before their
eyes.
I was
unaware how much aluminium is used in the construction of an RV, but you could
see molten streams of it hardening on the pavement.
All around the site was debris that had been spread by explosions which were numerous and ongoing. We even saw an airbag from the Jeep detonate and fly up in the air about 15 feet.
Such bad
luck in a short period of time! There
but for the grace of God……we will try to feature something less catastrophic for June.
Thanks for
visiting!
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