August Storm

There is always a huge August storm in the works to see us off at the end of August. This year it was a good one. It announced itself with thunder and lightning. I went down to the beach to have a good look at it and snapped some shots of the dark clouds moving in. The storm front was drifting toward Savary from Vancouver Island. Off in the distance I could see wind and rain whipping around, so I ran to the house to put away the camera and down again to check the solar panels and kayak. When I reached the beach again (a matter of a few minutes) all I could see and feel was a huge wall of wind and rain coming toward me, obscuring everything from sight. Everything beyond a hundred feet from me had vanished...and it was coming closer at a good speed. I turned and ran back to close the windows with the storm right at my heels...got back just in time to close everything but did not keep from getting soaked. If the windows had been closed I would have stayed on the beach to feel the storm come in...wonder if I could have stayed on my feet though it...
and get a load of that weird rectangular cloud!!!

Out and about on Savary

Summers on Savary are always wonderful. We all enjoy being there. It's a small island, but there is plenty to do and see in walking around the various trails, along the long expanses of sandy as well as rocky beaches, or all around the island.
There is plenty of wildlife to see and observe, from eagles to otters, from seals to seastars, as well as nudibranchs and anemones in the pools and, if one is lucky, even a killer whale or two. The starfish are plentyful. Of course the most common purple stars dominate, but there are also plenty of others such as the leather star, the sun star and, depending on the tides, a variety of other species.

An odd visitor to the seashore is the snake. There are always plenty of snakes slithering among the rocks and around the tidepools. Every once in a while one might even be seen skimming along in the water. They obviously feed on sea life...most probably on the small crabs, the odd sculpin, and possibly the anemones. Hard to know. I've never seen one feeding. And as to what type of snake they might be...some say a variety of garter snake, others say bull snakes...they range from the common garter snake colouring to jet black to a rattlesnake type of colouring...the black and the latter are often very aggressive. One of them, a little one, jumped at me as I walked along the rocks.