Sunflower Abstract

My last standing sunflower is really coming into its own as somewhat of a photoshop crash test dummy.

Last Sunflower Standing

This extended stretch of October sunshine is certainly a welcome surprise, despite its underlying hint of climate change. There have been murmurings of Vancouver's weather gradually shifting towards San Diego's. This month is starting to bring some relevance to that argument.

But on the plus side, my sunflower has been given a second chance to bloom. I planted a half dozen or so rather too late in the season, and had largely given up hope that they would bloom. All but one have been pulled out; I thought they were done. But the tallest one (now about 12 feet high assisted by a bungee cord to the deck railing) is stretching for all its worth toward each day's afternoon sun. I've been photo-documenting its progress.

Apple Festival 2018 at UBC

The UBC Apple Festival has been on my radar for several years, especially since Jane (from our running group) told me about Salish apples. They're relatively new and hard to find. She mentioned a small market near Nanaimo Street had them last year, but I never ran across any.

Then this year many of us in the running group have signed up to run the Fall Classic event at UBC so it was suggested that we pre-run the course on the same Saturday as the Apple Festival, which started at 11 a.m., giving us ample time to run first.

Of course I bought a bag of Salish, plus I decided to try Organic Winter Banana apples. How could I not want to try an apple infused with a hint of banana?

The one thing I find curious about the event however is that after you pay your 5 bucks entrance fee there is another 5 buck fee to enter the tasting area. In my humble opinion, the initial $5 should cover the whole event. That's just my 2 cents worth.

The apples are delicious, BTW!

Timing Is Everything

Would you believe it? Barely 3 days after a glorious day of motorcycling through the Whistler corridor on our Vancouver to Lillooet excursion, Whistler gets an afternoon forecast of snow!

I don't yet have any confirmation that snowfall did indeed occur, but we really couldn't have cut it much closer for a ride we'd been talking about doing all summer. I guess the moral of the story is, don't procrastinate when dealing with Canadian weather.

A cold weather system is moving in this evening to Vancouver. Tomorrow morning is supposed to be a crisp 5 degrees Celsius. And strangely enough, this evening as we ate dinner Shauna noticed that raindrops were falling despite the fact the sun was shining brightly. Not that unprecedented really until you consider that it literally was not raining in our front yard!