I am, frankly and irredeemably, enchanted with the colours and forms of the flowers that have bloomed in the past few weeks locally. By "locally" I mean, "within a few blocks of where I live." Especially the little ones, the ones that, to the naked eye, look only like so many dots against a field of dark green leaves.

The flowers will shrivel and fall off, indeed many have already, and the leaves remain, but this and the following pictures record the ones that have graced the gardens on Pendrell Street between Broughton and Bute, in early April of 2004.

And, of course, one robin.

We made a trip out to Boundary Bay between BC and Washington State weekend before last. Nola needed to look at it for a job she's working on and I was along for the ride.

It's one of the least colourful places I've ever seen. It didn't take me long to shift over exclusively to black and white.

Rhododendrons from a bush at the corner of Beach and, oh, Broughton? Yes, Broughton.

In early April, the first of April to be pedanticly exact, I needed to get out of the apartment and so walked downtown to catch up with Nola and tease her into taking me out to supper.

This is a camillia bush just up the block.

This is one of the bushes just outside our front door.

We took a walk from Kits Point back to Granville Island on the 28th of March. It was a chill, blustery day, sun shining bright and hard and all the trees in flower.

Braver-than-me sailors had their boats out, sluffing off the winter and reminding themselves why they pay dock fees in Vancouver.

Back at Reifel in late March, to try out Nola's new Canon and my new monopod. All the locals are pairing up, and tempers run high. We were quite nervous of the sandhill cranes, as they have a reputation for extra aggro while nesting and rearing (not that that's helped much the last few years), but as it turned out they were perfectly willing to let us pass.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Jericho Beach expressly to take pictures in the sunshine of a bright and shifting panorama of colours and patterns on the water and sand and rocks and spume and so on and so forth. The sun, which had been agressively shining all the morning long, went away just as we got there. We stayed on anyway.

Low tide at Coal Harbour.

We took a walk along the seawall and into Stanley Park in early January, while there was real snow on the ground. It was a bit chilly, but a bright, sunny winter day.

This is some of the sandstone at the base of the seawall. It's covered at high tide, and exposed at low. The action of the waves, and the continual drying and rewetting, have created the colours and shapes.