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Garden Bay Lake in February

This scene, taken at the bottom of our road, is typical of winter days in Pender Harbour: a glass-smooth surface on the lake, enough sun peering through the clouds to make striking reflections on the water, and a few wisps of fog floating up the hillside.  Monochromatic beauty—and it’s as quiet in reality as it appears in the image.

Anyone in need of a winter break?

A forest hike

We’ve just learned of a new online resource with great information about all the wonderful hiking and biking trails we have on the Sunshine Coast. The site also includes maps for many of the trails—everything you need to plan your visit to our special piece of paradise.

Check it out: Sunshine-Coast-Trails.com

Bear Bay Road

Guests often ask how much snow we get at Bluff Hollow in the winter. Our reply: When listening to Vancouver’s CBC Radio early on winter mornings, we often hear reports of heavy snowfall, gridlock and icy streets. We go to the window, expecting to see a blanket of snow on the ground, only to find we’ve had none at all.

And so we see a similar pattern this winter. Here’s an image of Bear Bay Road taken this afternoon. While Vancouver is digging out of several inches of snow, andpeople living in the Fraser Valley are coping with up to two feet, we accumulated less than an inch.

It’s cold out there, to be sure, but ever so quiet. On our walk, Silas and I heard the unmistakable cawing of ravens and looked up at the clear blue sky to see three of the huge birds riding on an updraft, rising in ever higher circles, only to swoop down and start the process all over again.

We’re truly blessed.

If winter is grey where you live—grey streets, grey buildings, grey skies—perhaps you need some green in your days. We used to find the winter months colourless and drab, but now, when the days are short, we’re surrounded by colour, most of it green. This is a typical scene when we take Silas out for a “bush walk” in the forest behind us. The moss thrives at this time of year, dogs love to romp through what must seem like a wilderness to them, and people inhale the quiet with each new breath.

Just down the road from Bluff Hollow, about a ten-minute walk, is Mixal Creek, which spills into Sakinaw Lake, which in turn drains into the ocean. Every winter we watch as the Northern Coho make their final journey up Mixal, to deposit their eggs so the cycle can start all over again.

This year the creek was lower than usual after the fall rains, and we learned from our Department of Fisheries neighbour that beavers had built a dam on Mixal Creek; he was watching for the return of the Mixal coho. As soon as he saw them congregating around the mouth of the creek, he took whatever measures were needed to destroy the dam, resulting in water levels favourable for the salmon.

Rick, a trained streamkeeper, and Peter, a neighbour whose property borders Mixal Creek, keep an eye on each year’s salmon run, to estimate their numbers. This year’s run isn’t finished yet, but last year they guessed at 450 to 600 coho, up from the previous year’s smaller numbers.

Eagles also keep an eye on the proceedings; we hear their screechy calls whenever we’re down at the creek at this time of year, and it’s not uncommon to find a half-eaten carcass or two on the side of the creek.

Trametes versicolor

A profusion of Turkeytails, the polypore that makes an earthy, healthy-tasting tea (just boil up a few until the liquid turns brown—it’s said to be good for what ails you!)

Slime mold overtaking Panellus serotinus

A creepy image: yellow slime mold overtaking a late oyster mushroom (Panellus serotinus)

Boletus mirabilis

And the largest Admirable Bolete (Boletus mirabilis) we’ve ever seen—still fresh enough to take home for dinner.

Sparassis crispa

This is the first Cauliflower mushroom (Sparassis crispa) we’ve ever found in the Bear Bay Forest (aka our backyard). And you can be sure we’ve noted where to return next year!

After harvesting

Risotto

We’d thought we were just about mushroomed out, as in, “Mushrooms for dinner again? Do we have to?” But we had no hesitation last night about tucking into the best risotto ever, featuring the crisp, flavourful fronds of Cauliflower mushroom, paired perfectly with a Meyer Family chardonnay from the Okanagan. It doesn’t get much better.

Lobster Mushroom

This mushroom—Hypomyces lactifluorum, or the Lobster mushroom—is the only one that the cook and dyer have to share. The orange colour is confined to the “skin,” so Ann pares that off and lets it dry until she has enough for a dyepot. Rick then uses the crisp, white flesh to make something delicious in the kitchen.

This is an interesting mushroom. It actually starts out as a Russula brevipes, or short-stemmed Russula,which becomes parasitized by the Hypomyces, a fungi that distorts its host and gives it this unmistakable colour. Lobsters emerge from the forest floor fully grown and can weigh as much as two pounds. We haven’t seen a lot of these mushrooms this season, making this one a particular delight to find!

The Shroom Works dyepots have barely cooled down over the last month or so as we deal with the abundance of dye mushrooms (in this case, Phaeolus schweinitzii, or Dyer’s Polypore). Yarns of all manner of golds, browns, and greens create beautiful, fluffy accents to every room in the house, or as Rick just put it, “We’re definitely in shroom season.”

Now the fibre is being spun up into yarn; here’s one combination of colours that should produce interesting visual texture.