http://vintagegoodness.com/featured-collectible-bennington-pottery/ 
evil metal fingers violently probing heaven, originally uploaded by Mister Wind-Up Bird.
Or possibly, some kind of ventilation.
the ‘S’ stands for ‘summer’, originally uploaded by Mister Wind-Up Bird.
After a long, dark winter and a few false starts, summer has finally come to Vancouver. I caught this little guy out on our front lawn enjoying the flowers and sunshine.
hello, cherry blossoms, originally uploaded by Mister Wind-Up Bird.
I’m finding the Vancouver winters harder and harder to deal with. It’s not the rain, which I actually kind of like, and is never very heavy. It’s the relentless, unending grey. More and more, I find myself missing Saskatchewan winters, which might be bitterly cold, but at least are sunny.
Aside from a few storms that destroyed Stanley Park and left our water undrinkable, I’m not sure this past Vancouver winter was any harsher than the past few. But it was certainly felt longer. Yesterday was the first day this year that really felt like spring, and all the weight of winter suddenly, magically vanished.
This is the fifth consecutive day of snow in Vancouver, and the third day of heavy snowfall. Vancouver really is not used to this. The trolly buses that I take to and from Yaletown have been simply awful — long waits, delays, random bus switches. The old tree in front of the Kommune has lost its two biggest limbs to the unfamiliar weight of so much snow, and our neighbour’s tree came down, taking out powerlines and a car. UBC was completely closed on Monday, and I suspect it might be tomorrow, too.
And Vancouverites themselves are clearly not equipped to handle it. I see them, walking fast, shoulders hunched forward, trying to use umbrellas to ward off this unfamiliar precipitation. All violent shivering and chattering teeth, since they haven’t learned how to psych themselves out of being cold. I told a couple stuck in a snowbank how to get the car out — by rocking it forward and backward until it popped out. They looked at me like I told them to wait for fairies to fly it out, and then proceeded to put the pedal to the floor and spin their tires for about five minutes while yanking the steering wheel left and right.
I actually find the whole situation kind of charming. In the rest of Canada, a late-November week like this would pass without comment. In Saskatchewan, it would be considered relatively pleasant. But Vancouver has been brought to her knees.
