Officially Winter!

It just didn't feel right putting up a wintery picture for today when we have already had 6 weeks of winter weather in the Bella Coola Valley!  This is a shot from last summer of the plant known as Devil's Club (Oplopanax horridus), the horridus part of the Latin name meaning 'frightful and rough'.  It's a challenging plant in terms of the spines on the stems and leaves which easily stick you when grabbed and leave a nice little festering spot for a few days. It's also an important plant for First Nations cultural and medicinal uses and  wildlife (Grizzlies love the fresh buds in the spring and the berries in late summer). Luckily it grows in extensive patches in many of the valleys of the Central Coast.   I've included it today to cheer you up and remind you of green times ahead.

In case you are thinking about other latitudes to be in, here's a list of places you could be in Canada today and experience more or less daylight hours.  The times are based on official sunrise/sunset calculations posted at the Environment Canada weather web page for each site and I believe they are a calculation based on a fairly flat horizon.   Sunrise in Bella Coola today was 8:35, but even with a bit of cloud cover it was light enough to see shortly after 8 AM. Enjoy winter.  Grizzly