Point of View is the theme for this month’s installment of the Photo Blogging Challenge. It’s also the subject of a supper conversation the other night – specifically point of view in literature, and the fact that none of the three of us can remember ever reading a book written in the second person point of view. Can you?
I’m really keen to see what other participants came up with this month. I found this theme more challenging than most months. For some photos, it’s more the accompanying words than the image that creates the fit. Here goes…
1. Right Position at the Right Time
We enjoyed several birding walks in April, the start of the migratory season. One morning in Canmore we were in just the right position, at the right time, with the right camera settings, to capture Nature’s version of DoorDash! For more of the birds we saw on this outing, watch Mr GeoK’s Relive video, here.
2. My Opinion re: April Snow
We had at least three major snow events this April. There’s been some grumbling, especially from our resident young adult responsible for clearing the driveway. But in my opinion, the more, the better. Alberta is preparing for another summer drought, so if Mother Nature is willing to add to the mountain snow pack, great!
I drew this smiley face on a neighborhood STOP sign while walking home from the nearest bus stop. And thank goodness for free local bus service. I did NOT want to drive to my appointment that morning and ROAM Route 5T got me there just in time!
Bonus pic = what we woke up to on April 30…
3. Best Chocolate Ever!?
As we ate our way through our haul from last year’s Northwest Chocolate Festival, we quickly realized we should have purchased more bars from Japan’s Green bean to bar. They don’t ship to North America. 🙁 Lucky for us, our oldest son and his partner vacationed in Japan in March/April. We messaged them our shopping list and as chocolate lovers themselves, they were happy to visit the Kyoto location to stock us up. As soon as they were back in North America, they sent a parcel with another 8 bars, which we received in mid-April.
Two of the bars a̶r̶e̶ were the new-to-us Fortunato No. 4. Ingredients? Nothing but cacao beans and sugar. The cacao beans are from Peru, of the Nacional variety, thought to have been entirely wiped out by disease in the early 1900s.
In 2009, a couple of chocolate enthusiasts from Washington state took hundreds of samples from cacao trees in the remote Huarango district of Peru. The 4th sample out of 20 taken from the farm of Don Fortunato Colala tested 100% pure Nacional. To preserve the unique genetics of this “Mother Tree”, the chocolate enthusiasts established a garden where they’ve cloned this tree thousands of times.
Green bean to bar’s approach to these “back from extinction” cacao beans results in a 75% dark chocolate that starts with the taste of dried flowers, melts in the mouth, and has a gradual tasting notes of herbs, fruits, nuts, and spices, Each bar has 18 squares of chocolate. Shared 3 ways, it provides almost a week of after supper treats. As far as I’m concerned, it’s truly delicious. I hope to purchase more at the October 2024 Northwest Chocolate Festival.
5. Strong Opinions
Electric vehicles. It seems people love them or hate them. According to some recent headlines, all the early EV adapters have purchased an EV, and the market for EVs is tanking. Yet the Canadian government is going all in on EVs, subsidizing Honda and battery makers to the tune of billions of dollars to establish an EV sector in Canada. Charging infrastructure is finally standardizing on the Tesla adapter. Mazda’s just come out with a battery / rotary engine hybrid. The whole situation continues to develop almost daily.
We bought our first EV – a 2023 Hyundai Ioniq 5 – about a year ago. At the time, the EV market here was very tight. So we had to take the colour and trim level that was available in order to add the anticipated power load to the sizing for our solar panel installation.
We have really enjoyed driving this car over the past year, including through the coldest days of winter. There’s no waiting for the heater to kick in, no lag between pressing the accelerator and generating torque, and we certainly don’t miss spending $40/week on gasoline. We charge at home, so access to/broken down charging stations haven’t been an issue. Don’t get me wrong – there are a few things about this particular EV that we really dislike, too. For example, there’s no rear window wiper.
Last summer, we discovered that Parks Canada has a few “no cost” EV charging stations at the Cave and Basin National Historic Site in Banff. So whenever we head to Banff, we try to plug in here to top up the batteries while we’re out exploring the trails.
5. Snack? or Full Meal Deal?
I was on the receiving end of this coyote’s intense stare for a good couple of minutes. It made me wonder whether I looked like a full meal deal from the coyote’s point of view. Thank goodness the Bow River was between us!
This was one of two coyotes traveling together in Banff. I spotted them while we were birding near the Cave and Basin National Historic Site in mid-April. For more photos of this healthy canine, plus birding highlights, check out Mr GeoK’s Relive recap.
That’s it from me. To learn other participants’ points of view on who knows what, check out the linkup at the bottom of host PJ’s post over at A ‘lil HooHaa. While doing so, please consider joining us this month. All you need are a blog site (several free options are available) and 5 photos on the theme (which I’ll post here as soon as it’s available). As for words, I’m definitely on the wordy end of the usual participants. The amount of accompanying text is entirely up to you.
And if you still have a minute, please share your point of view re: any of the above photos, or feel free to ask about getting started with blogging or anything else that’s relevant to this post. Leave a comment and I’ll do my best to respond in a timely manner. Thanks for stopping by! 🙂
These are great. Particularly the fishing bird and the coyote. You’ve got to be getting as little tired of the snow!
Has this bird actually just caught a fish?
The street sign looks wonderful, and your attitude is just right. There’s no point in grumbling anyway, so make the best of it.
Fortunato No. 4, I wonder if we have an equivalent in Switzerland.
In Switzerland, the demand for electric vehicles has increased in recent years and the government has introduced various incentives and measures to encourage the switch to electric mobility. These include financial incentives such as tax breaks and support programs for the purchase of electric cars as well as the expansion of the charging infrastructure.
The coyote is beautiful!
Yes, the osprey just caught a fish. We see them fishing quite often when kayaking at Vermilion Lakes. Very cool to watch how they hover, then plunge into the water. They don’t always succeed. As for Fortunato No 4, we found a UK chocolatier that makes bean-to-bar chocolate bars using this kind of chocolate and they call it Nacional cacao beans. Yep, EVs are a big point of contention / investment depending on the person and country. Elon Musk has thrown all things EV into disarray in North America with his firing of the entire Supercharger team. Not sure how Tesla’s going to grow car sales with an inadequate charging infrastructure?
So much to enjoy with this post. I laughed at the “Door Dash” comment. Perfect! Mercifully, we didn’t get snow in April, but just finished a couple rounds of tornadic storms. On a clear night, we can sometimes hear the coyotes in the distance from our neighborhood….where they can certainly stay. Reading about the chocolate made me think of the movie Chocolat! I’m less enthused about EV vehicles after I learned how “not green” they are with the manufacturing of the lithium batteries. What mining lithium and cobalt does to the environment, the toxicity of the chemicals and the human right violations are never reported when promoting this option…just my POV! 🙂
Yep, there are unreported costs to EVs, solar panels and other “green” technologies, just as there are for conventional oil and gas technologies. You have to be a careful shopper, for sure. Large businesses are facing plethora sustainability reporting standards, and the sooner those coalesce into one consistent standard, the easier it will be for them to comply, and then the easier it will be for all of us to make better-informed decisions about where we spend our $$.