It’s been quite the heat wave on the earthly realm of Vancouver. Hot summer days of bees pollinating rather dry lavender flowers or playing secret agent to save the city from a mad terrorist; less hot summer evenings of sunset reflections, dappled walls and green-roofed streets, and mornings of silly sticky things on city property.
And then you’ve got my birthday weekend. I hadn’t gone to the Folk Music Fest in many years and hadn’t planned to this year, but a friend asked me if I wanted to be in the lantern procession. Sure, I said, and made my way to Jericho Park. I wouldn’t anything to do until the sun went down, so I listened to some good music, ate some delicious food, and watched the scenery.
The lantern procession itself didn’t go so well, since there was so much wind we had to keep stopping to relight our lanterns—except for those fitted with electric lights—but I didn’t care that much. For however long it lasted, I loved being part of something this magical and beautiful. Most lanterns were five-pointed stars, painted in various pretty patterns. A few were rather more elaborate—hell, the photos don’t even do them justice, because that moth was actually carried on a little rig above the performer’s head, with mechanisms to flap the wings. Plus there was a TARDIS lantern that was unfortunately deemed too fragile to go out in the wind.
To cap off the weekend, on Sunday I witnessed some further-out heavenly bodies when the Moon and Venus appeared just a couple degrees apart in the night sky. I hadn’t gotten any good photos that day, and when I saw it all over my Twitter feed I realised this was my chance. It’s a great photo, if I do say so myself, way better than any other moon pic I took, even with my real camera. I do wish my phone had physical zoom, but c’est la vie.