Tooth marks in algae by snails of varying size and appetite.

It’s been raining a lot in Vancouver recently. This isn’t out of the ordinary. But the rain brings about a kind of senility – a distortion of time. So many days of grey and water seem as if they are many weeks instead… months. And many a Vancouverite will tell you that it’s wetter this year than anyone can remember. They’ll threaten to leave. En-mass. To flood south to dry out their lungs and complain about the heat.

And then suddenly it’s sunny again. The city blinks and everyone forgets because it’s just so darn beautiful. Vancouver, suffering a different kind of collective short-term memory loss, drags its patio furniture out onto the deck and settles down with a cup of coffee to take in the view of the north shore shrugging tattered wisps of mist off its verdant shoulders.

I haven’t minded the rain much; I haven’t been able to go outside too often anyway. And besides, with the rain there is no sun and with no sun there is no glare on my computer screen. And with all this rain, one day is much like the next so there isn’t anything to miss.

More importantly, rain is what makes Vancouver Vancouver. It’s what makes it green. No, not the leaves on the trees and the grass (moss) in our lawns or the dark viridian ferns in the lovely wind-ravaged forests. It makes stuff green. Like patio furniture. Sidewalks. The weather stripping around car windows. It makes back steps, the trunks of trees, sides of buildings, flower pots, bbqs, decks and fences a lovely, sometimes violent shade of green.

There is something poetic in all this slow-creeping green.

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