Homeless in Vancouver: Rain, rain, stay and play, it's a lovely springtime day!

Wednesday (April 26) was just the kind of pulsing green, water-drenched spring day that I needed to banish those last lingering winter blues.

It was an especially perfect day to enjoy Vancouver’s super natural back alleys and—good little homeless binner that I am—that’s just what I did.

From sunup to sundown I picked my way through the Dumpsters and recycling blue bins from Fairview to Mount Pleasant and back again—taking photographs along the way.

I have to say that what I liked best about Wednesday was the on-again, off-again, light rain, culminating as it did in an equally light rainbow.

After the aversion therapy that was December, Januarym and February, the day’s spring showers were a delightful reminder of how precipitation can be a blessing as well as a curse—and that the difference between the two is entirely a matter of degrees.

Simply put—paradise regained

And there was magic to be seen where the unpredictable sprinkles combined with the rebirth of spring.

Against the almost sinfully lush greenery of the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood the light rain fell and rested like a million drops of quicksilver, or a scattering of precious gems, if you will.

Next door to Mount Pleasant, over in the Fairview neighbourhood, where there was less green and more garbage, the rain had to compete for attention with all the colourful characters that called the Dumpsters home.

My morning began in Fairview with a toothy-looking inflatable fish that was all shark and no bite and by lunch, when I had returned to my starting point, I encountered a charismatic mellow yellow squid with a very strong claim to workers’ compensation.

Wednesday saw light rain and overcast skies in the morning, bright sun and blue skies in the early afternoon and, by the early evening—something of a Vancouver specialty—light rain from blue skies—closely followed by the faintest of rainbows.

Feels good to be alive, doesn’t it?