So apparently I was wrong and “they” were right.
I went to sleep last night star gazing through the window above my bed. I woke up to a cocoon of snow. So before I had my coffee I walked around the property and took pictures.. For the record its been four years since I have seen snow here.. This is what my world looks like this morning..
You can’t blame me for being doubtful about the snow forecast… Here is a picture of my wee hummingbird yesterday afternoon
and
then this morning.
At any given point we can check four or five different weather forecasts for this island and get four or five different predictions. On more than one occasion we have cancelled a planned trip because of the wind forecast, only to find the waters flat calm. At the end of the day we just don’t plan any trip that can’t be rescheduled. Our days are always flexible.
Tomorrows weather forecast is for snow. Today we had blue skies and sunshine. The waters glassy calm… It is very hard to believe we have snow in store for us for the weekend.
But, I take nothing for granted and as I hate bringing wood down the hill in the rain let alone snow I spent the morning bringing loads and loads of wood down to the house. I stocked the wood bin on the deck and piled arbutus limbs nice and high beside the wood stove inside. If the forecasters are accurate we will be cozy and warm. If they aren’t we can resume our outdoor projects.
Plans are getting finalized for a pretty major reconstruction of our wee cabin. We have the help of experts. Men who have been involved in construction their whole lives and know this house inside and out. Measurements have been made, plans drawn and a model built. The supply list has been submitted and a barge booked to bring roofing and construction materials over in one load. (it’s a small house) ….
E will do all of the system work, plumbing and electrical. He will also do all of the finishing work (tiling, flooring and drywall). But for the framing and carpentry the pros will be in charge. One of my jobs, cause I do serve a purpose in this whole project is to pack up the interior of the house and figure out some way for us to live our day-to-day lives during the disruption.
We will be cooking our dinners on the barbecue, sleeping in a tent, and cleaning out the cobwebs from the outhouse. It will all be an adventure… very exciting indeed. We are actually taking the roof off of the middle of the house!!!!
Today, I finished planting all of the iris down the driveway so now if the weather turns I will get to work packing up the house. Or if the weather forecasters are wrong, I will try to get my seed trays ready for the greenhouse. Cause reno or not… This summer, I will
still be gardening
This is how we got our truck to the island. Hey, someone was watching from above.. Hi.. I didn’t see you there… 🙂
The truck was filled with soil for my garden. Bark mulch to top dress the flower garden. ProMix for my seedlings. Peat moss and potting soil for the rockery planters.
We have sooo much to do to get ready for our little spring reno but before we get started we need to finish all of the projects which we have already started. To that end, yesterday I finished the majority of the tidying up I wanted to get done on the driveway. Today, I was filling the rockery planters with soil and E was attaching the shingles to the greenhouse.
Tomorrow, I will move more Iris down to the rockery planters.
I have lots of types and colours to divide and spread around. The deer don’t eat them and they require no work
on my part.
Beautiful day on the island. Helps you forget about the last four months.. It was eight degrees here at the north end with plenty of sun to fill up our batteries via the solar panels. Solar panels by definition need sun!
Our property is pretty messy without our attention for the last couple of months. Out of sight out of mind. But now that we are back, I can’t stand it!… The leaves from the maple trees didn’t even get raked in the fall. I can’t imagine what Mr. Ho thinks when he has his daily constitutional past the debris.
I got a pretty good start on the clean up today. Mostly around the studio, but a little tidying in the garden too.. I had a nice walk through the garden. The fish have fared well through the cold spell. There were lots and they are getting big! No garlic yet but no surprise as I planted it a month late.
For those who haven’t met Frank, he and his dog Beans are our resident skeletons. They attend most of the official island functions to reduce any predisposition for formality. The women folk and I found Frank, on the side of the road one day and we gave him a home. Beans was a birthday gift to E but really more to Frank for company. Frank ‘n Beans helped me up at the burn pile today while E went to town.
We never knew what happened to Frank, that his bones would be cast aside on the road to the pub. But he is a nice companion to work with.. Kind of the
strong silent type.
When I was in high school, or as I like to think of it, yesterday; I was a member of what they called at the time, Girls League. Although it seems like only yesterday I cannot for the life of me remember our purpose other than selling glazed donuts at recess for a dime.
I met her in girls league. She was also the editor of the newspaper. Her dream, I remember was to go to Carleton and train to be a journalist. But, she became very ill in grade twelve. As I remember it, the doctors told her it was unlikely she would live through her twenties and journalism school would be pointless.
She married young and had difficulties having children… Difficulties didn’t stop her so she took fertility drugs to solve the problem…. Three healthy children later she met her thirties… I had to take the same drugs and I can still remember sharing the stories of the horror our husbands had to live through with the insane mood swings. There is a roof somewhere that still bares the scar of an airborn roller skate.
She met her forties with more health scares and saw her children married in her fifties. Through the years, I have lost track of the types of disease she has fought and conquered. Truth is, we had lost contact for the last few years and I have relied on our mutual friend for updates on her life.
I was speaking with our mutual friend today who informed me she has been forwarding my blog to her for entertainment while she is at home fighting yet again another challenge. I am writing tonight to virtually send a hug and share strength to my friend from girls league. I am confident you will once again give the finger to your doctors and their prognoses.
I couldn’t be more honoured and pleased that somewhere in Alberta my blog is
making Wendy smile.
During our brief experiment living in a townhouse I missed my garden. But more than the garden, I missed planning my garden during the darkest days of winter and dreaming of the summer experiments ahead.
Today, I spent the afternoon strolling through on-line seed catalogues.. I like to try different seeds every year. I spent the afternoon trying to give my business to a new supplier but at the end of the day I returned to West Coast Seeds. I normally alternate between West Coast Seeds and Saltspring Island seeds. This year, West Coast had what I wanted.
I saved all of my tomato seeds from last summers crop. The original seeds had been purchased from SaltSpring Island seeds. I figure if planting seeds I saved from last years plants doesn’t work, I can always go to the gardening store and buy starts….But I am quite excited to try to grow my tomatoes from my very own seeds.. One of my favorite tomatoes from past years was the Juliet and I didn’t have any last year, so I did need to buy seeds for Juliet from West Coast today.
I was quite envious of Anne’s cauliflower last year so I bought some cauliflower seeds. My friend Janice made dill pickles years back and I thought I would like to try to make pickles this year.. So in addition to a new long cucumber seed, I included a dill pickle.
To that end I also ordered some dill seed along with my coriander for homemade salsa.
Sheila made us a gorgeous roasted veg dish last year with multi colored beets. I have ordered a blend of colored beets to try to replicate the delicious flavour.
With a functioning greenhouse (hopefully) I am going to try cantaloupe and watermelon this year. Everything else is pretty routine. Nothing else new.
I do wonder where it is all going to fit into the garden… Last fall I added strawberries from Marion and some asparagus volunteers from the family garden. Theoretically. if they all take I will have even less room for all of my annual experiments…
The trick as I work through this new landscape of vegetable gardening on the island is finding vegetables that I like to eat, that grow easily in my garden and are rewarding for the amount of work they involve to grow.
For example, corn takes up too much space and too much water for my wee garden. Turnips are prolific but I hate eating them.. There are only so many turnips I can convince my neighbours to take off my hands.
At the end of the day, deep down inside my soul I really just like to grow flowers.. Not just flowers but perennials… Mostly flowering bushes…. I like to grow them because I like to make bouquets for my friends. They are easy to grow, are pretty and by and large smell wonderful.. I am talking about you my beloved mock orange.
Before I moved here, I would ask my self three questions before I planted anything in the garden. Does it smell nicely? Does it have a beautiful flower? Is it easy to grow….
Vegetables never fill any of those requirements. Their benefit however obvious to others, have normally eluded their place in my garden.. But I am trying to grow as a gardener and am giving it my best go… But, in truth… I find looking at the seed catalogues, planting the seeds and bringing them to life more fun than the actual eating of the vegetables. Perhaps if I could grow chocolate it would be
a different story
This morning we have had sea lions, seals, otters, cormorant, hummingbirds and Eagles.. All playing in front of us.. Sigh, it’s good to be home..
On our wee island we now have fifty trucks. Most sit covered in dust til their owners show up for summer vacation. Nine times out of ten the batteries are dead when their owners return. But a few are driven regularly back and forth from the dock to our cabins. They carry propane, wood, lumber, piping and soil…they carry guests, dogs, Windows and 1000 gallon water tanks. Our truck has to be a 4×4 to get up our driveway. A trailer hitch is ideal cause at any given time you will have to pull something or someone…
When we bought this house we inherited a very old truck. The R’s were apologetic that it may never run. But run it did. We have changed the alternator and the battery many times. E had to bolt parts together when they fell apart but.. By and large the filthy old girl has been very reliable.. It’s been five years. She’s been good girl…
My sister in law called this week. Her neighbour wanted to sell his truck. She thought it would be perfect for us..E went over to town today and was more than pleased with the truck and the price..
Now we have to barge it over here… Always a complicated process. I am determined to fill it with potting soil and pro mix before it comes.. Drive the supplies straight to my greenhouse door 😉
The story goes, that back in the day, in the beginning when there were only two trucks on the island… They ran
into each other…
