This weekend we headed over to Galiano to do some landscaping work. We had bought a number of trees over the last little while, and we wanted to get them in before we got too deep into winter. And of course, we spent some time doing some small hikes and watching for whales.
We’re in a bit of a holding pattern on the property right now - we’ve got the first couple of larger infrastructure pieces in, but it will be a while before we have the resources to build anything more substantial. So we’re spending most of our time working on the property itself - pulling thistles and broom, cleaning up after the construction and continuing to work on turning the downed trees from last winter’s storm into firewood. There’s no shortage of things to do.
It was a nice, clear fall day.
Over the summer, we had purchased a few trees to plant on the property. We had been waiting for fall to settle in properly, so we could plant the trees and count on enough rain to keep them nice and wet. So this weekend we rented a van to take them all over, with a goal of getting them planted. We were on the Saturday morning ferry, and it was a beautiful day, with hardly a cloud to be seen. We spent the day digging holes and planting trees and doing some clean up.
One of the interesting things about the island is the sheer variety and volume of mushrooms that are present. As we arrived, these ones were growing up through the road!
After cleaning up the back mound, we planted a burning bush, a dogwood, a magnolia and a cherry tree. We’ll see how they do over the winter.
This one’s a little harder to see, but we planted a fig, Japanese maple and a lilac
Finally, we planted a blue spruce and Justine built a little rock garden to plant bulbs into. We’ll see how it does in the spring.
We spent most of the day doing this bit of landscaping, and made good progress. Hopefully they will all survive and thrive, and grow big in the coming years. You’ll note a lot of deer fencing to give them a chance to survive. Early afternoon we called it and headed down to Driftwood where we were staying. We got cleaned up and went for a short walk down to Maryanne Point to look for whales. It was a pretty quiet afternoon, and we did not see any whales - or much of anything really.
We relaxed for a bit before heading over to Woodstone Manor for dinner. They were doing an Octoberfest-themed meal that looked rather interesting. Woodstone is one of the nicest places on the island - recently renovated and reopened. The rooms are stunning (we had a tour a couple of trips back) and this was the first time for us to try the food. The meal was excellent, and we had a fun night.
Sunday morning we went for a short hike up in Bluffs Park before heading up to the island. I wanted to try and find some oak seeds to plant. We had some luck with the acorns, but even better had a great view on a red tailed hawk that was perched in the trees on the bluffs.
After our short hike, we headed back up to the property. We watered all the trees again, then started into broom clean up. We hacked through a good section of the bloom at the top of the hill, making some good progress. We are starting to get into the older stuff, and one piece was a good 8 feet tall. Needless to say we have lots to clean up. I also spent some time with the chainsaw, working on the pile of downed trees. Towards the end of the day, as we were sitting on the deck we spotted some humpback whales, keeping our streak alive!
We wrapped up the day cleaning up a bunch of the construction debris to take back to the city with us, as we had a van to move it. That was very handy and leaves us just with some wood pieces to burn on a later trip. It was a nice, if quick weekend away on the property.