I’m still doing some catch up, so this is a bit of an old post.
With Remembrance Day falling on a Wednesday, we decided to make the most of the timing and spend 5 days on Galiano, staying right through the weekend from the holiday Wednesday. Earlier in the year, we had also picked this weekend as a laneway broome clearing weekend with our neighbors, so we had lots planned and hoped the weather would hold for us.
Earlier in the week, we had lost connectivity to our video camera and our thermostat in the utility shed. That was odd, but we did not think much of it. When we arrived on Wednesday morning, the source of the problem was immediately obvious - we had lost the tops out of a couple more arbutus trees, and they had come down and taken out the power lines.
A couple of big arbutus limbs down, and with it our power.
That was unexpected. We called into BC Hydro and were in luck in that some other people were having similar issues, and a crew was on its way to the island. So we were added to the list. I wasn’t expecting much, but we had lots to do and so we got on with it.
Over the past few months, we had been cutting back a lot of broome. We had huge piles of it all over the property. This week we planned to burn as much of it as possible. Since it was nice and dry, we got started with it right away. The stuff burns fast - the problem with that is that you have to feed and tend the fire almost constantly, meaning there’s little else you can do. I had sort of hoped I could just start a big fire then go do some other things. No such luck.
The broome fire, with a pile nearby to feed the flames.
As we were making progress with the burning, the BC Hydro crew showed up! It was about 2 hours from when I initially called, which I think is pretty impressive. They looked at it and told us “piece of cake” which was exactly what we wanted to hear!
After the Hydro guys took care of the power lines, I got the chainsaws out and took care of the downed branches. That was a task I did not have on my list for the week, but I guess I end up with more firewood as a result. Too bad - we’ve lost a lot of arbutus trees, and they are our favorites.
It took us most of the day to burn through our piles of broome, but we made a great dent in it, and the place looks much better as a result. We called it a day fairly early and head back south to Driftwood and got settled into our cottage for the next few nights. It’s a great spot until we have something more permanent ourselves. As it was still light, we walked down to Maryanne point to see if anything was going on. It was pretty quiet - no whales - but there was a seal and a sea lion. Wednesday night we set anice fire, played some games and had a relaxing evening.
Thursday I played golf while Justine slept in, and then we headed up to the property. No burning today, but lots of little projects that have been piling up for a bit. While we were working, we had an unusual visitor - a Cooper’s hawk landed in the trees nearby.
Again we wrapped things relatively early on Thursday and spent a relaxing evening. Friday morning we picked Dana up at the ferry (Bradley came later that evening) and headed up to the property. We got a bit of head start working on the broome along the lane.
Dana and Justine did most of the work on Friday, starting with the hill near our driveway. I kept at the broome pile on our property, and we had two pretty sizeable fires going as we made a good dent in the broome infestation. Dana and Justine really made a difference - I was more cleaning up the mess we had already started.
The embers of the fire on the lane where Dana and Justine were burning what they cut out.
Friday was a long and hard day, but we made good progress. You could already see what a difference we were going to be able to make. Saturday morning we were back up to the property pretty early. Dana and Bradley had already made a bit of a start on things. Saturday was going to focus solely on the lane. We tackled it from both ends - Justine and I working from our end up the lane, and Bradley and Dana started further down and were working their way back. We had two fires going, burning as we cut.
Saturday was a big day. We made great progress, and the whole lane looks so much better. Not to mention there will be many less seeds off the bromme next year. Hopefully we can start to get ahead of it. We wrapped up early afternoon and they stayed and had dinner with Bradley and Dana. We were all pretty wiped, and it ended up being an early night. Both because we were tired, but as well because the power went out around 7:30 p.m. So we called it a day and headed back to Driftwood (where there was still power). On the way south, we did pass the Hydro trucks out working on the downed lines.
Sunday morning I got in another round of golf before heading back to Driftwood to get packed up. Our ferry was late Sunday night, and we had decided that we were not doing any work on Sunday, but instead were going to relax and enjoy our final day. Our first activity was a quick walk up to Maryanne Point. Sadly, it was another quiet day without much to see.
We had decided to go over to Montague Harbour and do a hike there that we had been meaning to do for a while. So we drove over that that way and parked in the day use area. It was very quiet, with only a couple of cars around. It’s the beauty of Galiano in the winter - there’s hardly anyone around.
The map of our little hike around Montague Harbour
This time of year we get a lot of wintering ducks and other shore birds, which always makes this part of the island worth exploring. We started off in the main camping area of the park, which is full of big, mature trees. It’s really quite a beautiful park.
Pine siskens pulling seeds from the cones.
I don’t normally take pictures of crows, but the light was nice.
The beach at Montague is beautiful - it almost looks tropical.
After walking through the campground, we headed out onto the little peninsula, where the trail circumnavigates the whole thing. It’s a beautiful trail through more old trees, with some of the arbutus along the water’s edge being some of the biggest we’ve seen.
But first, there were all kinds of waterfowl to check out. Of course,a t this point it started to rain on us… It didn’t last too long, but it put a bit of a damper on things.
But the highlight was the Harlequin Ducks - so pretty!
Thankfully, the rain didn’t last too long, and the sun even came back out.
There are some massive arbutus trees along the way.
It would not be fall on Galiano without mushrooms!
After wrapping up our little hike, we headed up to the property. Rather than doing any work, we relaxed and enjoyed the afternoon. We sat on the deck watching whales - lots of humpbacks - and the birds. It was quite nice. Eventually we decided to head down to the beach, as we were hearing quite a lot of noise from sea lions.
Sea lion rafts - hard to see from this photo.
We were not disappointed! There were 3-4 rafts of sea lions - probably 20-30 in total floating out, just offshore. And making a huge amount of noise. They were also porpoising, and swimming about, as the rafts broke up and re-formed. Sadly, the batteries on my camera died and I had left my spares in the car - rookie move.
We stayed until it started to get dark, then changed and headed back to town. We had once again booked a prime rib dinner at the Galiano Inn (so good!) and had a leisurely meal before heading for the ferry.