Picking up from the last entry, Mom and Dad were staying with us for a few more days. We had a nice mixture of tackling some projects we needed to get done along with exploring and relaxing. The days went by surprisingly quickly. Dad and I went golfing one morning, and there was a lot of games played in the evenings.
Our security camera is always good for a quick look at what’s going on.
As we were getting into the fall, it was time to harvest what was left in the gardens and in the “orchard”. One of the new things I tried this year was growing hops. The vines did well, and we had a pretty big crop. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with them (maybe try and make beer?), but it was time to harvest and dry them. We took down one vine to do an initial test.
Improvised drying rack for the first hop harvest.
The weather turned a little bit on us, but we still tried to get out and do as many walks and exploring as possible. We went down to the beach at the bottom of our property one afternoon, to see what was about. As usual, there were lots of seals, but as the tide was quite far out we had an unusual site of some of them out on the rocks,
The main view from the cottage - it never gets old.
The main project we wanted to complete during the week was building a compost bin for the property. Between the garden, leaves off the trees and other material around the property, I’m hoping we can create enough compost for our gardens. We’ll see how that works out.
I had ordered the wood the week before we arrived, and it was delivered while we were out one day with the whole crew. Stupidly expensive, but I’m not sure what you can do about that with everything that’s going on. It was a complete team effort, but as we didn’t have the right posts to secure it, we didn’t quite get the job done. Still, the almost-finished product looks pretty good!
The finished compost bin.
The fall and winter always produce the best sunsets.
One of our local friends - a western garter snake. There’s a fair number of them around.
We also harvested the fruit in our “orchard”. After the deer devastated the trees in the spring, all we ended up with were 4 pears and 1 apple. The pears were amazing - perfect ripeness - but the apple I think we harvested a bit early, as it was still a bit small and tart.
The longest walk we did was a hike along the shoreline on Monday afternoon. We drove down to one of the beach access points mid-island, for a bit of change of pace. With the tide being out, we were able to walk a long way along the sandstone shoreline, up to a pair of coves that we’ve been to in the past. The weather was nice - not quite nice enough to encourage me to go for a swim, but close.
The map of our walk.
As the tide was out quite far, it exposed some cool features like a crack in the sandstone that the purple sea stars were inhabiting.
Similarly, the crabs were using this overhang to shield themselves from the sun.
An early start to some amazing fall colors.
At the end of our walk, where we stopped to have lunch is a big sandstone outcropping. It’s full of interesting shapes, colours and textures, and worth exploring. We spent a fair bit of time exploring the area before sitting down to have some lunch.
As we started the walk back, there were a few spots that needed to be photographed. The light was fantastic, and in this spot showed off one of the very cool arbutus trees along the shoreline.
Another view of the same arbutus tree.
An old growth stump along the shoreline.
This year, we’ve had a pileated woodpecker show up at the cottage on a regular basis. You can see it pretty much every day. We’re hoping that it’s a young one that has decided to make our little patch of forest his turf.
Later that week we had a visit from the smaller cousin - a downy woodpecker up in the alders.
Sadly, our week eventually came to an end. Wednesday we needed to get packed back up and head to the ferry. Thankfully, getting off the property went as smoothly as getting on, and we were on our way.
We were a bit early for the ferry, but that gave us a little bit of time to explore the shoreline around Sturdies Bay.
All in all, it was a pretty great week. Iy was nice to see the family in person after all this time, and get a chance to show off Galiano as well!