We took a Friday off and headed over to Galiano to get our last utilities hooked up (propane tank delivery!) and to continue to work on the landscaping around the property. We also took over a last big load of furniture to wrap up (I hope) most of the inside of the cottage, and tackled a couple of small projects along the way… Justine gets full photography credit for almost all the pics on this post - I think I didn’t take my camera or phone out once this weekend!
Our propane was scheduled to be delivered on Friday morning, so we took Friday off work and headed over to Galiano on the Thursday night ferry. We had another huge load of stuff to take over with us, including a bed frame to get us off the floor! Thankfully, my coworker David was kind enough to loan me his F150 for the weekend, which made a huge difference! We had also picked up a number of trees at the UBC Botanical Gardens, to continue with our landscaping work. The weather was looking cooperative, and we had a huge list of projects to tackle!
The back of the truck was quite full…
…with the bedframe just squeezing in!
It was around 9:00 p.m. when we arrived at the cottage and got the truck unpacked. We spent some time organizing, then started to tackle putting together the bed frame. We got as far as the frame (the model we bought has drawers under it), but we didn’t feel the need to tackle that part. We had what we needed, and it was still after midnight by the time we got to bed.
It was good to get the mattress up and off the ground.
we were not quite sure what time the propane guy was supposed to show up, but we made an early start and got going with some landscaping projects. The first task was to wash the windows on the outside of the cottage. They still had a lot of dust and dirt from delivery, and we wanted to get that cleaned up. After getting them washed, we were able to hang up our window-mounted hummingbird feeder.
We had picked up a number of plants, including a maple, flowering currant (my new favourite), a small pine and a number of juniper shrubs. We got all of those into the ground, and deer fencing around the ones that needed it.
We only had a couple of junipers, but we’ve started to build out a bit of garden along the path.
Our new little pine tree.
On top of the “mound” at the back of the property we have a number of raspberry vines. They produced a fair amount of berries last year, but the way we had each plant individually wrapped in deer fencing looked pretty bad. So I had bought some new fencing and some new posts, and created a proper enclosure that I think turned out much better. We’ll see if it keeps the deer out or not…
While we were working on the raspberries, Justine found this little guy - a Pacific Chorus Frog
The propane guy showed up late morning and installed our new propane tank. It’s a big one, but I hope that means we don’t need fills more than once a year. We’ll see how much we use. Unfortunately, the tank comes empty and the propane fill wasn’t schedule to come until the next day. The installer was kind enough to empty our regular propane tank into the big one, and finally we had hot water!
New propane tank arriving on site!
Thankfully, it’s not too much of an eyesore…
We’ll still eventually build some sort of screen around it, but it’s not too bad for now.
As we were on the island on a weekday, we headed down to the Galiano Conservancy to meet up with Adam and look at their nursery. They grow a lot of native plants, and we were looking for more to continue to (hopefully) re-wild the property. We ended up with a good haul - a mixture of shrubs (salal and huckleberry), native grasses and some small trees (juniper, garry oak and an arbutus). And a few succulents for home. It’s great to be able to support local efforts.
After getting back, we wanted to tackle a couple more projects, but it was getting late and time to head inside. We started putting together our bar stools for the counter (now we have a place to work) and continued on the drawers for the bed frame. We started a fire in the woodstove and had a nice, relaxing evening.
Saturday morning I started early and headed down to the golf course and played 9 holes. I didn’t play too badly, and the course is starting to dry out a little bit. On my way home I stopped into the hardware store and picked up a few bags of cement to do the posts for the gate to the garden.
After getting home, we planted all the plants that we had picked up the day before. We’re hoping that some of the native shrubs will start to replace the broom that we’re removing from the property. We’ll see how that goes…
One of main main goals for the weekend was to get the fence posts into the ground for the garden. We’re planning a 16’ x 24’ area that will be fenced off, and then we’ll build a series of raised garden beds inside. Not all at once, but over time. It should be nice. As we’ll have a gate on the outside, we decide to cement the posts holding the gate. The others only need to support some light deer fencing, so we decided to just go with tamped earth with them. When they had the heavy equipment on site, I had them use the mini excavator to dig the post holes for me. Good thing too, as the ground is solid and filled with rocks. Digging those holes myself would have been insane. Justine and I got the first two set and filled with concrete.
Since we needed to let the concrete set overnight, we moved on to the next project. Back to working on skirting the cottage. It seems we’re taking a long time to get through this! We did learn a lot last time, so this one went more smoothly. We also forgot a few things, but in general this second short end of the building went pretty smoothly.
After moving inside for the evening, we finished off building the stools and bed frame, and generally cleaned up and got better organized. The we settled in and enjoyed our evening.
Our hummingbird feeder is a success! We had both Anna’s and Rufous hummingbirds.
Sunday, the weather took a bit of a turn as the wind picked up. For the first time since we started coming to the island, we had our evening ferry cancelled, “stranding” us on Galiano. It’s a good thing we have a place to stay now!
We got a mix of weather over the course of the day - rain at the beginning, some clearing in the day and strangely by the time the evening came around, things had calmed down.
The first project we tackled Sunday was to finish the posts for the garden. The concrete had set perfectly, and we were able to move on to the rest of the posts. It took us quite a while to get the other 7 posts set, but we worked through the ,morning (and the rain and wind) and got it done!
One of the other “gardens” I’m trying out this your is to grow mushrooms. I had ordered some starters (wood dowels inoculated with the mushroom spores) to try it out. To start them, I needed some freshly cut down logs, in which I had to drill holes. There have been lots of trees down around the area over the past few months, so we collected 4 big logs to start the process.
We built a rough frame to hold the logs and started to drill holes in the first log. The weather went crazy - we got crazy wind and rain (and later in the day snow and hail!), and so we abandoned the project with only one log partially done. I had broken a drill bit anyway, and it was really no fun being outside. We’ll finish it up next time.
We’ll see if we can grow some mushrooms!
Since the weather got so crappy, we headed inside to warm up, have a fire and tackle some other “projects”. This one was a Christmas gift from Aunt Rosie. It was a fun little project, and will be a nice birdhouse to add to our collection.
We were not supposed to have been their Sunday night, so Monday was a bit of a scramble. I had calls early in the morning, and the first work call from Galiano was mostly successful. We’ll need better Internet to do it more permanently. Monday was a much nicer day, and we were greeted by an amazing sunrise.
After my call we got packed up and headed for the ferry. We had to return David’s truck and then get home to pick up on the day’s work. It was not the most productive day ever, but we managed. I think we made good progress on the property this weekend. We got lots of things planted - hopefully we’ve protected them from the deer - and I’m hoping that we’ll start to get some things established and starting to grow. There will always be lots to do, but we made a good start!