As many of you are probably well aware, I turned 50 this year. I can barely wrap my head around this fact, but it is true nonetheless. For my 50th, we spent the weekend on Galiano and while it was a busy work weekend, it was also a lot of fun. Not exactly what we had planned - Justine and I were supposed to have gone to Africa. But you know… COVID and all, so those plans will have to wait.
My birthday was actually on Thursday, so we took Friday off to extend the long weekend. Going over Thursday night, that gave us almost 5 days on the island. Almost a mini-vacation. On my birthday, I did receive a couple of fun gifts that I got to open, and the best one was one that I got to watch.
First off, I want to say “thank you” to everyone that sent in videos, photos, ecards, messages and notes for my birthday. It was a bit overwhelming, and I was very touched. Justine did an AMAZING job pulling it all together into a video that’s over 30 minutes long. It was very touching, and I really appreciate all the effort that everyone put into sending me their thoughts on the big day. I wish we could be together, and it’s been way too long since I’ve seen most of you. I hope that will change in the near future, but it really made the day special to receive so much from so many of you. Thank you.
Since I couldn’t go on safari, Justine felt we should have our own. Lego to the rescue! Pretty funny…
So we sent the Lego safari adventurers off into the jungle to explore!
I got a couple of other great gifts that I’ll highlight later in this post and in the next one.
Thursday night we packed up and headed over to the island. We looked set for an amazing weekend of weather, and the trip over was quite nice.
A view out the port hole as we pulled into Sturdies Bay.
On arrival, it takes a little while to get all set-up and settled in. We wandered to see the state of things since the last time we were there (the deer didn’t seem to get into the garden!), then settled in for what turned out to be an amazing sunset. We had a bottle of bubbly and some excellent desserts to celebrate the momentous day.
While it was my birthday weekend, there was still lots to do at the cottage. The last couple of trips have been all work, so this time we decided to make sure we took some time to enjoy ourselves while also doing some work. Our first task was to complete the work on the garden boxes, filling up the last one for Justine’s flowers, and planting the remaining seeds and plants that we didn’t get to.
The last garden box filled with soil, and all the seeds planted. Hopefully in a few weeks, we’ll see how everything is doing.
The veggie boxes are also now fully planted. A combination of seedlings we started at home and on the roof, and new seeds.
In the last post, we got some pictures of mamma robin sitting on her nest with a clutch of three eggs. Sadly, it looks like they didn’t make it. The nest is now empty.
The next big task was to finish the garden. We needed a gate for the entrance, as well as more permanent deer fencing to keep them out. The light mesh we had put up (albeit temporarily) looked great, in that you couldn’t see it at distance, but it was not a permanent solution. So we built a gate, got that hung and worked our way around the enclosure, getting up the proper fencing.
We felt that we had completed a lot for the day, so we called the “work” part of it at that. The rest of the day and evening were spent relaxing and enjoying ourselves.
Some all-terrain bocce on the lane.
It was still pretty cool, enough that we had a small fire to take the chill off the evening.
Saturday, we were awaken by a very nice sunrise. But it also shows that the grass needs to be cut! This area was completely ripped up putting in septic, but we seeded it and the grass has come in really well.
Rather than starting with work, we decided that Saturday we’d do a hike. The Bodega Ridge Trail in the park that backs onto our property provides amazing views back across the channel and over to Salt Spring Island and Vancouver Island.
I guess this ended up being a bit of work, as I took our machete with us, knowing that the trail was going to be filled in with nettles that would need cutting back. That was a good call - we completed some needed trail maintenance as well as a hike along the ridge!
The map of our walk. It ended up being about 8 km.
At the beginning of the hike, as you can see, the nettles are massive and need to be cut back to make the trail walkable/rideable.
At the top of the trail, at one point we came around a bend and there was a turkey vulture sitting in the top of the tree. He sat for a bit before eventually launching into the thermals to ride with the rest of the flock.
Eventually, the ridge trail connected back to the trails we normally mountain bike on. On one of the connectors, we found this strange sight, in the middle of the forest…
The rest of the afternoon we spent doing yard work - planting more trees, mulching, and pulling thistles, nettles and broom. They aren’t the most exciting of pictures. But it was another beautiful day, and we had some great sunsets!
We rescued the raspberries. The grass was growing in amongst them, and was as tall as the berry plants. We also planted a few new ones.
We spent a lot of tie re-mulching all of our trees. The mound had gotten so far out of control, it was a challenge to find some of the plants. I’m hoping the addition of landscaping fabric will help. This is our original cherry tree. Now that we have some others, I hope it will get pollinated next year.
One of my other, very cool gifts was this absolutely huge Lego Land Rover Defender. We didn’t start on it this weekend, but cannot wait to tackle putting it together!
Sunday we tackled the ongoing project of skirting the cottage. Unfortunately, the local hardware store ran out of the material we were using. So we could only tackle the front, as we were using off-cuts from the earlier work anyway. Still, it was great to get one more side of the cottage completed.
We had some lunch, the took a beer to go for a short hike down to the beach. We went to the new park that they built recently, as it’s a nice, short walk down to the water.
Monday was our last day, and was more yard work. We cleared out another section of broom, making our pile bigger, and kept at more of the planting and deer fencing. There was lots of little projects to do before it was time to pack up and head home.
As always, the weekend came to an end too soon. While it wasn’t what we planned, it was amazing nonetheless. The wishes from everyone were fantastic and very much appreciated.