I’m taking a short break from the Maui updates (a couple more to go…) to share our weekend on Galiano. IT had been almost a month since we were over and it finally feels like sprint is arriving. We missed what hopefully will be the last storm and snow for the year, and we have lots of projects to tackle. More than we knew…

We headed over on Thursday night on the 7:30 ferry. Well it was scheduled for 7:30 -I think we ended up being 40 minutes delayed. Before that, we made a stop to pick up a load of soil for the gardens. Gotta love the Tacoma! After picking up our dirt, we made a brief stop at Barnside Brewery for a quick beverage and some growler fills for the weekend. We may have also stopped at the liquor store near the ferry terminal for some Guinness - it was going to bet St. Patrick’s Day after all!

As I mentioned, it had been almost a month since we had been over and there had been a pretty big storm during that time. Sadly, we didn’t come out of it unscathed. We had arrived after dark and noticed a couple of big branches down on the front lawn. Sadly, the light of day the next morning revealed the worst of it - we lost one of our beautiful Arbutus trees in the storm. It was a very sad day.

This is what greeted us in the light of day on Friday morning.

This was the top of one of the nice Arbutus trees in front of the cottage.

You can see where the top came off.

When the top came down, it crushed a bunch of smaller trees we had planted. INcluding taking the top off one of our loverly coral maples.

It was a pretty big branch.

Not how we wanted our trip to start. BUt it was better than what greeted our neighbors Dana and Bradley, who were on the same ferry. They arrived to two big alder trees down across their driveway and hanging on the power lines. Fortunately BC Hydro got there first thing Friday morning to clean up the mess.

Trees down across the driveway and on the power lines.

Friday was a work day, but we did cut out a little bit early to try and get a few things done. We had brought over the load of soil for two reasons - to finish off the new garden by the fire pit and to top off our garden boxes so we could start planting for the season.

Friday morning sunrise - you can see our missing tree. :-(

On the way to the ferry we had stopped at the garden center and picked up a few plants. Not a lot, and we focused on things that we know (and pray) the deer don’t eat - mostly heather and lavender. So we shovelled dirt into the garden and Justine got busy planting her plants while I finished emptying the truck.

The flowers ready for planting. Hopefully the deer will leave these alone…

The finished product. We’re very pleased with it! We’ll add a few more plants to the garden, but overall it’s turned out quite nicely.

After finishing up those projects we made a fire in the fire pit and enjoyed the sundown with a Guiness. Happy St. Patrick’s Day! We wrapped up the evening after the sun went down by making dinner and watching F1 practice from Saudi Arabia. It was a good day!

We had a nice little fire as the sun went down.

Saturday morning I was up early and headed to the golf course to play 9 holes. As I got up to get going, I was greeted by a spectacular sunrise!

Once I got to the course, as usual, the only company I had on the course moved about on four legs…

I had a pretty decent round. The course is in much better shape then it was at this time last year. There’s almost no standing water and you can walk around without getting soaked. And bonus - your ball doesn’t disappear into the ground when it hits the fairway.

After my round I headed home for our big day of burning broome. A couple of trips back, we made a big push to cut down a big swath of broome. So we had a number of bg piles to deal with, plus al the branches off the downed arbutus trees.

The starting pile - or one of them anyways.

We try and keep the size of the fire manageable. It takes a bit longer, but keeping the risk low seems worth it.

Justine bringing over branches to add to the fire.

The start of our little fire - byt the end of the day the pile of ashes and coals was about that big.

We had beautiful days on Friday and Saturday. Sunday wasn’t quite as nice and it rained MOnday, but overall it feels like spring might have finally arrived. We discovered that our crocuses finally sprouted - until the deer eat them.

After finally getting through all the buring (everything looks so much better) we hung out with Dana and Bradley by their fire pit for a little while, before making dinner and watching qualifying!

Sunday morning I played golf again (similar outcome to the day before) and then Justine and I headed up to Lola for brunch! We love this restaurant at Bodega Ridge, and this was our first time trying out their brunch. The menu is limited, but as always, the food was amazing. I did manage to maintain some level of control and not order the fried chicken. We had a nice meal then headed home to get back to work

The patio at Lola being patrolled by the geesee.

Last winter we put in a rainwater collection system. It’s been working great, but one of the projects we’ve put off has been burying the outflow pipe. It’s just been sitting on the lawn, pouring water out near the cottage. We wanted to bury the pipe (makes it easier to cut the grass) and extend it out further away from the cottage.

So we dug a trench. And lined it with rocks so the pipe (with some holes drilled in it for drainage) would have somewhere for the water to go. I think it should work out, but I guess time will tell.

It’s hard work digging a trench, especially in our rocky soil. Shawn would say we should be using a machine…

Once the trench was dug, we laid the pipe and then lined it all with rocks.

The hard part was done.

Jus did an amazing job getting it all filled back in and levelled off.

Then we reseeded the dirt and we’ll hope for the grass to grow before the birds eat all the seed.

While Jus was finishing off the trench, I got the lawn mower out and cut the grass in the orchard. Last year we let it get away from us, but this year we plan to stay on top of it.

Once those projects were done, we planted a bunch of the gardens. I was able to put in all the early seeds - radishes, kale, lettuce, peas - that sort of thing. We’ll see how everything does this year!

One of the garden boxes, all planted and ready to go.

We finished off Sunday with a couple of games of bocce! We split the pair of games and enjoyed out afternoon.

Monday was another busy day of work, so there was not a lot to share. Eventually we packed up and headed for the ferry and trip home.