With my long trip to France and India coming up, we needed to head over to Galiano to check up on things. We were also about to have our first real blast of winter, and we wanted to make sure the place was holding up to the cold temperatures. We had planned to go over Friday night, but the weather was rough and the ferries got cancelled. Justine was on the bal and had booked a second ferry for Saturday morning, so we got there a day later than we had planned. And yes, winter had arrived…

We had arrived to a light dusting of snow, along with the coldest temperatures we’d ever had on Galiano.

It wasn’t a lot of snow, but the poor hummingbird’s food was frozen solid and needed a refresh.

The mountains across the straight looked amazing with the fresh snow.

The main task we had was refreshing all the bird feeders. It was cold (for us) and the birds were going through the food like it was free. We got the bird feeders refilled and back out. For the hummingbirds, it was actually cold enough that they were freezing outside during the day. We kept rotating the feeders in and out, to try and keep them liquid for the poor little guys.

Bird tracks, probably juncos in the snow on the table under the shed’s roof.

We got the woodstove going and the cottage warmed up. There wasn’t a lot we could do outdoors with everything frozen, so it seemed like a good day to relax and take a down day. We had received a pretty cool Lego set from Justine’s parents for Christmas, so we set about tackling it. It took us a couple of hours Saturday and Sunday, but we got it done and it looks pretty cool.

The set is Lego’s interpretation of Japanese art. 1800 pieces, many of them tiny, made for an entertaining set to put together.

It started with the “painting” inside the frame.

If you look closely, you can see the #D nature of the piece.

Then we built the frame, and wrapped it all up. W eeven have a great place to put it!

The weather was cold and clear the whole weekend. It made for some nice views out from the cottage.

We didn’t spend a lot of time outside over the weekend. It was quite cold, and it was lovely inside with the fire roaring. We did get out and go for a walk, mainly to check things out.

I thought this was pretty cool. Bird wings pattern in the snow.

The little downy woodpecker was hanging about all weekend.

Our rain barrels were frozen all the way through, right to the ground.

The overflow bucket frozen solid.

This one was a bit more concerning. Our big water collection tank also froze solid, overflowing over the top. Hopefully it’s not damaged.

We headed back to the city on Monday night. There was another blast of winter and snow coming, so it was time to head home. It seemed like everything was OK with the place, and with things set to warm up to more seasonable, it looked like the place was going to be OK.

As we arrived at the ferry terminal, we had the most amazing sunset!