While I will deliver the promised pottery reveal, this post will also cover a lot of other ground, including a fun night out in Vancouver and the completion of the first major phase of our deck on Galiano. I’ll sneak in a garden update as well, but amazingly, no birds!

The Pottery Reveal

Back on our anniversary in February, Justine bought us a pottery lesson. It ended up being very fun, but quite difficult. The instructor was great, helped a lot and at the end of the session we each had two pieces that they were going to fire, glaze and do all the hard stuff that we don’t know how to do. Here we are, two months later, and we were able to pick up the final “works of art”.

Here’s a photo from a couple of months back, with the pieces we had thrown on the wheel. We thought that we made a decent start.

And here are the finished pieces! The glazes look nice, and while they may not be the most consistently thrown pieces of pottery you’ll ever find, I think they came out pretty well.

These two are Justine’s, and while I hate to admit it, I have to give her first place. Her little flower vase was clearly the overall “best in show”.

And the glaze on her bowl was probably the most interesting.

Mine turned out well. My bowl has a little wobble along the top, but my little flower planter will work well for a small catcus or something.

Overall, we were very happy with the end result! I’d like to try it again.

Whiskey and Words

Last spring, I bought us tickets to Whiskey and Words, the annual fundraiser for the Vancouver Writers Festival. We had a really fun night, drank a lot of whiskey and bought a few too many items from the silent auction. This past Friday night, the big event was back, and we were off to have some more fun.

This year, our friend Katie joined us, promising to help keep us in line. We met for dinner at the MExican restaurant on Granville Island (one of our favs), before heading over to the event. Doors opened at 8:00, and we were ready to go. As we had an 8:00 ferry to Galiano the next morning, we knew we could not afford a repeat of last year.

It’s a fun event, with a big silent auction and lots of different whiskies to try.

One of the fun elements of the event was this guest artist. We chatted with him a bit, and he was doing these cool little pen and ink drawings. He did one up of the three of us, as a nice little memento from the evening.

Fortunately, we got out of this one alive! We did try many different whiskies, but kept it at a reasonable level (thanks to Katie for helping out). We also did not buy anything from the silent auction. We did bid on a few things, but did not win. There were less interesting items, and the prices got bid up quickly. There’s always next year…

“Finishing” the Deck

As mentioned, we had a early ferry over to Galiano in the morning. The last of the wood we needed for the deck was being delivered, and the plan was to finish the major part of the project. We arrived about 10:00, the wood showed up shortly after, and we were hard at work getting it done. The goal was all the deck boards on by the end of the day.

The first step was to use up the rest of the 2x6s and put some blocking in between the stringers.

Then we got the end boards up and moved onto the deck boards. And yes, it rained on us pretty much the whole day.

But we pushed through and got it done!

It’s so nice to finally be able to walk out from the living room, through the sliding doors and onto the deck!

This phase complete! We have a deck. There’s still a few more things that we need to do - stairs to the lower deck, a roof over part of it and railings. And we have some interesting ideas for what to do with those two beams sticking out…

One of the tasks I have been remiss in tackling the past couple of years was pressure washing the other two decks. Last year it was the caterpillar apocalypse, but no excuses this year. We wanted to weather seal the new deck, so it only made sense to do all three and so on Sunday morning, I got the pressure washer out and I got to cleaning.

Pressure washing work in progress - you can see the difference it makes!

And all done and ready for a coat of weather sealant.

The last task we had was to weather seal all three decks. The weather turned nice on Monday, and was supposed to remain so through Tuesday. So we thought we had a window of opportunity. So later Monday afternoon, we got to it and powered through applying wetaher sealant to all three decks. It was a big job, but good to get it done.

The new deck, all freshly sealed up.

Sadly, the weather did not hold as promised and it rained Tuesday. It looks like the new treatment is working, but we did not get the 48 hours of dry warm weather we were supposed to. Let’s hope it does not affect things too badly.

Here’s a full set of photos of each step in the process.

While there is still work to be done, it feels great to be this far along. I think it looks great, it’s (mostly) level and feels very solid. It’s going to be so great to sit out there all summer!

Garden and Orchard Update

While it’s still early in the season, there’s lots going on around the property. For the first season in a while, we’re feeling hopeful about the orchard. There’s been no deer invasions, no caterpillars and we’re hoping the cold snap did not do too much damage.