We arrrived home from Ontario in the evening on New Year’s Eve. we had a relaxing night at home, spent most of New Year’s Day relaxing, and then headed to Galiano on the late ferry to spend a few days on the island before life gets crazy.

It was dark and late when we arrived, so we settled in and called it a night pretty early. We had four days to get some projects done and recharge before life and work kicked back inot full gear for the new year. While we ahd been in Ontario, the island had gotten a lot of rain and wind,a nd there had been some damage from trees coming down. We had gotten away with no dammage thankfully, but our neighbors were not so lucky.

A pretty large alder tree had come down across our neighbors driveway.

This was what the weather looked like for the whole time we were on the island. It was pretty grey and the clouds hovered low.

We have a big pile or gravel that needs to be used for a number of projects. First up was an additional water tank. More on that later.

The main project we had tackled this winter was building a wood shed for all our firewood. That prject had gone pretty well, and we just ha d afew finishing touches to apply to wrap it up. We’re pretty happy with how it all turned out.

We finished up the doors and the last bit of hardware to keep them closed.

I think it turned out rather well.

Justine was pretty excited that it was done - another project off the list!

Oddly, our artichokes have continued to grow over the winter, and we have fruit coming on one of them.

Puzzle Season Continues

As the weather was pretty awful, we were spending a fair bit of time inside. Continuing with the theme from Christmas at Mom’s, we decided to tackle another puzzle. This one was a wood puzzle, laser cut, which meant lots of cool shapes for the puzzle pieces. This one was small and a fair bit easier than the one we did over Christmas.

Our puzzle - very topical for a rainy weekend on Galiano.

Some of the fun shapes the pieces take when they can be cut by laser.

We found the whale!

The puzzle came together fairly quickly over the courseof the weekend.

It’s quite a nice looking puzzle - I like the illustrations.

Success!

The weather did not improve - we sank further into the clouds.

One of the gifts we got from Justine’s parents was sushi making equipment. So we thought we’d give it a try, and see how it turned out.

We thought we’d keep it simple to start - cucumber and tuna rolls.

Prepping the rolls.

The finished product - they turned out pretty well I think.

We’ve had the property for over 5 years now - which is pretty crazy to think about. I think it was near the end of the first year, I had a sign made for the property that we put up on the big arbutus tree at the edge of the driveway. We’ve noticed that over the past few years, the tree has started to grow through the sign, so it was time to move it.

The sign, in it’s original place.

The tree starting to grow through the letters in the sign.

It was time to pull it off the tree and reset it.

I mentioned the pile of gravel earlier. The main project we wanted to complete while we were here was moving a bunch of it over behind our big rain water tank, to make a pad for another tank to be brought in.

It wasn’t a lot of work to get the new gravel area built out.

All set for another tank to be brought in.

The area is bigger than it needs to be, but it will do the trick.