I had a rare treat this week - I was spending more than a week on Galiano! We came over on a Thursday evening, I and was staying through the following Sunday to manage the Panorama Lane road rebuild. Justine was taking the ferry back on Sunday night, and coming back over on the following Friday night. While I had a busy week of work ahead of me, it also meant I could focus on a number of projects in the evenings.
We arrived late Thursday night. The ferry was delayed, and so it was dark when we pulled in. Friday was a busy day of work, after a long, frustrating week. So I headed down to the golf course and tried to play a round. The course was in rough shape - still very wet, and much of it had not been cut (due to the wet conditions). I think I abandoned the round after 5 holes - it just wasn’t worth it.
The hummingbirds have been crazy this year! We’ve already had up to 10 at the feeders at a time, and they haven’t even had the little ones yet. Both the Rufous and the Anna’s are around, and I got some nice pics of both. I can;t wait to see what it’s like once they hatch their chicks.
I did get more of the garden planted, putting in seeds for carrots, beets and some lettuce. It might b too early, but we’ll see. I am staggering my plantings a little more than I did last year, to try and avoid everything being ready at the same time.
Because I don’t have enough on my plate, I recently volunteered to be on the Board of Directors for the Galiano Golf Club. I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I thought giving back would be the right thing to do, and they need some help. One of the projects I offered to help with was the re-painting of the clubhouse, which is looking quite tired and sun-bleached. There’s a small team of volunteers that have offered to help. The first stage is to scrape and do some patch work on the outside. We were meeting on Saturday morning to make a start on it.
I did a shift from about 9:30 until after 1:00, and we made good progress. But there’s still a lot that needs to be done before we can move onto painting. A lot of the boards on the clubhouse could really do with replacing, but sadly, that’s not an option with the current budget. So we’ll patch and sand out what we can, but it means it will likely be a few sessions before we’ve got all the prep work done.
After getting home I was pretty tired, so we agreed to call it a day and enjoy the lovely afternoon. We got the fire pit set-up, made a fire and enjoyed the late afternoon sun.
All the bird feeders have been busy. The pine siskin’s, absent last year, are back in big flocks this year.
The Bird Buddy hummingbird feeder has been very busy and has given s some great shots. I downloaded a bunch from the last couple of weeks to share.
While working at the Golf Course on Saturday, I had discovered that Laurie had been out cutting the past few days, and the course was in much better shape. It had been sunny, and had dried out a bit, and so Sunday morning I went down and played a round early. It was much better! I got the full 9 holes in and enjoyed myself immensely.
Afterwards I came home and we did a number of small projects around the property. As Justine was heading out on the evening ferry, we did not want to tackle too much. So we puttered around, and then decide in the early afternoon decided to go for a short hike on one of the local trails. It was nice to get out i th woods and explore some of the new trails that the Galiano Trails Society had built, quite close to our place.
Our short little hike on some of the new trails near our cottage.
After the hike, we had some dinner and eventually Justine headed to the ferry. She managed ot grab a ride with Dana and Bradley, who were headed back at the same time, saving me a trip to the south end and back. My evening was pretty uneventful and I had a very busy work week ahead of me.
The road project started on Monday with a first delivery of gravel for the road bed. But I wrote a whole post on that, so I will not cover it here. Instead, we’ll talk about some other projects that I dealt with over the week.
A few months back we had a load of gravel delivered for the base below our new water tank. The est of the pile has been sitting there. We used some here and there for small projects, but it was time to use up the rest of it. Monday and Tuesday after work I spent time digging up grass from part of the lawn to extend the driveway properly. I then put down some landscaping fabric and spent backbreaking hours spreading out the gravel.
You can pretty clearly see where the new gravel (slightly larger grade) versus the older gravel. Eventually I’ll get the whole driveway covered.
The work week was quite busy, so I didn’t get as many projects done as I had hoped. I did sped quite a bit of time and a few evening cutting broome. I made good progress on the area out front of the cottage. After only 2-3 years, it had all grown back from where we had cleared it before.
By Friday night I was a bit burned out from cutting broome, so I moved onto another project I’ve been meaning to get to for quite a while. We have a small patch of forest that sits between to cottage and the road. Over the past few years a number of the small trees have died, and in the wind storms there’s been a lot of branches down. This is of course a risk on a couple of levels - it’s a bit dangerous with the risk of falling trees and branches, and there’s a high fuel load if we ever had a fire. So, the plan was to take down the dead trees and clean up all the downed branches and chip it all up for mulch.
Friday I started with cutting down the dead trees. They were all small, so not a lot of risk, but I was still quite cautious (being there by myself). A couple were tricky, but most came down cleanly. One however got hung up standing, and I needed help from Justine when she got back.
After taking down the trees, delimbing and cutting them up into manageable lengths, I got the wood chipper out and spent an hour or so chipping a bunch of the branches. There was still a ton of it in the forest to clean up, but I had two wheelbarrows full of chips to start mulching some of the plants. But I felt like I had made good progress, so I called it a day. Our friend David came by for a drink before dinner, and I had to pick Justine up at 8ish from the ferry.
Mid-project. Trees are down, but I have the mess to clean up.
Saturday Justine and I continued on the clean up project. We got the one standing tree down and into more manageable logs. We moved all the logs over to the area where I do the bucking and Justine spent a lot of time pulling branches into the pile for chipping. I spent a few hours chipping, while Justine took the wood chips and spent some time cleaning up many of our trees and shrubs. Over the fall and winter weeds had encroached and the cages needed to be cleared out and the plants re-mulched. It was a busy day!
Justine created this cool collage of our little project.
Sunday I was back down to the Golf Course. I played a round then settled into more prep work on the clubhouse. We did not get as many people out this week as last, but we made some good progress.
I got back from the course around 2:00. As we were leaving that evening, we didn’t have much time for any more projects. I did need to cut the grass, as it was going to be out of control in three weeks, the next time we’re back.
So instead, we enjoyed the afternoon. I did some more planting, and I’ll share a whole bunch of photos showing the garden’s progress as spring really gets started.
