We’ve had a busy few weeks and we’re off to Halifax later this evening for a long-overdue vacation. It should be fun. In the meantime, my birthday has come and gone, the owls have had their owlets, the gardens on Galiano are coming along well, and there are lots of bird photos. The usual.

My Birthday

For my birthday, Justine took me for a fancy diner to Botinist, in the Fairmont Pacific Rim Hotel. We had not been before, but had wanted to go for a while. It was fabulous - they are know for their cocktails, which were amazing, and dinner was superb!

The restaurant is nice - a relaxed vibe.

We had some fancy cocktails.

I had a delicious octopus starter - Jus had a burratta salad.

I had the steak for main main and Jus went with the sablefish - both were delicious.

A little birthday treat.

My cool gift - a Liverpool puzzle!

The Owls Have Owlets!

I went back up to have a lok at the owls, and was fortunate enough to get some great shots of one of the adults, siting way down low. But even better, there are two little fluffy owlets, peeking out of their hole!

One of the adults was sitting up high in a maple.

The other was down close to the ground sitting in front of one of the houses!

But the best was that you could see two owlets in their nest hole! One sat at the front the whole time; the other would pop up every once in a while.

The one in the back kept flapping his wings!

And of course, there are a ton of photographers hanging out, checking out the owls and the owlets. It’s a bit out of hand…

Galiano - Garden Update

We headed over to Galiano for the weekend to get the rest of the garden planted. It will likely be close to a month before we get back, so there was a lot of plants and seeds to get in the ground, and I needed to get the irrigation set up as well. There is not a lot of rain in the forecast.

In addition to work around the property (the grass was a good foot tall!) I had other projects on the go. For the past month or so I’ve been organizing the painting of the Clubhouse at the golf course. There’s been a great team of volunteers that have been helping, and Saturday we made on last push and got everything completed!

You probably cannot tell, but it looks much better!

I did get out golfing two days - Friday afternoon and Saturday morning before painting. The course is looking much better, and id drying out nicely.

For the Birds

It’s a great time of year for birds, and we’ve got quite a few nesting around the property. Here’s a selection.

Purple Finch and Goldfinch, birds on a wire.

The white-crowned sparrows love it after I mow the lawn.

It’s always great when the violet=green swallows return.

These dumb pigeons can barely get at the feeder, but boy do they try.

This pileated woodpecker was back and forth all weekend.

We’ll be at peak hummingbird soon.

The grass gorws like crazy this time of year. We were gone 3 weeks and the grass was a good foot tall. It took me a good three hours over two days to get it done, but it was looking good.

The lawn looks so much better once cut.

The orchard is also looking good. More on that in a bit.

Justine made up a couple small planters to add to the deck.

While I was painting, Jus did some amazing broome clearing. We’ve almost pushed it back past the top of the slope.

One of the main objectives of the weekend was to get the garden fully planted and the irrigation set-up. It will be almost a month before we’re back, so it all needs to be self-sustaining. The fruit trees were covered in blossoms this year, and it looks like we have fruit set on all the trees! It’s very exciting!