We’re going to take a short break from the Maritimes updates (yes, they are going to take a while longer…) as I have some exciting news to share! I have changed jobs, leaving Semtech (Sierra Wireless) after almost 10 years (!) to join my new team at Netgear! I’ll share some more later in the post, along with an update the the week we spent on Galiano at the end of June and beginning of July. It’s exciting times!

So I’ll start with the big news on the job change. I joined Semtech (Sierra Wireless at the time) almost 10 years ago, in November 2015. It’s almost hard to believe that a decade has passed. I have worked with some amazing people and have made some lifelong friends, but after a lot of soul searching I decided that the time was right. The opportunity was not one I had really been looking for, but after some discussions with my new boss Graeme and the CEO CJ, I was sold on the vision and think that I can bring a lot to the group. I’m joining the Mobility team within Netgear that focuses on mobile hotspots and fixed wireless access routers, and I think that we are about to do some really interesting things! While I will miss the team at Semtech, I know that I will always have friends there and will stay in touch. It’s a small world, and our paths will continue to intertwine.

July 3rd was a big day for me - it’s been almost a decade since I was the new person.

I received a warm welcome to the team!

Galiano Solo Visit

So, with that out of the way, on to the more usual topics. Prior to my departure, I had made a quick trip to Galiano on my own, while Justine was still in Toronto visiting with her parents. We had been away over 3 weeks, and we were concerned about the state of the place. I knew that I was going to need to cut some grass at the very least. I headed to the ferry on Friday night, and made a stop at the nursery near the ferry, as I knew they were getting close to the end of the season.

We had planted one of these last year, and the deer left it alone. So we planted one more in the forest between us and the neighbours, as we thoughts it would provide nice undergrowth. They had some nice big ones at the nursery, so I picked up a couple. Good thing as it turned out.

The summer flowers were beautiful, further down the lane.

As expected the grass was crazy long when I arrived. It was close to a foot tall in places. As there was still lots of light, I did about an hour of cutting Friday night, only getting through about 1/4 of the lawn. It ended up taking me 4 sessions, over the course of 3 days to get it all cut. I’m seriously considering a robotic lawn mower. Maybe next year.

The lawn was crazy and out of control when I arrived.

Sadly, we had missed most of the foxglove this year.

But the daisies were still out in full force.

And had totally taken over Justine’s “deer” garden.

Now for the sad part. Those lovely plants that I bought? To add to the one that we had planted in the forest? Well the deer destroyed the poor thing.

So that meant my planting project got a lot bigger - now in addition to digging holes, I needed to put up fencing to protect the new ones.

We’re also very excited that the fruit tress, or at least most of them, seem to have some fruit growing on them!

So many pears!

The apples are also coming along.

Even our tiny, brand new crab apple has fruit!

And my strawberries are producing lots of fruit too!

I was golfing over the weekend, and had these two flickers put on a bit of a show.

Fun BirdBuddy pics - I am so pleasantly surprised with how good the quality of the photos is.

The last big project to kick off the summer is pressure washing the three decks and then weather sealing them. It’s a big project and disruptive, as we have to take everything off for a a few days. I knew I wasn’t going to get it done that weekend, but I wanted to start the process. So I cleared off the deck around the shop and gave it a good cleaning.

By the end of the weekend, I finally got the grass all cut.

I did save some of the daisies for Justine.

The place was looking much better!

Then it was back to Vancouver for my last few days of work at Semtech. With the departure from my job, I had almost a week off, and we spent most of it back on Galiano. We had some visitors, and I’ll cover that trip on a separate post, or this one will get way too long.