My goal has been to get caught up, and I think this post should do it!
We were on Galiano for the August long weekend, and while we did not get up to much, it was nice to just hang out and relax. We haven’t done a lot of that of late. On top of the island updates, there’s a few small things from events back in Vancouver that bookend the long weekend.
We’ll start with a fun event before we headed over to the island - Paul Simon at the Orpheum! We had seen Paul Simon along with Sting a number o years back and were blown away by how good that show was. So when we noticed that he was coming to Vancouver, it seemed like this could be the last chance we might get to see him. I don’t have much in the way of photos to share, as they had a strict “no photos” policy, and one of the attendants was actually coming around yelling at people. It was a bit odd. But I can share the stage.
The show was great - a lot of his less know stuff in the first half, and then a full range of the hits for the second half. And I was really pumped that we got a version of “The Boxer” one of my favorite Simon and Garfunkel songs of all time. It was a great night!
A few days later we headed over to the island. This trip was a little different in that Justine was staying for about 10 days, while I was going home on the Monday night and coming back again the following Friday. Work really does get in the way of life. As mentioned, we didn’t do a lot - but I did get out golfing every day.
Earlier this year I volunteered to be a member of the Board of Directors at the golf course. We had a booth at the Saturday market, and so I did a volunteer shift for a couple of hours, getting the word out.
We’ve had flocks of cedar waxwings hanging about for a while now. That’s been new for us this year.
We’ve been lucky enough to have some Western Tanagers also hanging about. They’re looking a little scruffy this time of year, but are still quite striking.
They are amazingly well camouflaged in the arbutus trees.
What’s also been cool this summer has been the family of Cooper’s hawks! We used to have a solo one around every once in a while, but this summer there’s been a number of them, all sticking quite close together. I assume it’s a mother teaching her young. We’ve had them in the trees around the cottage - and one day I had two of them land in the trees above me when I was lying in the hammock!
The one little “project” that we did need to do this weekend was to put together some new chairs that Justine had purchased for the deck. They were form Costco (of course) and were very big and heavy - all recycled plastics, and with a 40 year warranty, I hope that we’ll never have to replace them.
Everything is getting pretty brown and dried out. But the place is otherwise looking pretty good!
Garden/Orchard Update
Since we were there for almost two weeks, we had lots of time to spend on the gardens and in the orchard. They need lots of water this time of year. Everything is growing and we’ve been getting decent harvests of various things.
The garden has really been mostly a disappointment this year. Things just aren’t growing as I would have hoped. But we have had a few things to harvest as the summer has progressed.
It’s always good to end with hummingbirds!
As a Vancouver Whitecaps fan, the big news last week was that Vancouver had, who knows how, signed German superstar Thomas Muller from Bayern. This was huge news in the football community, and we were excited to attend the first game after his signing. He didn’t start but came on part way through the second half. And scored a goal (that got called back!). The game showed some promise!
