It’s been a busy spell for travel. Immediately after getting back from Galiano (see the last post) I was on a plane to San Jose for a few days in our head office. While it was a pretty uneventful week, the weather in San Jose was amazing! After being back for a few days, I was heading back to Galiano solo to deal with a bunch of activities for the golf course while Justine had a girl’s weekend at home.

San Jose

I had to fly down to spend most of the week in the office in San Jose. As San Jose doesn’t have a real airport, that means flying into San Francisco, renting a car for the week and driving to the office. Normally i get whatever crappy mid size car they have, but this time I got upgraded to something fun!

The flight left about 7:30, putting me into San FRan around 9:30 which had me in the office by about 10:30, with time to spare before my 11:00 meeting. It worke dout pretty well, and the traffic, which can be horrific, was actually not too bad.

The drive from the airport to the office.

For the rest of the week, well there’s not a lot to tell. It was work, hotel and repeat. The only thing of note was that the area where my hotel was located seemed to be very Japanese heavy. There were a lot of great Japanese restaurants, and even a full Japanese supermarket that had all kinds of cool things that I haven’t seen since we were in Japan. So that was a fun surprise.

We recently moved our head office into a brand new facility. The office is nice - very open concept/modern high tech. And it has this amazing outdoor space, which was perfect given how sunny and warm the week was!

The “Cafe” where we do All Hands and other meeting from.

What was amazing to me was that almost no one was sitting outside! I guess the Californians are so used to perfect weather that it wasn’t the novelty that it was for me after our winter of rain.

One of my amazing Japanese meals!

A Last Gasp of Winter

We have had a very easy winter so far this year. While I was in San Jose, it tried to have one last go at it, an we even had a little bit of snow - that barely lasted an hour.

The poor hummingbirds had to deal with a little bit more cold weather.

The good news is that we were back to normal by the time I got back home.

My flight home was on Friday morning and I was back to the house by around lunch time. All-in-all, a pretty easy trip. I was home for about a week, as I was heading back to Galiano on the Friday night. This was to be a solo trip, as I had a bunch of things to do for the golf course, and Justine had a girl’s weekend planned at home with her friend Nicole.

Galiano Work Weekend - at the Golf Course

As I’ve mentioned, I’m volunteering on the Board of Directors at the Galiano Golf Society, which operates the golf course. It seemed like a good way to give back and get closer to the community. We were having our AGM on Sunday, so I really needed to be there. Plus we were organizing a volunteer work day to try and get a bunch of things done around the course.

I left the office around 3:30 on Friday to ensure I had enough time to get through the tunnel and towards the ferry. I also wanted to stop by the nursery, as I was expecting that it would be open. And it was. It’s a dnagerous place and I left $250 poorer but with some great new trees and shrubs!

I can’t stop at this place without buying something. In this case a new cherry tree (Rainier Cherry!), a blueberry bush, an Oregon Grape (yellow flowers) and a fatsia. It could have been worse…

It was starting to get dark by the time I arrived at the cottage, so I had to wait for the next morning to wander about and see what was blooming and how things were progressing in the garden and in the orchard.

The daffodils were pretty much at their peak.

The hyacinths however, were just about done.

The flowering currants looked spectacular.

In the orchard, the cherries were starting to bud.

Some were even shooting out the first leaves.

I had to be at the golf course to help organize the work party by 9:30, so it did not give me a lot of time to wander around and get the birds fed.

People were asked to show up around 10:00, and we had another great turnout. This is one thing that has so impressed me about the course, is how well supported it is by the local community. We had a lot to do, but we also had lots of willing hands to help make it all go much easier.

Over the course of the winter we’ve been building up this burn pile to collect all the downed branches, dead trees and other material that has been cleaned up off the golf course. We made it a fair bit bigger over the course of the day.

One of the main projects was cleaning up and rebuilding the parking lot. A few week’s back, they had cleared a bunch of broome from the side edge of the parking lot. Laurie had then scraped the area and laid down a layer of asphalt grindings.

He did the same at the bottom (top) of the parking lot.

Spreading out the asphalt grindings to make a much cleaner, safer front of the parking lot.

We didn’t quite get the whole job finished, but the log are ready to be put in place.

The crew gathering for lunch.

On the side part of the lot, the logs were put in place.

After creating risers for the big logs to get them off the ground, we tested driving rebar through them and into the ground.

The side part of the lot (mostly) complete. It looks great!

Up at the top of the lot there was a huge pile of old, mostly rotting logs. I spent a good 2-3 hours with the chainsaw cutting it all up so it could be added to the burn pile.

All cleaned up, other than the logs that we were going to use.

By the time I left the course it was almost 4:30 pm and I was exhausted. I had big plans for planting all my new trees, but that wasn’t happening. I got home, crashed out for a bit and then made some dinner. My friend David from down the lane came up later in the evening, and we hung out and drank scotch and got caught up. It was a fine evening!

Sunday, I had to be at the golf course at 1:00 for the AGM. So that gave me the morning to get all my new plants in the ground. It was a mixture of in the orchard and around the property.

It didn’t start well. I began with the blueberry in the orchard. And immediately hit the monster rock of the day…

I barely was able to lift the damn thing out of the ground!

But eventually I got the new blueberry planted!

The Oregon grape, in full bloom went into the ground much easier!

This little cherry was one of our original trees. It never really grew properly, and seemed to have some sort of disease. So I dug it up and moved it to the “slope”.

And planted the new Rainier Cherry! This one has good shape and I’m hoping will grow and be healthier.

The last one was to add another fatsia to our collection. Fatsia japonica, commonly known as Japanese Aralia, or paperplant, is a popular, low-maintenance evergreen shrub known for its large, glossy, hand-shaped leaves. It is highly valued for adding a tropical, architectural look to shaded gardens - and hopefully to grow up to create a visual blocker between us the the neighbours.

Once the plants were all in the ground, I had some time to do a few more small projects around the property. And it gave me time to check out how things had progressed in the week or so since I had been over.

The flowering currants are still going strong.

The blossoms on the pear trees are huge!

I’m hoping this bodes well for another good harvest.

The cherries are about to pop.

The hyacinths have held out better than I expected.

Galiano Golf Spring Work Party - 29.jpeg

Justine’s rose, which we planted towards the end of the season last year seems happy and has lots of new growth.

The peonies are growing fast!

I headed down to the AGM for 1 pm. Were were there for a good 3 hours, but everything went very well. It’s a very supportive community. I got home just after 4:00 and did a few things around the cottage but it was mostly a lazy afternoon and evening.

Vancouver Blossoms

I thought I’d share a few more photos from this week, as the trees are in full bloom!