We were back on Galiano for the weekend, with a whole raft of projects to tackle. We finally got to use a purchase that we made back in the fall, there was more garden to be planted and of course broome to be cut. We ended up with a pretty nice weekend and we got a lot done!
As it was the Easter long weekend, we were booked on the ferry on Thursday evening, at 7:45. That should have gotten us into the cottage by about 9:30 at the latest, if everything was on schedule (which it rarely is). Justine picked me up from the office about 5:00, and we headed to the ferry. We did our usual running around - shopping, grabbing dinner and such, but we were still quite early. Technically, the earliest you are supposed to be is 1 1/2 hours before your departure time to get to the terminal. We were within that window, early, but it was a mess at the terminal. It turned out that there was a earlier ferry at 6:30, and they were still dealing with the non-reserved drivers from that sailing. There was chaos, and at first they had us just wait in the lines outside the terminal ticket booths, then they sent us up. BUt clearly they were not all on the same page, as when we got to the booth, the woman told us they were not processing out sailing yet!
It was clear that she didn’t really know what to do with us, so she asked if we wanted to go on the earlier sailing! Definitely! So we got lucky and ended up on the 6:30, which left a little bit late, but still got us into Galiano about the time that we were originally scheduled to leave. It was even light still by the time we got to the cottage! The weekend was starting well.
Since we had so much extra time, we were able to finish off a project that we had been working on for what feels like months!
We finally finished our Christmas present!
Our Lego, Classic Land Rover Defender! It’s quite a bit smaller than it’s newer cousin, but we had a great time putting it together, and it will be a great addition to our Defender collection.
Friday we slept in a bit and did a bit of a walk around the property to see how everything was progressing. The buds on the fruit trees in the orchard were expanding and we should have blossoms the next time we come over. And in the garden, most of the seeds I had planted were starting to sprout! It’s exciting times. And as you can see in the video above, the hummingbirds are already out in force! So many of them, so early in the season. It’s so much fun!
We did a few small projects - re-fenced one of the small bushes, pulled broome from the lawn and I got a big set of seeds planted in the garden. I’ve got most of the seeds in the ground. I still have a lot that need to start indoors. That took us up to lunch time. After lunch we tackled cutting broome. We’re pushing down the hill a little ways and made some visible progress before calling it at the end of the day.
One more shrub protected from the deer.
And we re-fenced one of our amazing flowering currants.
Saturday morning I headed down to to the golf course. I played a round, but I’ve been having an issue with my elbow that really didn’t allow for it to be much fun. I’m going to have to go to physio to get it sorted out.
While we were having lunch sitting on the deck, Justine’s keen eyes spotted a pod of orcas way down below us! We had not seen orcas in while, and while they are primarily little black specs, I thought I’d grab my camera and get a few shots. They are pretty bad, so be warned.
Our work projects had to wrap up just after lunch as we were headed down to David and Tova’s for the afternoon, to hang out with the neighbors on the lane and have a bonfire. They were burning a bunch of yard waste and other debris, and it was fun to hang out with the lane people. We ended up staying for dinner, making the “afternoon” a little longer than planned. After we headed home, we played Scrabble and had a relaxing evening.
Sunday we were going to tackle a bit of a larger project, so we wanted to give ourselves lots of time. Along the back edge of the yard is a mound that was created when they leveled the property we have a bunch of trees and shrubs and bulbs planted there, and we’ve protected them in an ad hoc way, as we we have planted new things. It was always looking a bit messy as a result. Last fall, while visiting one of our neighbors we noticed that they had used some old fishing net to “fence” off part of their yard. It seemed to be working, and they have us the number of the person they had bought the netting from. He was a former commercial fisherman, and was selling it off. I bought 200’ (or so I thought…) worth, and it’s been sitting under a tarp ever since. So we thought we’d try using it to put around the whole mound, hopefully making it look better.
Our starting point. You can see all the bit of fencing around the various trees and shrubs.
The first part of the task was to take down all the old bits and pieces of fencing. That part actually went pretty quickly. We’re going to have lots of fencing to reuse when we need it in the future. And we will…
After pulling it all down and pulling all the old posts out fo the ground, we put the new posts in the right places. We were using a combination of metal posts and some of the surrounding trees to hang the netting from.
It was a lot of hard work, primarily dragging 200’+ of fencing around the perimeter of the area were were fencing. That meant pulling it through the woods, through the underbrush and around all the trees. It was a bit of a pain. But we got there, and I think the end result works pretty well! And we have over 100’ of netting left over. So while I paid for 200’, I think he must have given me quite a bit more.
There’s now quite a bit more space protected from the damn deer.
The fencing project actually ended up taking less time than I expected. So were pretty much done by 1:00, which gave me enough time to cut the grass. Yes, I had to cut the grass the first weekend in April. It was pretty long and thick already.
Monday was a work day, so there’s not much more to say about the weekend. We got a lot done and the place is looking good!