This is going to be a long, somewhat random post catching up on a few different topics. First off some updates on the progress of the gardens and orchard at Galiano. Spring means that things change so quickly. It’s been a frustrating start to the season. I also got to set-up my new Lymow, robotic autonomous lawn mower and start to understand how it works (spoiler pretty well so far!). It was also my birthday and we had a nice night on the roof with Alex and Matt. Like I said, lots to cover as it’s been a busy month!

We headed over to Galiano on the Thursday night. We’d been away for a while so we were keen to see how things have progressed (and what we’d missed). We had, quite surprisingly, been parked behind our neighbors Mike and Megan on the ferry. They hadn’t been over for almost 8 months (!), and so we spent some time and got caught up. And followed them all the way up island once we arrived. As we were about 2/3 of the way home, Mike suddenly stopped in the middle of the road…

Baby deer season - this one must have just been born as it was really wobbly on its legs! Hopefully it stayed off the road as it was getting dark.

After we arrived, it was pretty close to dark so we really couldn’t check out much. It would have to wait until Friday. Which of course was a work day. We carved out some time to wander around and see what was going on.

We have lots of goldfinches around at the moment.

These amazing tropical-looking plants are doing well in the forest area between us and Jerry and Madeline. Well at least since we fenced them to save them from the deer. Lots of new growth, and every year we add a new one.

The lavender has started to flower. These purple and white variety is stunning.

I thought I should throw in a view of the cottage.

Our new lilac has the most amazing flowers. And so fragrant. Justine managed to catch this tiny white spider on the petals.

We’re getting some cherries. But sadly a lot are shrivelling up on us.

And some apples are forming. But sadly, it looks like no pears this year.

Justine has also planted some peones that are finally starting to produce flowers.

As it was the long weekend, we had quite a bit of work planned. We needed to set-up the irrigation system in the garden, pressure wash the and seal the deck and also try and relax and enjoy the place a bit. And we needed to get to Crane and Robin for one of our favorite meals!

I don’t have any photos of the pressure washing and sealing. It’s not very exciting but took the majority of the weekend. Justine did the heard work on the pressure washing, but we shared the sealing once things had dried out. That was Monday so we had to leave the furniture off the deck after we left, for everything to dry properly.

We had some mixed weather, but Justine did catch this great rainbow!

The garden is a little bit different. I had decided to rip out the old irrigation and redo it with better soaker tubing. The old system wasted a lot of water, and we are in for a hot summer. So we ripped out the old (and managed to reuse a lot of it in a different garden) and set about planning and installing the new.

A glorious day!

We added a hog wire trellis for the peas and beans. Assuming the damn critters stop eating them as soon as the sprout.

We got a pretty good harvest of asparagus this season. It’s starting to produce well.

Radishes however have been a bust. We got a few, but most went straight to seed. I think it was too warm.

You can see all the new drip lines.

The mostly finished product.

This time of the year is great as all the birds are starting to come back. The turkey vultures are everywhere at the moment!

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Straight looking quite like this - it almost looks tropical! The light was just right I guess.

I think we counted 9 or 10 turkey vultures. And they swept down very low over the top of the broome, almost at “eye level” for us. It was very cool.

Lymow - Saving me from Cutting the Grass

So, on to the fun one. For the past year or so I’ve been researching robotic lawn mowers. When I was at CES in January I looked into many of them and talked with some of the people. For our property, I decided on the Lymow. https://www.lymow.com/ They had just released the second version of the products and from all accounts made significant improvements that addressed some of the issues from the first generation. With my bonus money, I pulled the trigger and decided to go with it!

The set-up process is pretty complicated. It has a home base for charging that needs to be protected and have access to power. You need to install a GPS antenna that also needs to have access to power. And the robot and the base need Bluetooth to your phone and access to Wi-Fi for firmware updates. I actually got through the set-up process well, and the robot seemed to be connected, have good positional accuracy and download all the updates. So far so good!

It was time to go out and train the little guy.

The app has a set of controllers built in that you use to drive the robot. You map out zones (and no-go zones) so it knows what needs to be cut. And you build channels so it knows how to navigate between them and back to its charging base. I took it out and mapped my first zone to do our first test.

It’s got this great feature where you can completely raise the cutting deck to clean, change the blades and do other maintenance. There’s a lot of really smart features in this machine.

I think I have mapped 5 zones so far. This is the smallest but the most difficult. I think the slope here is close to the max that the little guy can handle.

The first test was very successful. It did everything right and came back to the dock to charge.

And here it is on a longer section of the lawn. Just busily doing it’s thing.

So far I’m really impressed. It’s done most of the lawn, and done a good job. There have been a couple of areas where it got confused, but overall I think it wills ave me 3-4 hours in the spring. It will take some time for me to trust it, so for the time being I’ll send it out only when we’re around.

I will also try and stitch together some videos and do a separate post.

Saturday afternoon we went down to Crane and Robin with David and Tova. We had a fun dinner and then went back to their place for a fire. It was a great ending to the day.

Some random photos from the rest of the weekend….

Justine’s “Deer Garden”. The Gary Oak is doing really well, now a good 4’ tall and branching nicely. COnsidering it was like 8” tall when we got it, I think it’s doing well!

Everything in the garden is coming along nicely.

On one of her earlier trips, Justine had spotted a nest under one of the Oregon Grape plants. The baby white crowned sparrows must have just hatched!

Justine had the eye this weekend and spotted this big garter snake as well. Once it noticed us, it dove down through this rotted stump into the ground! Just disappeared!

On the way home, we were pretty early to the ferry. We grabbed some food from the food truck and while we were waiting for it, wandered down to the end of the ferry dock to see what might be about. The purple martin chicks were actually quite big and looked ready to fledge.

Mount Baker and the surrounding mountains were looking lovely in the evening light.

A pair of golden eyes

The juveniles are almost as big as the parents.

They really are cool little birds.

One of the parents were in the eagle nest tonight.

There’s a spectacular English Hawthorn at the ferry terminal in Sturdies Bay that always has the most amazing blossoms in the spring.

Looking out across Mayne to the mountains in Washington State.

After getting back from the island on Tuesday night, we didn’t have much time before having Matt and Alex over on Wednesday night. Wednesday night was my actual birthday, but we were also celebrating the fact that Alex had been formally called to the bar on Wednesday and was now officially a lawyer! So we had a lot to celebrate! Justine made dinner, we had a nice evening on the roof and even had my favorite dessert! It was a pretty great night and it was fun to share with Alex on her big day.

Some local flowers.

A delicious chocolate mousse for my birthday!

It’s a bit of an awful photo, but it was a wonderful night hanging out on the roof.