Gabriola Thanksgiving Artwalk

Thought I'd share a few pictures with you of our trek around Galiano Island.  I've already shared our experience with Bruce's allergies, but notwithstanding, we had a great time!

This piece was on display .. not for sale ... at one of the artist's studios.

We grabbed a coffee first thing when we landed on the island .. this was the first work of  art
that Bruce and Richard enjoyed.  It was in the parking lot beside the coffee shop.
You can see why boys fall in love with chrome on their vehicles.

The Dorothy, viewed from the wee loft in the workshop.  To the right, you can see the original
painting of the artcard I purchased, below.

 The Dorothy is Canada's oldest sailboat and she's being loving restored in the workshop of Art Grove. To see the full story and perhaps contribute to the documentary being shot during the restoration process, you can head over to dorothysails.com.  Under the stern of the boat was an area where a young Gabriolan entrepreneur was selling taste samples of his island-crafted beer and brewing up some return business.  Richard tried a porter and while I stuck with a more traditional amber.

I loved the bright orange on this boat and the simple style of the painting.

Céc was looking for a purse that she'd seen at another fair.   None of these came home with us
but the artist was generous in letting me take a picture of the colorful display.

Outside the studio of an artist whose work was done with a shopvac (I kid you not),
we ran into a delightful garden with a variety of little outdoor rooms

Lunch at Drumbeg Provincial Park.  Cécile packed a picnic!
At least, I think its Drumbeg .. could be Sandwell for all I know.  Have I mentioned I get lost
when someone else navigates?

Loved the front of this old van almost as much as the pontiac at the top.
Seems to me this old van could tell stories.  I'm still not sure what color it really is.

There's something about boobs that make men go silly.
These two are about to burst into a 12-year-old giggle fit.

Geo-caching with Richard

One Sunday afternoon in October, after the morning outrigger paddle, Richard was looking for something to do.  I'm sure that man never sits still for more than five minutes, unless he's got a glass of wine in his hand.  In that case, he's all about the relaxation.  He doesn't do things by half measures.

Richard decided geo-caching would be fun because, like most geo-cachers that I've talked to (admittedly, not many .. decidedly less than oodles, but more than one and possibly more than two) they are keen on finding lost trinkets to the point of craziness.  

Richard finds the first cache.  Although it appears that
we're in the middle of a rough patch, we are at
the edge of a conservation area.

He knows there's a geocache in my neighborhood and enlists my willing cooperation by telling me its fairly close.  We can go for a walk .. its a beautiful fall day .. the kind that make you want to enjoy crisp air, the smell of pine needles crushed underfoot and maybe even the sight of horses - safely across a fence where you don't actually have to worry about horse pies, which might be an even bigger blight on the landscape, and therefore more dangerous, than cowpies.

So I grab my camera, my shoes and a determination to make it up Rutherford Hill before I collapse from exhaustion.  Don't laugh .. that hill is biiiiig.  Up at the top of Rutherford Hill is a park where there's a housing development with another in the works, which as you might image, is a bit of a contentious issue in the tree-hugging society where we find ourselves living.  Part of Linley Point is a designated conservation zone ... boggy marsh area .. that is home to some sort of birds and a whole lot of thistle.  

The pond at Linley Point

From our first geocache, we headed off to find the second, which was at the left end of this tiny lake.  I'm not sure if this is Cottle Lake or if this is a pond designed by the developers, in which case .. good job!  The mallards are certainly enjoying it.

Here is where the citified trail ends abruptly at a someone loosey-goosey planned crosswalk which at the moment crosses nothing except hardpacked dirt and scrubby grass.  Here's where shit gets real.  Richard breaks out the gps and we head out into the unknown.  Well .. our unknown.

The extremely dry summer is telling on this cedar we encountered alongside the

dirt trail. At the time, we wondered what would cause the phenomenon we 

were seeing.  I opined that this was likely a natural process, but as it turns out, 

the lack of rainfall has had a considerable impact on all cedars, not just

the ones in my backyard hedge.  Ha!  Good old CBC Radio to the rescue again.

Arms draped in rich green velvet reach out to forest dance partners, swaying
to the rhythms provided by capricious air sprites

By this time, the afternoon was wearing and yet we were generally within a decent range of another geocache, so we'd go tramping off to find that one too.  My feet began singing their own song .. a sort of muddled up blues number that started out just with a few basic pieces.  Later on, a horn section was added and when I didn't immediately stop and put my feet up, being many many many MANY yards away from my own house, they pulled out wailing steel guitars and other assorted stringed instruments to add to the cacophony going on in my shoes.  

Can you see a path here?  Yea, me either!

Although my sense of direction totally failed me ... Richard's gps was proof positive I was dead wrong when was saying that "this" direction was the right way to go home ... I did recognize this shed from a walk that Bev and I had taken a couple of years previous.  My feet started to get a bit happier until they remembered that we'd been driving that day.  Still, it's at the top of Rutherford somewhere .. damned if I could find it again except by accident.  We plunged off through another set of trees and eventually found the road that wound down through the trees to Bradbury Road.

I learned two things that day.  Richard doesn't mean it when he says "one hour," and despite that, he's a good-hearted colossus and I'll be making that trek with him again.

Spring is in the Air

I walked over to Cecile and Richard's place last weekend, to help her make some breakfast for the Huliguns while they were out on the water.  And I know that you folks in Alberta were in the middle of Mother Winter's last grasping demonstration of power, but here in Lala Land, it was all signs of spring ...

This is the jasmine outside my kitchen window.  Each year, it gets just that much more show-stopping

Fuzzy catkins on a tree stopped me.  Although they are sneezes budding out, they also look a lot like flowers!

When breezes play tag along the
streets .. there are always
cherry blossom casualties.

This has to be one of the best pictures I've taken in ages. The colors are simply amazing, the spring buds could not have been more dramatic and there's even a whimsical wee portal into the neighbor's yard.  This is at Cécile and Richard's.

The Crow and Gate

I hope the road from "turkey stuffed with bread" to "you stuffed with turkey" has been a wonderful trip, full of family and friends, and almost as importantly, pumpkin pie, which is the inspiration for my site design this month.

It has been a time of family lately for Bruce and I lately, with our trip to Vancouver a couple of weeks ago, followed by a visit from nephew Brad and his clever wife Kristen.  They reside in Richmond, Virginia and are up here for a trip to see her parents, a well-timed visit that coincides with Kent and Ilana's brief return from Singapore. 

Brad is a Geek, with a capital G, and he loves it.  It's hard not to become enthusiastic about his subjects as we sit and chat about random things .. internet memes, underlying differences between Canada and the US, his work, their activities, and various bits of geekery.  Kristen is the fairy in the family, full of mischief and good humour, flitting from subject to subject, but hitting all the important topics ... like how much cocoa is the precisely right amount for a chocolate bar.  She is the rememeberer of the two of them, bearing little gifts that might mean nothing, but in actuality, mean everything.  Your hazelnuts will find a home in our backyard somewhere, Kristen :)

I thought we'd take a walk around the area in Cedar around The Crow and Gate, but we arrived in time for a huge growl from Bruce's stomach, so we settled into a ploughman's lunch and more importantly for me, a pint of Smithwick's ale.  Mmmm.

Over lunch, we talked about the activities the two of them had been up to and discovered that Brad has been biking and went out for ride recommended by a bike store owner.  As it turns out, the group leader was our friend Cécile who, until this summer, worked part-time for the store.  The ladies in the group made sure he got a good workout, a rather exhaustive effort for a man who, although fit and a regular cyclist, hasn't been on a mountain bike in a few years.  He admitted he had to pack it in early, but he was going to be off with them again on Saturday, so he has resilience going for him.  Bruce and I had brunch with Cécile and Richard on Sunday, so we heard about the ride from her as well.

The parking lot edges on a duck pond where the Mallard pairs happily
cozy up on the bank when they are not demonstrating their
rather impressive swimming skills.

Nothing says English cottage garden quite like a pergola
of rambling roses. This is the entry to the Crow and Gate pub.

We talked about Kristen's spinning for a bit and when asked if she sewed, she ducked her head, looked over at me with a grin and said, "Not really, but I recently did have my apron-itzvah."  For the menfolk who may be reading this, in school where you get to take some version of home economics electives, the apron is usually the first thing you sew, making it a rite of passage for fledgling designers. 

Autumn is only just beginning to be sketched in chalky hues
across the countryside

We discovered there wasn't really so much an area to walk as to meander and take pictures of the vignettes carefully crafted by the owners.  So we strolled the grounds and Kristen attempted to get Brad to actually smile for a picture, Bruce jumping right in to assist her with the project and I grabbed some blog photos. Brad declined to be featured in my blog and since my photos of them include Kristen, I'm sorry I can't share pictures.  I could remove Kristen from the background, but generally, photos of her make more sense as a context of the two of them.  You might think her mentally deranged in at least one of them where she's attempting to get Brad to smile.  I'll save that one for a 50th wedding anniversary retrospective for you, Kristen.

The dahlia beds provided some stunning color and contrast against the emerald lawns.

Blue on blue on blue on blue ...

We have a stand of this grass in our yard, but its not nearly so impressive
as this.  The pampas grass towered over me.

I love old pathways, maybe because they remind me of visits to Granny Gideon in Bently.

Confession:  I added a blue layer to give the skies some more
dimension.  I loved this shot of the weather vane.

 

The late afternoon sun provided a bit of drama in the reeds alongside the stream.

I'm not sure if these were waiting to become dessert at the pub or are being saved for Halloween
jack-o-lanterns.  Either way, they showed the bounty of the large pumpkin patch we spotted.

On the way home, we stopped at the waterfront and strolled down to the crab dock where Brad chatted with one of the fishers hauling up crab traps.  We'd been watching them try to capture the crabs scuttling sideways after being released, which was a bit comical and not without its element of danger to fingers.  Most of the crabs ended up being under the catch size and released back into the water.

Its rare to see the ocean this calm, so this shot of Cameron Island
and the harbourfront docks was begging to be preserved.

The kinfolk!

 Some days start off with the promise of fun and continue to be that way all day ... our visit to Vancouver was one of those that delivered on its promise.

Here's Bruce as we start the day .. texting Bev while we wait on the ferry. 

The day was sunny, then overcast, sunny, then overcast .. you get the idea.  While we sat and had tea on the balcony, Kent must have put on and removed his hoodie a half dozen times.

Its an understatement when I say that life with two children has its challenges.  Parents are just rolling their eyes right now, I'm betting.  I watched Ilana and Kent patiently redirect Elsa who is making her own decisions on things important to her, like what to wear, what to play with now, what to eat and how to assert her somewhat limited independence.  A fan of all things Barbie and Dora, pink and purple are her favorite colors right now, however its best if you can wear one red shoe and one purple shoe.  Seahorses and coloring are fun and Parmesan cheese is yummy for lunch.

She was delightful to be around as was the happy baby Elina.  At one point when Kent was changing the baby before we went for a w-a-l-k to the p-a-r-k, I asked him about being with the family 24/7 and if he was enjoying it.  His response was "I love it.  I don't get a chance to just be with Ilana and the Kids when we're in Singapore, to do this everyday stuff."  And yes, Elsa is at the stage where spelling is still a way to speak code.

Elsa surprised Bruce by choosing to hold his hand as we went for our walk.

Bruce taught Elsa the art of mugging for the camera.
I'm pretty sure someone will regret it.

Learning the flying dismount!

Monkey Bars are cool!
I love how Elsa is the center of their universe at that moment.

Slides are more scary than fun just yet .. one day soon, she'll actually come down it!

Jailtime

While older sis was playing happily, Elina was getting to know her aunt.

The trip back home.  Looks like she picked up a bad case of boy cooties.
Don't laugh, its a real problem that will probably flare up again in Grade 3.

Lost Lake

The day was not one of those gorgeous August days that you think of as 'golden.'  It was 'nice,'  a day for getting outdoors and doing things without the worry of SPF factors.  Cécile and I both took our cameras along and ventured down Lost Lake Road.  Oh come on ... with a name like that, it just begs to be discovered.

Lost Lake Road starts out as Vandernoek, which is an endless source of amusement for Cécile and Richard because it translates rather naughtily into Dutch.  So she was quite happy to see what was down the street when we first turned onto it.  A bit further down, it turned into Lost Lake Road .. and quiiiiiite a ways after that, we found the tiny overgrown parking lot for Lost Lake.  At least, I think this is Lost Lake; it would stand to make sense, right?

The lake itself is quite small .. we tramped around it three times in an hour, stopping for photographs and once for Céc to chat with some birders who, it turns out, she knew quite well.

Overhanging the edge of the lake at the one end was an arbutus tree, its newly denuded bough etching a beautiful contrast against the greens of the surrounding cedar.

These trees are quite unique, as Canada's only broadleaf deciduous evergreen.  They shed their bark each year to reveal glossy cinnamon or green branches that are reported to be used for fine woodworking.  The Arbutus is a protected tree in Victoria once its reached a 50cm height, so there is a misconception that it is a protected species around the province.

This is a closer look at the peeling process on a smaller tree.  Some gardeners love them for their look and evergreen leaves, others find them just too messy.  The shapes of the trees are always unusual .. you rarely see a straight tree, although you may occasionally see a straight-ish one.  We have an arbutus at the back of our property, but its behind our cedar hedge, so the neighbors enjoy it more than we.

Here's another example of the terrific nature of street names in Nanaimo.  Big Whale Lookout .. you know, I'm not exactly sure they can see the water from there.  Here's the view from the corner of Big Whale and Lost Lake. 

While poking around, we ran across a wee street whose discovery delighted us ... Porpoise Place.

At the end of the street was a public access to something .. we didn't travel down it too far since I hadn't locked the car, but while we were on it, I snapped a shot of the house it travels past, simply because this is so West Coast Lifestyle. 

This picture has it all ....  deer fence to protect the shrubs, a riotous and freeflowing display of flowers and shrubs, a balcony rail (we love our balconies here) and a kayak.

Of course, there's no place like home.  Here is a collage of shots of my front step.