picking up some pieces

Not much to report really, just filling in some blanks from the last couple of weeks.

We made a return visit to Arthur & Jessica Vickers studio in Cowichan Bay with friends Martin and Angele Segger on the only rainy day, seriously, we've had all summer, August 7. We had booked the excursion with the Seggers way back in June so decided to go ahead despite the downpour and chill; I actually lit a fire that night to warm the house a bit.  We had lunch at the Genoa Bay Cafe, new owners and worth a visit, 'did' a couple of wineries, and had an hour of Arthur's wonderful stories specifically about the process of building the Leadership Desk. He had told us part of the story before but this time we saw some of the raw wood he worked with and more about the 40 people who were involved in the project with him. In the tradition of his people he is a spell binding teller.

Paul (no. 2 son from Halifax) spent a few days with us, a real gift since we don't see him very often. he was overseeing one of his events in Seattle so skipped across the pond for a visit.

3 amigos: Jim, Paul, Mark on Mark & Melynda's deck. While Jim and Mark look most alike they all have a similar cheesy grin!

Family dinner (we were 14!) at Emily Carr: Paul, Mark, Barb, Besty2, and Melynda

Betsy1 on the wasp warpath (we are plagued by wasps in late summer as their food supply literally dries up); she'll be thrilled to see this photo!

We had a mini heat wave for the duration of Paul's stay with temps in the low 30s which he didn't seem to mind. And we didn't seem to carry a camera with us even though we were doing tourist things like the Dragon Boat Races, a classic car show, kayaking (Paul and Jim).

When it's hot here the humidity goes down instead of up, we were averaging about 25% humidity which crisped the garden as you can imagine. We are up to 65% today and it is markedly cooler. Have I mentioned that we have this desert phenomenon in the summer? We may get another shot of moisture this weekend but it is only looking like cloud at this point. Meanwhile the province is having a dire forest fire season. There have been something like 1400 fires this summer, with hundreds of thousands of hectares involved. Some of the fires are human stupidity but lots are from lightning strikes, and all are exacerbated by the miles of standing dead timber from the pine beetle infestation (I painted a 7 foot  long series after I first saw the outcome of the beetles 5 or 6 years ago)  and decades of not letting the underbrush burn itself out occasionally. Alberta and Arizona both do controlled burns and they don't have the conflagrations that we experience here. One of the hardest hit areas is where Betsy1 has just moved from, Quesnel/Prince George/William's Lake, where the air quality has been off the scale for weeks.

This post is for Randy

Randy Mains is a good friend of ours, at least we think so, and a very accomplished guy. He flies helicopters and teaches pilots in the oil fields in Abu Dhabi, has written a couple of books one of which, Dear Mom I’m Alive, is in movie development under the title “Letters from Black Widow 25”. Randy enjoys jokes and stories at about the grade 4 boy level (he and Mark get along fine!) and is lucky enough to be married to Kaye who is a legend in her own right. Randy teases Jim and me a lot about our constant ‘projects’( he has had the benefit of Jim’s help on a couple of his own) but his real favourite is about Jim renovating and/or moving our garden pond. The pond has just been renovated, again, hence the title of the post.

Befores

We’ve had a leak for months in the short stream that connects the larger fish pond with a small ‘head of the river’ pool. Jim has long hankered for a cascade from a fissure in our rock outcropping but that’s a job for professionals and probably will cost a few dollars. So he’s been procrastinating, which is always a sign that he doesn’t have a vision for the project. When he gets the idea nailed down he’s very gung-ho. I finally suggested that he just fix the leak and do some minor tweaking so the stream was at least operating. Fixing the stream meant removing a lot of rock, taking up the old liner, laying a new one and resettling the rocks. Btw, all the rocks in any of our garden photos have come from our own dirt, which I hesitate to call soil. Some of them are pretty darned big and Jim has dug them out during various garden excavations. We have literally tons of rock.

We all have our vision of work; Melynda got roped into helping too.

Back to the pond -“while we’re at it” crept in to the equation as it invariably does! It’s been a bit of an issue that we don’t really get much benefit from the pond because we are forever on the main deck which is some distance away. Also the pond was closed in by a vine covered obelisk, some big grasses, and various other plantings all of which was really nice but obscured the water feature to the point that it wasn’t. So, says I, why don’t we open up the near side by moving a few things. And (still my big mouth flapping) if we (that would be the royal we not the plural!) move the upper pool down a level and straighten out the stream a bit you could then add the rock fissure thingy next year or when we win the lottery. Well, suddenly rocks and dirt were flying like one of Randy’s helicopters. Yikes! Have I mentioned my rather dysfunctional shoulder? After 6 days of pretty hard labour the shoulder doesn’t seem to be any better or any worse which is absolutely astounding. Another “have I mentioned” item, we haven’t had rain for 35 days now and the dirt is QUITE hard while the sun is QUITE hot. The best thing about all this activity is that the birds have a little beach to swim from and they are very happy.

Afters

The not having rain part is great for us and we are loving it only because we aren’t affected by the many forest fires. For the last few days it has been pretty hazy which we are told is caused by particulates from various fires in the province. The photo of the sun was taken about 8:00am.

And we are feeling like very bad parents as we have lost the hard drives on two of our computers in the last month: one desk top, one laptop, different brands, different stores, both only 2 years old. Luckily we recently updated our netbook and have an antique (6 years makes it an antique, right?) laptop as well, so we are functional if not overjoyed. Plus we have external hard drives doing weekly scheduled back-ups so haven’t really lost any data (that’s a nudge for any of you who haven’t got one), not that we have anything very important to lose.

So many places to sit and no-one ever sitting!