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.
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