Camping 2018

goats on the roof - Coombs

saw blade insert at the Timberland Pub

We don't have much room for camping this summer so we grabbed a few days last week to go to The Living Forest, less than 2 hours away, just south of Nanaimo. We've camped there a few times in recent years; we like the way it's run, the amenities, and the convenience. Sometimes we think we should venture somewhere else, but why? Flush toilets, a cafe that donates its proceeds to local charities, 2 minutes to grocery and liquor stores - what's not to love?

June was doing its June weather thing, being unpredictable. We had a summer month in May but June did not want to warm up. Our set up day was offering 40% chance of showers and we hadn't had rain for about 6 weeks so how could we moan about it. We executed our plan of erecting first the kitchen shelter, then the tent, then the less urgent bits. Just as we finished the two main projects, the rain started and it rained like Maritime rain, for several hours. At the last minute, Jim had thrown in two rubberized capes that we bought in South Carolina more than 30 years ago. Hallelujah. Also, hallelujah that our getting-a-bit-long-in-the-tooth tent stayed dry. It is a 3 season tent (which for me means summer) with a full batten-down-the-hatches fly but the fly has been rubbed by the pole clips and folded most of its life and kind of ignored, so I did wonder how water tight it might be. Test passed and good for another outing or two.
Third hallelujah is that I always take a meal prepared for set-up day, usually chicken curry, so we didn't have to find food and cook in the rain.

The kitchen shelter is only water resistant, meant more as a sun-shade or to keep the tree crap out of my coffee cup, but even it was reasonably dry. We did see a very nifty solution to tarping a tent or shelter using water filled pop bottles to weight down the tarp. But I digress!

Not being beach bunnies we usually explore the area, find a hike, park, point of interest, pub, or all of the above. This year I have a banged up leg so nothing too strenuous and no kayaking but
Living Forest has an online map that highlights all kinds of things we like to do at various levels of difficulty. Our friends the Tedders had the adjacent camp site and their tiny rescue-shi tzu Xena is not interested in any kind of physical exertion. At all!

A Great Gray owl

top of the world view

We went to North Island Wildlife Recovery Centre which has grown and changed a lot since we were last there. Nearby, the Tedders knew of a viewpoint up a very steep road to a cell tower installation, and then we went to Coombs for a late lunch. We love Coombs but it is suffering from success by being crowded and they've spiffed it up a bit too much maybe. Still fun though.

Morden Colliery tipple ruin

We also found the Haslam Creek trail (thanks to Gayle's good eyesight!), part of the Trans Canada system, with a nice suspension bridge across the gorge, the Morden Colliery ruins, and a winery making drinkable wine.
The Timberland Pub on Timberland Road serves up some very good food along with some rustic local characters.

Haslam Crk bridge

recycled horse shoes!

Our also long-in-the-tooth and completely neglected (apparently you are supposed to clean and oil them once a year. Who knew?) Coleman stove started to act up and quit completely on the last night. It's an old-school kerosene version and Jim has spent the last couple of hours trying to sort it out, with only an occasional not quite burn the house down moment. We like the kerosene concept as a less volatile fuel and adding to those millions of disposable mini propane tanks just goes against the grain for me. So he'll get it fixed with some good YouTube help or we'll have to bite the bullet for a new one. I also had a brainwave about how to more efficiently pack the car but that and the camp-stove may not get another outing this year. Sigh.
On the other hand we are going on a long road trip to Saskatchewan toward the end of August, by way of Fort St John which is way up north. I have a very long must-see list for Sask and am excited about the adventure of it all.

Meanwhile my stove mechanic friend has just reappeared and offered wine.....

Latest Craziness

I started this post more than 2 weeks ago so it is old news but I decided to finish it anyway.

The Halifax branch of the family, Paul, Sue, Rachel, Jillian, have a company called Over The Edge that helps non-profit organizations raise money. About $75 million to date. It started with a one-time event in Halifax with a brain-wave from Paul. He knew of 3 groups who needed some money so he said, let's charge people $1000 each to rappel off a tall building. And people did buck up for the adventure. There were a few bumps along the start-up trail, but OTE launched in 2008 and a decade later people are still rappelling off tall buildings for charities such as Make A Wish, Special Olympics, Boy Scouts of America, and many, many others. There are events all over North America, and also in Europe and now New Zealand.
For a few years, Rachel and Jillian "saw" their father a lot on Skype or Facetime as he racked up air miles but checked in twice a day with the family.

Two years ago a Victoria event was scheduled but didn't happen but at the time, Paul said he would bring Rachel out to rappel with Jim if we decided to do it. Friends of ours were turning 70 that year and I volunteered myself and Jim to rappel with them. Jim is of the "you are crazy and I am not doing it" school of thought but, really, he wouldn't be happy if I did and he didn't, so eventually he gave in; very reluctantly. He and the other couple were relieved the 2016 rappel was cancelled but I am in the "we'll be a long time dead" school so was a titch disappointed.

Fast forward to 2018, Paul messaged to say he was coming to see us for a few days on his way to Las Vegas. But wait says I, Over The Edge is in Victoria for its first local event the very same week, is that why you are coming here? No, just passing through. I was all over it and Paul, "I'm not a big heights guy", agreed to organize the family to come from Halifax to do the rappel, yes, 6 of us. By organize, I mean turned it over to Sue and cut short his Las Vegas golf trip (silly me, I thought it was work) by a couple of days. And the rest is family history and a fun visit.

The client is Make A Wish BC/Yukon and the building was the CIBC building on the corner of View and Douglas, apparently 15 stories and officially 160 feet from roof to ground. The minimum cost for participants of OTE events is $1500  and the net proceeds go to the sponsoring charity. As a team of 6 that meant we had to raise $9000.00, not exactly chump change. Thanks to brilliant support from our friends and family we eventually raised $10,200.00 and we all got over the edge and to the ground in one piece. I was surprisingly calm but it's not easy to step off the ledge. Even though I was pretty sure the guys on the roof didn't want to kill off the boss's family, you are on your own when you take that step and then "walk" down the building. Jim zoomed down as though he'd been doing it for 20 years while the rest of us were somewhere between a slow crawl and a cautious creep. Some of "our people" came to watch and, on the way down, it was a great comfort to hear them yelling support.

For the right motivation I would do it again and not be so tense, maybe even look around a little bit, but I won't actively go looking for another rappel! Been there, done that...had fun.

Rachel

Paul, Jim, Jillian, Sue, me Rachel

Six and a half years later...

We bought this house impulsively and then spent a fair amount of money on modernizing it before we moved in. A good friend, JMcI, asked what it was we liked about it in the first place since we were changing virtually everything. Never mind. 

In the midst of completely changing the kitchen and making sure all the lower cabinets were drawer units because we are getting ancient, we were faced with the 24 inch pantry cabinet and the pullouts would be $225.00 each. Times 6 is a whack of money for pull-outs so we said, “we’ll make them ourselves after we move in”. Hah! 

About every 6 months I floated the “what about those units for the pantry” question because the back of the shelves was like a black hole in space; especially the bottom one which required getting down on the floor to investigate the nether regions. I’m pretty fit and agile but, really, I was not interested in exploring that shelf.

Sometime in early December I upped the pressure and asked “the question” at least once a week, sometimes several times a day. 

That got the project on “the list”, a mysterious entity that only Jim knows about. This week, Thursday to be exact, after golf Jim drifted down to Lumber World (supplier of the original cabinets) to see what the possibilities were. Lo and behold they had a sale on and the now $250.00 each drawer units were discounted to $89! Holy schmoley! My plan had been to use the existing shelves to create the drawer boxes and buy the hardware at the Restore. Never mind again. 

This plan included purpose built boxes with spiffy DTC full-extension soft-close hardware and they had 9 available.

Let’s be clear, the units were on a major discount but we still forked out more than $500.00 which might be chump change to you but isn’t to us. We needed 5 and jumped right in, picked them up yesterday, and Jim unpacked a couple and started the hmmmm, how does this work dance. An hour later he’s realized that 2 of the boxes and hardware are the wrong size and the salesperson was gone for the weekend. Not to disparage Lumber World too deeply but there are a few people there who are worth talking to and a few others who will not give the lowly DIYer the time of day and on top of that are as dense as the bag of hammers they might try to sell you.

Before she left, our salesperson, one of the useful ones, sent a link to an installation video because no instructions came with the items we bought. Never mind again; the link was to a different brand of hardware. Sigh.

Google, YouTube, and Jim’s brain to the rescue and we have a plan because 3 of the boxes and hardware are actually the right size! Sort of. The third one needed some adjustment, being a half inch wider than it should have been and with a set of locking holes drilled in the wrong place. Never mind again, we can deal with that and did. 

Understand we’re working in a 24” wide space, 23” deep and had to install level blocking pieces and the drawer rails. Willing and fabulous as Jim is he’s not small and dainty and flexibility is a fleeting memory so this project was definitely a team effort with me folded up inside the cabinet at one point holding the necessary piece in place while it was drilled and installed.

Besides having much more accessible space, the major success was that we didn’t get scrappy with each other about the challenges. Jim was particularly patient despite being wakened every hour on the hour last night by the grandfather clock which I decided to activate yesterday. On our way to bed I asked if he wanted me to stop it, he replied probably a good idea, but at 7:00 this morning I had that sinking lack of memory of following through. We already know I can sleep through a bomb going off, a very funny story, and I grew up with that clock chiming away, so hadn’t heard a thing. Never mind! He’s having a nap right now.

At The Turn of the Year

The country is in a deep freeze and even we are hovering just above 0 degrees, nothing like the dangerous cold anywhere east of Vancouver. Not to mention north.
New Year's Day in most of Canada is the beginning of settling in for a couple of months of winter.
Not meaning to be irritating but no doubt this statement will be: for me New Year's Day is the beginning of the end of winter.
We've only gained about 5 minutes of daylight since December 22 and we still have lots of time to have a snow event, but the worst is over. Maybe. The worst being the wet dark days of November. December is mitigated by Christmas lights and festivities and January is just a big improvement over both. Sister Bets says February, but not me. I'm ready!

We usually bring in the New Year quietly and always stay up till midnight to ring it in properly with champagne and the fireworks from Seattle.

table for two

Today we had sundowners outside with the propane fire-pit to take the chill off.

We are a bit whacky on this side of the world but we'll be a long time dead so let's enjoy the now we've got. It was a super moon, not to be ignored!

Santa Claus brought us a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle that we finished today, 6 days from start to finish. Not much productive took place during the week! We weren't completely anti-social but the puzzle certainly kept us off the streets and out of the malls. Well okay, there was one short foray to Mayfair Mall just because it didn't seem right to ignore the sales completely. Right?

this was a challenge!

So 2018 is with us. Let's plan to treat it well, with fun, good people, and a dash of good works.

Christmas Baking

We are out of mincemeat and that set of a bigger chain of events. By “out of mincemeat” I mean the 18^th century recipe using meat and suet and 2 cups of booze that we’ve been making for years. All the ingredients are in the house so it will happen. Soon. Maybe today.

The rest of the chain is a romp down memory lane. I used to bake on Christmas Eve; being a career person, that was the allotted moment for items that might have been better with a bit of aging, like fruit cake. Never mind. If all you’ve got is Christmas Eve, so be it. 

Now that I have lots of time, I don’t do Christmas baking. Costco and sugar concerns sidelined that activity until this year when we ran out of mincemeat and I got nostalgic about some old recipes. I inherited a couple of favourites from my mother except for the fruit cake recipe that I begged from a neighbour sometime before I was 12. Which wasn’t recent!

I made the fruitcake yesterday and it has to be the most expensive recipe in the universe. There isn’t really enough batter to call it a cake, more like a fruit/nut bar that would sustain you on a serious hike. After I’d made it I found a notation to double the batter but on second thought it could easily be tripled and there would still be a LOT of fruit and nuts. And it is delicious. I don’t care if you don’t like fruitcake, you would love this one. 

scotch cake with glace cherry bits

check out the ancient 2 cup sifter!

This afternoon I made dominoes and scotch cake, aka Nanaimo bars and shortbread. Like so much of life there are rules. Scotch cake should be made with brown sugar (who came up with the icing sugar version?) and three ingredients: butter, brown sugar, and flour and cut out with Mum’s old cookie cutters. Dominoes should be topped with unsweetened chocolate even though I think Mum’s recipe originally might have said semi-sweet. If you don’t already do those things, we need to talk, except for Mum’s cutters of course.

So Christmas dinner dessert is taken care of AND we have a precious bottle of  Kaye’s lemon curd for lemon tarts, not that there is much room for dessert though, strangely, people manage!

Speaking of baking, earlier today we went to the Ginger Bread fundraiser event for Habitat for Humanity at the Parkside Hotel. Don’t get me started on parking in the downtown core, but having circled a couple of times we scored a place right outside our destination. We noticed that most of the ginger bread entries are from “home chefs” now while a few years ago they were mostly professionals. It doesn’t take more than a second to figure out that for a professional chef to do one of these creations either they don’t have a life or their employer is beyond generous. I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the hours but one entry claimed 120. You get my point.

The entries have to be completely edible, like the Rose Parade has to be all botanical, right down to any writing. Edible ink? Who knew? This year's theme is Canada 150.

multi-cultural BC

adorable elves

my second choice

Habitat is a terrific organization putting real people in real housing and this event apparently generates a decent amount of money. Get yourself down to Parkside on Humbolt, a seriously beautiful hotel lobby, and hope that crazy bakers keep on wanting to support the event and cause. I voted for the National Parks entry and Jim fell for the Mountie/beaver. 

the iconic red serge

celebrating national parks

Walking up the street to Cora’s for lunch we came across these beauties; mahonia japonica.

 It was a very satisfying day, topped off by dinner prepared by my in-house chef James Francis.

December Decorations

The house is decorated, always a slow dance because I fuss with placement and don't want everything pulled out at once. Order out of chaos and now we enjoy the result. It is dark here in Victoria at this time of year, with only a scant 8 hours of daylight and the sun so low in the sky it doesn't clear the nearby trees. To compensate there is a never ending list of events, parades, festivals, and activities; and in our little piece of the world we like lights and decorations as a distraction. We like to sit by the fire with the Christmas lights and decorations glowing, and enjoy some wine and each other's company. And friends and family of course. 

We've stopped collecting Santa Clauses and have reduced what we had by at least half because, you know, there is a limit and I do believe that less is more. It may not always be obvious. 

Now Jim collects Christmas movies on our PVR and it is such a nice change to watch mindless good wishes and happy endings!

November was wet. We had some amount of precipitation for a record 28 out of 30 days, even some snow. Ugh and ugh. We are having a La Niña year, in my opinion a little girl who cries a lot and has occasional temper tantrums. It will pass.

Right now we are having a respite with sun in the forecast for the next week and daytime temps of 8 or 9 Celsius. Not too shabby for December on almost the 49^th parallel.

I took advantage of the sunshine today, December 6, to grab some pics of seasonal decorations in our neighbourhood. Enjoy.

winter planter

Santa taking orders

beach flotsam

laurel topiary

berberis

rhododendron way out of season

crab apples

hanging on!

yellow pyracantha

fine dining on a hotdog at Capitol Iron

A Remarkable Thing...

We went to Jamestown, Virginia a couple of years ago and now see another piece of the story at Port-Royal at the mouth of the Annapolis River, Nova Scotia. This was the first real experiment in living in the northern New World, led by Champlain who invented The Order of Good Cheer to ward off serious cabin fever. Port Royal (French 1605) and Jamestown (English 1607) were “it and dit” for timing and not too far apart as the crow flies or warships sail. It was a volatile era of territorial expansion and the two forts were front and centre. Port Royal lost the skirmish and was destroyed in 1613.  An interesting side-bar is that the reconstruction of Port-Royal, from a set of original plans, was energized by a woman from Massachusetts. Construction of this first-ever replica built on the first-ever National Historic was from 1939-1941, ironic timing considering world affairs in those years.

window at Port-Royal

the main entrance or Port-Royal

This Parks Canada interpreter/guide was excellent and later we realized we were seeing his face every where in the marketing materials for the area. At the Tidal Bore Power plant, we were told he is one of a set of identical twins, Alan and Wayne, who both work for Parks Canada. No wonder we saw him everywhere!

Try to keep up here...

The French moved the burned-out Port-Royal settlers 10 kilometers up the river and the now town of Port Royal survived until turned over to the English in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713. The English renamed the town Annapolis Royal after Queen Anne and it was the original capital city of Nova Scotia, replaced by Halifax in 1749. Fort Anne was built by the Scots in 1629 to protect Annapolis Royal. 

Fort Anne

Finally, the point of the story: the Fort Anne Tapestry. How does every Canadian not know about this remarkable piece of work? Begun in 1985 as a way to commemorate the centennial of Parks Canada, the project got underway in 1988 and was unveiled in 1998. There are four panels, each 4.5 feet wide and 8 feet high for a total of 8x18, and each representing a century of local history. Hundreds of people worked on it, including Queen Elizabeth. The detail is astonishing, including a Mi’kmaq shield made from birch bark and adorned with porcupine quill, a tiny “pearl” necklace, lace, and innumerable types of stitches.

The room is long and narrow so you can’t get a decent photo of the entire piece and my phone camera didn’t do justice to the vibrant colours but I hope you’ll get the gist. And if you get a chance to see it, do; it was a highlight of this trip.