Late September Butchart Gardens

Today was quintessential early fall--cloudless and calm, cool in the morning warming up mid-day. We spent a few hours at the lovely Butchart Gardens and I tried out my new camera.  Here are few of the images I found.

Cowichan Bay

Today being Sunday we took a drive over the Malahat up to Cowichan Bay on the east side of Vancouver Island. It's a cute little bay with a marina and a road lined with waterfront cottages and funky restaurants.  

We stopped at a restaurant called Rock Fish Cafe, where we had some delicious Manhattan style clam chowder and salad and then walked down the dock to a Maritime Museum. It's built along a pier that you can see in the photo at the top of this post.






















This museum is a labour of love by people in the area who are wooden boat aficionados. Many elegant and historic rowboats are docked there. As well there's a marine ways where people can haul their boats up to repair them.

And inside the main building there's a workshop where volunteers work on ancient outboard motors, doing repairs the people then pay what they think the work is worth.





There's also a lovely old wooden boat that needs a ton of work and is for sale for $15,000 to anyone who will undertake to restore it where it sits. Maybe this could be your life's work?

Here's a lovely double ended rowboat that's in the museum. Isn't it beautiful? How I would love to have have place to moor this sweet little boat so I could take it out for a row in the harbour. But alas, my boating days are over.
























I'll leave you with a rather moody photo of the bay. Today was somewhat cloudy but by the time we got back to Victoria the sun was out in time to light up one of the pots of grasses in our back courtyard. Summer may be over but we still have some lovely warmth happening in Victoria.

The dog days of summer

We've had a lovely summer here in Victoria.  Lots of sunshine and very little rain (actually about two hours in the past two months). Here are some dogs enjoying a late evening stroll down at Dallas Road. But now it's September and today the kids went back to school.  I guess the dog days of summer are over now.








I haven't been posting much so I thought I'd just show a few images from the season.  Here's a reflection photo from the dock at Saturna Island showing the beautiful blue ocean.

We're pretty stoked that last Thursday the Federal Court of Appeal struck down the permits for the Trans Mountain pipeline last that was proposed for the port of Burnaby, near Vancouver.  It's possible that this may be the end of that project, which would increase tanker traffic on our coast seven-fold.  This would mean huge environment issues if a spill of diluted bitumen took place. This kind of spill cannot be remediated. Can you imagine what a spill like that would mean to our beautiful coast?






Earlier this summer the new Johnson Street bridge was completed. It took a long time and a lot of money. And many people thought it unnecessary, but in the end it has cleaned up the harbour big time. And eventually the cost will fade from people's minds. On the left is a photo of the old bridge going up to allow a large boat into the upper harbour. On the right, a photo of the old bridge with the new bridge completed to the left of it.  It's quite a different look

The new bridge has a wide pedestrian walkway and cycle path and people are always walking from old town across to the other side of the harbour.   The building you see here is the Janion building, the new part, where until the 15th of August we owned a tiny suite.  For the past two years we've rented it out, through AirB&B in the summer and to students for the other 8 months of the year.

But after a couple of years of doing this because of changes in regulations made it uneconomic to continue this so we sold it. Another reason was that the parking lot beside the Janion is going to be the site of a large 7 storey condo building that will eliminate much of the view and the light. We'll miss meeting people from all over the world, but we won't miss cleaning bathrooms and changing bed linens several times a week.


Here's what the main part of the studio suite looked like this summer.

This fall we are not doing any traveling, mostly because we need a break. Last year after Harry finished his chemo we started taking trips. In May we went to Mexico City, in June a road trip to Nelson, in September we went to London, Spain and Portugal. Then in February we spent a month in Zihuatanejo and in April we were in the South of France. So now we're here in Victoria attending to our own home and planning some social times with friends.  

Today Harry finished replacing some boards on the back deck and I've signed up for a weekly painting class.  Life is good.

And another birthday!

The end of summer is punctuated by Harry's birthday. And this year was no exception. But this year we celebrated with a Thai feast hosted by our friends Ry and Kallayanee. She is an excellent cook and in fact runs cooking cooking classes from her home in North Saanich. (See link above.)  Kallayanee did the dinner and I made the carrot cake. It was gluten free so that my gluten intolerant friend Wendy could partake.  And by the way this is the best carrot cake I've ever had.

Above are  Kallayanee and I lighting the cake (with friend Paul lurking in the doorway), and below Wendy and I singing that traditional  birthday song.

The old guy, otherwise known as the Geezer (and I can say this because he's now 76 years old) worked hard to blow out the candles, watched by his friend Ritchie and wife Liz.

Here they are again, along with our friend Linette looking affectionately at the Geezer.

And here are Linette's partner Mark and myself laughing along with the jokes in the cards. The one I liked best was from Ogden Nash:  You are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely.

We had a great evening and fabulous food and laughs and celebration. What more could one ask for a birthday.  Thanks to everyone who contributed.

By the way, it's been more than six weeks since I've posted here. It was nice to take a break from blogging but I will try to be a bit more on the ball.

Summer reading

Today I dropped by the library looking for some summer
reading and happened to notice a shelf with some shopping bags full of books.  Some of them were book club sets, a dozen of the same books geared to book clubs who want to discuss a particular title. But other bags were full of varied books, some of which piqued my interest.

It turns out that these are something new by our Victoria library: Staff picks to go. The librarians collect six books and a video on a particular theme and you can check them all out at the same time. Instead of 3 weeks, you get six weeks to plough through them. Wow, what a cool concept.

There were several selections including religious and fantasy and a few others, but I chose the collection called "Search for Fulfilment" because the titles spoke to me.





Here's what was in the bag.




It turns out that I have already read (and enjoyed) two of these books, plus the Harold Fry one that the videos are based on. But that leaves four interesting books and the possibility of ten hours of video.  Isn't that great?

And on the back of the list of books in this bag, they include a whole page of other books on the same theme.

I'm really impressed with the Victoria Public Library. And I will be back for more of these staff pick collections.

I have read "Broken for You" by Stephanie Kallos and loved it. I will be looking up these other ones as well.  Because, when I think about it, one of my very favourite genres has to be books about the search for fulfillment.
Not too sure what that says about me. I don't feel unfulfilled but I do love reading about the process.

"A Thousand Days in Venice" sounds like a wonderful escape.

Hooray for the Victoria Public Library.