Friday July 6, 2001

 Lots of guests have arrived over the last few days.  Yesterday Danusia and Anabelle came to visit from the city and spent the day with Caitlin and Aine puttering around the place.  Chris Robertson joined us for dinner, traveling by boat from Gibson’s to Galbraith Bay where I picked him up.  He called as he was leaving the harbour and I hopped in the car and drove across the island to meet him.  I arrived a few minutes before him, and so I sat on the dock, leaning against a runabout that was turned over admiring the view up Howe Sound.  Beyond Hutt Island, which lies a few hundred metres off shore Mount Artiban on Gambier Island and behind that the snow capped and cloud enshrouded Mount Garibaldi away to the north.  It is a breath taking view.

Chris arrived in his little Boston whaler bearing the gifts of two Shaftsbury Ales and a nautical chart of Howe Sound as a housewarming present which now adorns my office wall.  He was blown away by the house and offered all sorts of advice from drain spouts to cabinet wiring.  He really got me thinking about a herb garden in the back next to the composter.  If I can do it without having to resort to “Gulag Gardening” to protect it from the deer, I might give it a shot.  There is a large lavender plant in there now, and the rest is dusty miller and heather.  The heather gets moved, the dusty miller goes.

When I drove Chris back to Galbraith Bay after dinner the sun was 20 minutes from setting behind Mount Elphinstone.  As Chris sped away I saw some splashing off his starboard bow and speculated as to whether it was a whale or a seal.  When Chris called 40 minutes later from home he said it was a seal goofing off and chasing salmon.  He thinks it’s the same one that hangs off Soames Point, below his place doing the same thing.

Today my colleague Dave Kennedy arrived for some work.  We ploughed away in the office until lunch at which time we headed over to Doc’s for food and continued meeting.  He left on the three o clock and I checked into the library to get a card and a book on gardening with native plants.  The library is great; the gardening section is larger than the history section, and there are all kinds of intriguing titles on hand like “How buildings learn” and so on.  Of course there is a complete collection of Nick Bantock books (he is an island resident) and three copies of an early history of the island.

I walked home gorging on salmonberries and huckleberries and tasted the first blackberry of the summer, a small dark incredibly sweet thing.  Our other guest today, Catherine and her daughter Molly, said they found two ripe thimbleberries, but all the ones I tried were still too green to pull off the plant.  Caitlin saw the resident osprey over our house today, and Aine has found a Steller’s Jay feather.

We have been privy to the most astounding moonrises over the last few nights as the moon waxed full and has started to wane.  I tried photographing some of them, so we’ll see how they turn out.  At this time of year, the moon rises in the gap in front of us, a big orange or yellow ball rising behind Whytecliff and dusting the Channel with glittering luminescence.  Aine and I have seen them all come up the last few nights as we have curled up on the couch reading James and the Giant Peach.  She is getting old enough for “chapter books” as she calls them, and this story has her gripped. 

The commute this week was fun.  It’s lovely at 7:00am waiting in the ferry line up.  People leave their cars to get their coffees and stop to chat with friends and neighbours until the boat arrives.  Then we all drive on and folks mill about some more on top, some in the middle of changing from Island clothes to business suits.  There was a guy in a shirt and tie with shorts and Birkenstocks on Thursday.  When he left the boat he was a downtown business man.  On the way back over on Thursday I played my whistle in the line up and attracted the attention of Jan, a local musician whom I met at the opening of the Ruddy Potato on Saturday.  People are SO friendly here.  We compared notes about the best route from Vancouver to Horseshoe Bay and where we both lived and so on. 

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