September

Every morning, while waiting for the coffee machine to heat up,  I have been looking through the garden doors at the clear cloudless blue sky sunshine,  smiling and saying out loud, "another lousy day in paradise", a line from a 'you had to be there' running joke from a long ago trip. Just when I had been, almost, bemoaning the short 6 week summer we had, along comes this - 10 days, and counting, of warm, sunny days. Record breaking highs for this time of year I'm informed by the online local papers (which is not all that high, if the truth be known, but it's all relative I guess).

It appears that this is a new season, an in-between summer and fall season. It very clearly is not summer. Although sunny and warm in that sunshine, at night those 20-something temperatures fall to lows of 8-9 and boy is it brisk out there as I venture out into the dew with coffee in hand to see what's happened overnight in the garden.

The garden is gorgeous. Things that have been underwhelming performers through the summer's heat are now putting on new growth and flowers. Everything was newly planted this year, as there was nothing when we came here, and shrubs and perennials are settling in, and those that aren't are being moved or sent to compost. I've been scrubbing out hundreds of pots (note to self - clean as you go), and caulking the windows of the GreenHouse, which I'm not at all sure will solve my leakage problems. New planting beds are being prepared, and ongoing water and deadheading maintenance gets one up close and personal with each plant. I spend almost all my time outside in the garden, working or reading - the rest I spend taking pictures, blackberry picking and exploring new beaches in nearby communities.

When Number 2 Son Mike was here a few weeks ago we went for a walk along a nearby trail and found a big blackberry patch. We stopped and picked and picked and ate and ate, until finally I had to say "I'm STUFFED", which is not a usual description of berry eating. I have been back to that patch several times since, picking pounds/kilos of the stuff, or "kilometers of blackberries", which refers to my ill advised attempt to speak Italian in Ischia, where one afternoon, while everyone on the island was in siesta mode, I was trying to order a "kilometer of cherries" in the local language. I recognized my mistake almost immediately, but the old woman in the shop didn't bat an eye and weighed them up for me, no doubt laughing her head off once I was out of sight. I certainly was.

The Fuchsia Summer GreenHouse

I've been photographing the Fuchsia Ranch collection and taking note of how the plants have behaved this season and what I may do with them next season. I use Aperture for my photo library and post-production and I'm playing with its book making feature as a way to keep a record of The Ranch this year.  This is in keeping with what has become a feeling that if I don't start to organize and produce something I can touch and keep, all these thousands and thousands of digital images I have on my computer and add to every day will end up one day in some massive crash or change of software or whatever. Which might not be a bad thing for most of it which leads to the point that it is also a way to better pay attention, select the best, critique the composition, reshoot, compare shots, adjust, and generally learn my craft. I have a few other projects in mind to get these photos off digital and published in hard copy form to share, so learning what this book feature can do, or learning enough to know whether I want to continue to use this software or go on to try something else.

Screenshot of the Aperture Book software

Fuchsia Deep Purple

Living these days outside in the sunshine has been wonderful but clearly this season is changing. The light is different, the angle of the sun is decidedly lower and by late afternoon the once long sunny backyard is in full shade as the sun quickly disappears behind the tall trees of the forest at the end of the street. Here at 49.3564 N by 7:30 it is dark out.

The town also feels different. The tourists are gone and even with days and days of sunshine, the vibe of this summer town has changed. We've been here, in this new home, for about a year, and we've barely scratched the surface.

Still. May be time for a change of scenery.

Freedom Cove

We stayed in the town of Tofino looking out on the view that had captured my heart the first time I ever saw it and for every visit since - across Clayoquot Sound to Meares Island and the other smaller islands,  with the Vancouver Island mountain peaks behind. Watching the boat traffic in the Sound, going to and fro, weaving through the islands till lost sight of around the bend and behind. It makes me want to go across, go further, see what lies behind up the inlets and coves further up Clayoquot Sound and beyond.

The view from my pillow in the loft of the condo in Tofino - dawn - the sport fishermen are just leaving

So, we hired a boat with Captain Mike Little of Browning Passage Boat Charters to go take a look at what lay beyond.

It was 3:00 in the afternoon when we climbed aboard, heading around the back of Meares Island and beyond to a place called, by its residents, Freedom Cove. The boat would take a minimum of 3 people, maximum 12. Howard, Number 2 Son Mike and I make 3. It's just slightly passed high tourist season this day in early September, and we find we have the boat to ourselves.

We travel across the harbor towards the native village that has been there continuously for 5000 years. At least. Then around the west side of Meares Island where we pass a complex of old buildings. This used to be a residential school for native children. Even the sound of those words these days sends a chill but Captain Mike who was born here talks of friends of his who were there and who themselves speak of the education they got as worthwhile, as well as some usefulness of learning the ways of the "white guy", which was the point of the schools. Lots of points of view I guess.

We continue past a view of a looming Cat Mountain, a wall of green forest, where some company is proposing building a copper mine. Friends of Clayoquot appear to be all over that one, I was asked to sign something, or send a postcard or whatever, when I stopped at their booth at the Saturday market. Apparently it would mean defacing the mountain. According to our Captain Mike, a retired Coast Guard captain, he can't see how they'd get the copper out of there, through the relatively shallow entrances to Clayoquot Sound from the Pacific. Apparently something similar was proposed many years ago and not proceeded with for this same reason.

 Then past more small islands, past several large fish farms, till we reached the entrance to a small bay, turned the corner into its smoother waters and came upon a quite amazing sight. The floating gardens of Freedom Cove.

You won't find the name "Freedom Cove" on any local chart, but that is what it is called by its residents,  Catherine King and Wayne Adams, who approached us as we stepped off the boat to their dock. They welcomed us with hands full of containers of cherry tomatoes, gifts for us.  Here we are at their float home, with its huge connecting floating gardens, greenhouses, studios, guest houses, dance platforms, candle studio, carving studios...This is their home of 20 years, and their ever changing art installation.

An aerial view...

Catherine takes us on a tour - she is a dancer, a poet and a sculptor, and above all a gardener. She explains that they have live a subsistence lifestyle out on their float home, an hour's boat ride from the town of Tofino. All the building materials for their floating garden and its multiple greenhouses and other structures are from salvaged materials, some from the neighboring fish farms. They grow all their vegetables and fruits, everything in containers as the whole structure floats in the bay, tethered in multiple locations to the cliffs along the shore. They are not alongside the shore, they can't step off the dock to go for a walk, they are surrounded by water. Fresh water for themselves and for the gardens comes from a waterfall on land a distance away, gravity fed to their complex. The whole structure looks like a series of lagoons, you walk along deckways and across bridges to get from one greenhouse (there are about 6) or studio to another.

One of their greenhouses is dedicated to growing strawberries. They have every other berry as well as apple, pear, fig and other trees growing in huge pots. They grow every kind of vegetable you can imagine, and then some.

We were with them for about an hour and a half, looking at their structures, their art projects, their home, their plants, garden art, candles they pour from molds made from their carvings from bone and other materials. I could barely follow half of what she was saying, as I looked at her pots and plants and how her irrigation system was set up and all that.

I told Wayne about my desire to see what lay beyond my view from the town of Tofino. He said that he had felt the same way in the years he lived there and then look what happened - he ended up living out beyond these past 20 years.

What a great visit, to an artistic couple whose art is also about how they live their lives in this place of isolation and breathtaking beauty. A chance to get to know, if briefly, some of the people who have made this far place home for so many years. They are not the only artists who live on float homes in the wilderness around here, but they may have the most extensive structure and certainly the most flamboyant.

Meanwhile, later that day, back in Tofino's waterfront...

Slipstreamed

In early August Howard, Maristella and I piled into the car and took the ferry to Vancouver. Off to see Bonnie Raitt in concert and also to meet up with Number 1 Son who was flying in from the east for a 10-day West Coast vacation.

I hadn't been to a concert in I don't know how long but when, last spring, I first heard she was coming to Vancouver I knew I had to go. My track record on actually following up on events I'd like to go to is pretty pathetic but this time I thought, "Enough of the "should do" and just "do". The last time I was in the same city as one of Bonnie Raitt's concerts was in Ottawa a decade or so ago when she was performing with Eric Clapton. I did not go to my everlasting regret. I had been out in Victoria for the summer and didn't know, until too late, about the Ottawa concert. This time that wouldn't happen again and I was first on line for my tickets.

Getting to Vancouver is easy and way pleasant. The ferry terminal in Nanaimo is 30 minutes away from our house, the boat ride across the Strait is about an hour and a half, then it's a 30 minute drive to downtown Vancouver. We stay at the Sunset Inn in the West End on a quiet tree-lined residential street a block from Davie Street and within walking distance to everything - Granville Island, downtown, Stanley Park. I think the building used to be an apartment building, so lots of space and balconies. Perfect. This particular weekend was hot and sunny and totally gorgeous and everybody was outside.

We arrived early at the concert on Friday night, which gave lots of time for people watching. I was immediately struck by the age of the audience - almost all of a certain vintage. Lots of (male) grey ponytails, and not a few canes, something I can now relate to this past week. It is always a shock to me to look in the mirror, which in this case was the audience of the full Queen Elizabeth Theater on this night. After an opening act by a Delta blues guy, out came Bonnie with her amazing band. All but one band member has been touring with her for decades - plenty of time to get really hot!

Bonnie Raitt reminds us that she is 62 and is very funny about it. Knows her audience. She says she hopes she'll be at it for another 10 years but jokes that they might have to widen the aisles in the theater to accommodate all the scooters. She doesn't appear to have changed a bit in 30 years - same hair, same clothes, same guitar playing, same voice. It was a fine concert, just fine. Colin James came out to jam at the end, the home town blues player appears to be a Vancouver crowd favorite. I'm so glad I went, I'm still feeling the energy of that live performance all these weeks later.

I listen to Bonnie Raitt a lot and have for many years. The new album, the first since many years, Slipstream, is great. Her cover of Bob Dylan's Million Miles is outstanding, is getting lots of air play on the blues radio programs, and will, I predict win awards.

As it turned out, music was to play a very key role in our subsequent travels in the weeks following the Vancouver weekend.

I love music stores, especially used CD music stores. I like working my way through piles of CD's, looking for something I don't know I'm looking for. I like the cover art, and I especially like the liner notes. Every now and then quite by chance as happened recently, I'll find something that really gets me excited, like the Oscar Brown Jr. CD. Recorded in 1972, I first heard it in its entirety late one night on CBC and promptly went out to get it. On vinyl I guess, though no one ever called it that, back in the day. It was a record, plain and simple. I like the tactile nature of a CD store, or that of my own collection of hundreds of CD's and I like the sense of surprise to find something, or rediscover something, something that doesn't really happen for me online. Although I do buy from Amazon often (along with books which is another story), I still like the stores.

On this trip to Vancouver, I went off to find a music store I knew on Granville Street, Charlies Music City. This was a large used and new CD shop that also had a huge DVD selection. It was there last summer and had been for decades - it is now closed. The big, multi-level flagship HMV music store also closed this past year, which didn't surprise a lot of people, but I still managed to find stuff there. This got me thinking about how I access music, how everyone else seems to be accessing music, and what I should do next. I don't download music for free. I decided to have another look at the iTunes store and found it's still the same crap website I remembered it to be, so I'll not be going in that direction, along with some of the Apple proprietary shit that goes on with the iTunes store.

I had also been looking for something to play music on. My wish list included, in one unit, a radio, a CD player, a dock for my iPad, and great sound. All in one, but I had been having trouble finding what I wanted.  One day Maristella and I were in a big chain electronics store (that is also now selling vacuums and dishwashers) looking at something else and I went looking for music machines. I couldn't find them. All I could find were cheap looking iPod docks. I asked the sales clerk about it. "What do people listen to music on?" "Their computers mostly", he replied. Maristella and I looked at each other. "Great sound quality" we both said at the same time. "Not".

That was the low point.  But later we found Ditch Records on Fort at Blanchard in Victoria and all was right with the world again. I left with a pile of CD's from their very eclectic mix, as well as a recommendation from the clerk where to go for my magic music machine - a real old-fashioned audio store, Sound Hounds on Pandora, with people working there who really love music and sound.  Got into a long conversation about music quality through CD vs MP3 or whatever that was pretty enlightening. I ended up buying a TEAC receiver, with radio, internet radio, CD player and iPod connection, with small but wonderful Boston speakers and it sounds great in the space we have for it. However when I returned home with this new music machine in tow, I soon discovered that my ancient iPod did not work on it, its technology too old for all this new-fangled stuff, so I had to go out and invest in a new iPod Classic and transfer my collection. More money to Apple.

Here's what I'm listening to these days on my new magic music machine - on CD:

Slipstream - Bonnie Raitt
Shape Shifter - Santana
Spirit Rising - Angelique Kidjo
Sin & Soul - Oscar Brown Jr.
Locked Down - Dr. John

Here's a list of someone's recommendations for some of the best new music (so far) 2012. Lots to explore.

My Summer Vacation v.2012

 

Today is September and Labor Day Weekend, so that's that. Summer is over. It felt so short, and indeed it was.  Real summer weather started this year on July 4th and lasted all of seven weeks. Now the days are noticeably shorter, evenings are cool, early mornings brisk. The pattern of shadows in the backyard has changed as the sun is lower in the sky. It's completely dark by 9.

It's been a busy summer and the time passed too quickly. After the fateful boat trip which grounded us, house guests arrived and we hung out at the house planning dinner, shopping for dinner, cooking dinner and eating dinner. Sleep, wake up and repeat. In between all this gorging on fresh seafood and local market produce, we did manage to squeeze in some walks, local exploring and a few road/boat trips, one to the unpopulated west coast of Vancouver Island and by contrast to both major cities - Victoria and Vancouver.

Now everyone has dispersed to their respective homes and this past week we've been on our own for the first time in over a month. Quiet time, decompression time. The relaxation has been fine but at the same time there is so much I am itching to do - clean out the GreenHouse and get it ready for  fall when the fuchsias come back in, put in a new bed in the back to be ready for spring planting, remove a few shrubs that are ill placed. We found a hydrangea growing in the front of the house which is in total shade and gets little rain as it is mostly under roof overhang. It is a large shrub but with such conditions it was no surprise when it yielded exactly one flower, which I promptly cut off and brought inside to enjoy it close up.  Perhaps it was planted by the same tenant who mistakenly planted hostas along that same front bed. Deer food. They munch on it all summer and leave their "evidence" on the lawn. Time for a deer-resistant, full-shade change of plantings. I also want to go for longer walks now that the heat of the days is no more, exploring new trails. I also plan to rearrange all the art in the house and take on a couple of decorating projects.

But I can't. Do anything. I've been sidelined by not one, but two different injuries to my back. The first happened while I was in bed sleeping - when I woke up I was in pain and couldn't get out of bed. I'm wondering if it has anything to do with 4 hours of spring cleaning (a little late) the day before and if that is the case I'll make sure it never happens again. The second happened 5 days later when I finally felt able to walk a little further and went off to pick blackberries. I ended up falling down a bank by the railroad track and hurting the other side of my back.

So these days I am alternating hobbling around the house and garden and lying on a chaise in the garden shading by a big orange hat and wrapped in a blanket. I read books and self medicate, stare at the sky and the top of the huge cedar out front and watch the bees in the garden that is now a riot of blue and purple flowers. Yesterday morning I got in the car to go to the Saturday market to pick up flowers and the Saturday papers. I had a hard time getting in and out of the car and once on the pavement shuffled my way along like everyone else in this geriatric town. Stiff and sore. My future flashed before my eyes.

I need to get better soon, so I won't push it. All those projects can wait. Next week Number Two Son comes to visit and we're off for a few days in Tofino on the west coast, a place for walking and hiking and kayaking and, uh, surfing. I'd hate to show up there pushing my new walker.