We just can't help ourselves

We continue to buy plants/flowers... I'm running out of buckets to put them all in (still have a few :D) In our defence, we had several large bags of potting soil left over from the last raised bed and we wanted to use it up.

Re-homed the plants we had in these and replaced with lovely flowers

Brad found this massive flower planter and had to have it

Brad's Mum bought us this garden planting stand and with everything planted now we decided to fill it too!

Re-homed the 8 Lemon Balm plants that were in this garden bed (as it is a spreader) into pots for the deck and replaced them with more Rosemary & Thyme, then added Spinach seeds. The hope is that this cooler shaded area will allow the spinach to thrive during summer but either way we will be planting spinach also in the fall.

My Zucchini ( I grew from seed) hasn't budged at all.

Amish Peas have cracked and are doing well

Kidney beans are doing well

Scarlet Runner beans are doing well

We went for a drive the other day which took us through the area where the forest fires were threatening our community. Its a mess and thats just the small bit you can see from the road.

The biggest take away from these pictures is just how fast Mother Nature recovers, the fields are filling in already. The fires in our area are still burning but are 'under control'.

Back at work and... NEWS

Tuesday we were back to work, I can't go anywhere without things falling apart in my absence...  ;)

The campground up the mountain has been overrun with, of all things, cows!

We saw at least 3 grown cows and 2 calves just at one site.

...and the smoke problem has escalated significantly while we were gone

You can barely see the big mountain on the left.

And you have to look REALLY closely to see Three Sisters in this shot.

Usually they loom large and you couldn't miss them for anything.

There are a couple of fires just north of our area but the bulk of this smoke is coming from the bazillion wildfires in BC.

LATEST NEWS

We have been offered and have accepted a new job. We will not be leaving this one until October and the new boss appreciates that we want to fulfill our commitment here. 

We will be the Campground Managers at Mowhinna Creek Campground on Salt Spring Island, BC. The current Managers wish to retire in January. We are pretty excited about this opportunity. It will be very quiet over the winter but the position is year-round and the island gets crazy busy during the summer months. I will have more to say on this once we get there, maybe before.

We have done plenty of research into the island but still have plenty more to do, there are so many things to see and do. The island is very self-sustaining it appears. There is a farmer's market of 140 vendors and to be accepted as a vendor you have to have made, built or grown the items yourself. The island has a population of 10,000 which triples during the summer. 

There are an abundance of arts/crafts folk on the island and the place has a 'hippie' feel, strong on environment and all that fufu without all the prissiness. From what I've read it is a very relaxed environment (too relaxed?) and only the tourists are dressed to impress. This works for us .

The only problem so far? There are no laundry facilities on the entire island and you cannot hang laundry at the campground.... thoughts anyone? I know there are some wash/spin machines but it still needs to dry somehow...

THE HOUSE SALE:

Our house sale did not close on Wednesday as expected, while disappointing its not a shock as nothing works properly in 'hell' - must be the heat. (See my point Anonymous commenter?)

So we are sorting that out. 

RESORT PROPERTY

Meanwhile we have also decided to sell our property in California. Yeah, yeah, I know...

When talking about going south this winter, we decided we didn't want to end up stuck in 'hostile' territory should Trump's rhetoric against Canada/ians get worse. This is the main reason we decided to look for a position in BC for the winter in the first place. 

We were planning to keep the property in California until we realized that Trump has 2 years left and will likely get a second term, leaving us paying for a site we can't use for potentially as many as 6 years. So, sell it we are. This sucks because we met some great people at the resort and we were really looking forward to seeing them again.

Suffice to say we are taking all this is stride. No kidding, it is never dull around here.