Category: Garden Bay

These past few weeks I’ve been working hard in the front garden, removing the grass from the funny shaped areas shown in this photo taken from the roof. I defined these areas a couple of years ago and just let them go wild. My idea is to have meadow areas with perennial flowers and I was slowly adding plants. It became obvious that the grass was going to out-compete most other plants and so I decided to remove it before planting more seriously.

The house in Garden Bay has a septic system circa 1992. No plan of the drainage field was ever filed but I knew it was out front, and I knew the location of the septic tank and distribution box. A few days ago I noticed the soil around the D-box was very wet and decided to investigate. After removing the soil a puddle formed. Not good. So I called the pumper service and they concluded that two of the three drainage lines were blocked.

These past two days have been spent investigating and worrying about what to do. It will be an expensive repair and will be a major disruption to the front yard and garden. Today the owner of the septic company came to access the situation to then generate a quote. Fortunately he was sympathetic to my concerns and gave me a good feeling about the installation of a new leach field.

more to come as the project progresses …

A cool and wet June in Garden Bay is coming to an end. This is the disappointing June weather that I remember from when I first moved to BC. The garden is growing well with all the water but it saddens my heart to see all those beautiful flowers hanging on the ground.

We have been healthy and feel lucky to be living where the COVID-19 pandemic has been relatively contained. In early June we went to Powell River, ate in restaurants, and spent the night. In mid-June we travelled to Vancouver for the day to get haircuts and shop at Home Depot. This week we resumed playing soccer in Gibsons. Slowly but surely life is returning to normal.

After finishing the plumbing project I installed recessed lighting in the living room. The result is excellent and satisfying, but the job was messy (cutting holes in the ceiling) and uncomfortable (working in the cramped attic).

Next I repainted the guest bedroom. That involved moving all the furniture out, protecting the floor with plastic, repairing all the flaws in the walls and ceiling, masking, painting, clean-up, and finally moving back the furniture. Good work for rainy days.

It hasn’t rained every day of course, and rarely it rains all day. We’ve been to the cabin three times so far this year with the focus on completing the roof over the back deck. It’s almost done and there’s no hurry. We are also going to construct a new outside shower stall and I have been staging the materials at home where it is easier to work.

I have been spending much of my time in the garden, which is the whole yard. Much of it is cultivated and the rest is rather wild as I have a laissez faire policy outside of the cultivated areas. This year the wildness got away from me and I have been working to get it back under control. I’m almost there! The weed policy has been updated to eliminate certain plants that are not charming enough the tolerate. I really enjoy being “in the weeds” because it gives me time to evaluate the garden and ideate improvements.