I set my alarm and had plenty of time to make the 8:50 ferry to catch a 10 o'clock meeting in Sidney. I had decided to take Scout along thinking I would drive down, put the car on line and then walk him around 'til it was time to board. At 8:15 we drove down to a completely empty parking lot. Hmmm. According to the posted time schedule that covered Sept 06 until July 07 (!) the 8:50 was really a 7:50 or a 9:50 but certainly not the convenient 8:50 I needed. In what can only be deemed a blossoming change in attitude, I shrugged my shoulders. Welcome to the joy of island living.

I was awake, dressed and had hiking boots in the trunk so why not explore the island's southeast appendage and the only provincial park on the island. Translate, I could let Scout off leash and not fear a sheep farmer would mistake him for a wolf and shoot him. You think I am joking? You can't shear a dog and use his fur and you certainly can't sell him for $5 a pound, making him expendable if he wanders within 50 yards upwind of a farmer. While Scout's nappy haired body used to elicit questioning glances from 5 year olds who would often ask if he was a lamb,

it is now shorn short exposing the long snout of a vicious killer.


Since it was so early, and so the month of March, we had the entire place to ourselves. I took this video in the hopes it would continue to build the chain of evidence that I have not, in fact, lost my mind.


We came home, delightfully tuckered out and settled in for a little reading, writing and cooking. The sky was mostly clear but the cloud covering was starting to crawl over the ridge. I shot this video less than an hour after waxing poetic with Ingrid about the big blue sky.


It carried on like that for a couple of hours and left the entire forest covered with an inch of snow. We went for a short late afternoon hike and I remembered how much I love the crunch, crunch, crunch of fresh snow under hiking boots.

We wandered up near our neighbor Neil's compound and discovered a little shack of a building with smoke coming out of a chimney. The splashing confirmed what I had already suspected, Neil is a man who knows what matters. I can't help but wonder if the gift of homemade soup might lead to postings about bathing in a warm little shack amid the snowfall and cedars.

PS. Beware the daikon rotting from the inside out and remember that sometimes the vegetables in the store's bargain bin, aren't.