Life's a beach

It's good to take time out and enjoy a break at the beach.  Where I live, I'm in the shadow of Lummi Mountain, so even on a nice day, the sunshine only lasts in my yard until afternoon.  That's why we are so happy to have friends over on the "sunny side" of the island.  That way we can chase the sunshine!

Here's some photos from our latest trip to the beach to run the dogs and watch the sunset with our good friends Mark and Aubrei and their pooch Onyx.

Wet Feet! Those rubber boots couldn't keep the "big wave" out.

Ben finally can find real agates!  No more sugar agates!

Mark even found an agate! 

Onyx loving the beach

Brr!  You just can't keep Echo out of the water!

He's cold and regretting that swim now!

Normally Ben is the first one ready to leave the beach, but now that he's mastered agate hunting, he was way down the beach when we were ready to leave.  Echo on the other hand never wants to leave the beach, but this time he was so cold that he took off without us to wait at the car!  When you live on an island, life's a beach.

P.S.  Wow!  I received another Sunshine Award!  Thank you Threads Of Magique

Spring Work Out

It feels so good to be outside in the sunshine and I'm already feeling my muscles growing too!

My easiest compost ever bin last summer

Remember my post about the easiest compost ever?  I swear by this method!  Everything from fern fronds & grass clippings to egg shells & cilantro stems make it into my compost bin and magically with no mixing or moving, I get a tube full of black gold each spring! 

Now that my tube of compost is ready for use, I just pulled off the wire frame to harvest my black gold. Theres always a layer at the top that is only partially decomposed, but that's ok.  This layer along with all the worms inside of it is removed and placed in the bottom of the empty wire bin where it will jumpstart this years compost.  All the enzymes and microbes that aide in decomposition are already in that partially done layer.

I'm thrilled that I wound up with a lot of ready to use compost!  It was about 8 wheel barrows full of 100% free organic soil amendment! And with no backbreaking work or constant turning.  I just stack it in, water it when it's dry and let mother nature do her thing.  You just can't beat that! Composting is the epitome of the old saying "waste not, want not".

Beautiful black and rich.  Last years waste will

feed the plants that will feed us this year!

If you've been following my spring garden frenzy, then you know that I've run out of room in my garden beds for planting anything else.  Soon Ben will be building me some more recycled beds and bringing home a few yards of 4 way organic soil to fill them, but the sun is shining and I just can't wait.  So I took a look around the yard to see what I might repurpose for planting in some odd shaped areas of my garden where buiding beds would be difficult.

First I found the top half of an old plastic compost bin.  The bottom section had split open and was not really good for anything (that's why I'm not using plastic for my bins).  It seemed like a great candidate for a garden container.  I drug it down to the garden and found a spot for it, next to my ugly but useful recycled laundry bin planter.  I filled it with compost, leveled it out and planted another type of carrots inside.  It might not be pretty now, but it will be gorgeous when those carrots come up!

 

You never know what might make a good garden bed. 
This container lived it's first life as a compost bin,
now it will get a second life as a carrot planter!

I still had loads of compost, so I took the wire mesh tubes from last years failed potato tower experiment and carefully cut them in 1/2 to form 6 good sized containers.  These would fit perfect in the sloped corner of my garden.

 

This wire tube tower for potatoes was too tall last year.

 

That's more like it!  Now these shorter tubes I can work with. 

Each tube became 2 - 18" tall planters.  These are perfect for this spot because I can mold the shape a little bit before filling them.  Then I found some old plastic woven bird seed bags I've been saving for a project and cut those down to line the bottom of each of these new planters.  I cut drainage slashes in the lining and got to work filling each plant tube with compost.

8  loads full!  I highly recommend a 2

wheeled barrow like mine for ease of use.

Eight trips to the back yard with my wheelbarrow and I had created a whole new planting area from recycled and repurposed items I already had!  I love recycling in the garden!  

The mesh planters are full and ready
for seeding.  And now a wasted space in my
garden is going to be a productive.  Yay! 

I decided to go ahead and try potatoes in these again now that they are a bit smaller.  I have several different types of spuds that have sprouted in my cupboards that should work. I placed 3 little papita starts in each tube.  I don't know if they'll all grow, but at least some of them should.  I know potatoes grow in compost bins all the time.

Red, white & russet potatoes from the kitchen get

replanted here  along with an onion and some garlic

centers that need planting.

Oh I almost forgot, each day when the sun is out I'm opening up my boat/greenhouse to get some direct sun on the soil and the plants.  I've also placed my jugs of water strategically throughout to absorb the heat of the sun durring the day.  In the evening I'll recover the boat and those recycled containers of water will radiate the warmth back into the greenhouse. 

Those empty jugs from our ceasars and screwdrivers

become passive heaters in the greenhouse

I bumped into my neighbor Leslie as I was out enjoying the sun. She's also been hard at work cutting back her fern fronds and generously offered them to me for my garden mulch. Thank you Leslie! I think I may have enough fronds to fully line the non-growing areas of the garden now! It sure makes the garden area look nice too. A few hours of work in the sunshine and what a payoff!  I love it! 

Saturday in the garden.

I know many of you are still buried under the snow storm.  Maybe a little more about my organic gardening will tide you over until you can get out and dig in your own dirt.

We've had an extremely warm winter this year.  Great for our heating bill, but not so great for the nearby winter olympics in Vancouver BC.  We're all in more or less the same weather area and the shortage of snow up north has kept us from freezing down here.  Anyhow, I've been watching the signs of spring for a few weeks now.  I held off on making any plantings because the calendar kept telling me "not yet Christi, it's just too soon."

Today I finally told that calendar to shut up!  It was a beautiful sunny day and by jove I was going to get in my garden to plant something!

With my seed stash in hand, I headed down to our little enclosed garden and threw open the gate then I got straight to work.  I pulled open the plastic cover on my boat garden and cleared out a few small weeds, cleaned the dead growth off the herbs, pulled out the brown leaves from the strawberries and planted 2 short rows of lettuce.  1 row is "salad bowl" and the second row is a mix of romaine with red and green leaf lettuce. 

The boat garden revealed - garlic, strawberries, fennel, lettuce and carrots

Next I focused my attention on an empty bed that held multi-colored carrots last year.  It is really important to rotate your garden crops to keep down on disease spread, so this year I planted 2 rows of my home grown organic onion sets and 3 intesively planted rows of peas from some seeds that my mom saved for me from her garden last year.

Now I was on a roll!  I still had 2 open beds ready for planting, so I went back through my seed stash and found a few more candidates for an early spring planting.  These beds grew my lushious tomato crops last year, so this year it would need to be something else. 

I decided 1 pea planting just won't be enough for me, especially since last years peas were devoured by our local deer (before we got the deer fence up).  I found a packet of Gray Dwarf peas in the mix.  These are really good.  You can use them as pea pods or as green peas, so I planted 1/2 of this open bed with the gray's, the other half I added 3 short rows of Olympic spinach, 3 short rows of Gormet Mix radishes and 3 plantings of Brussels sprouts.  Yummy! 

It doesn't look like much now, but in a couple

of months this intesive planting will be in full

production!

Feeling good about my progress, I decided to leave the bed unplanted for just a bit longer.  I threw the plastic cover back over the boat garden and called it a day.  Boy it sure was nice to get out there and get something new in the ground.  I'm glad I left the 1 bed empty, so that the next time I get the urge to plant I've got a whole bed ready for me!

The times they are a changing

And our island life may be about to change in a big way! 

I live in a small island community in Washington State.  I've been coming to this island my whole life, in fact, my mother went into labor with me here many years ago.  For my lifetime we've had a small 20 car ferry, the Whatcom Chief, that has run a short span from Gooseberry Point to Lummi Island. 

That may be all about to change.  The ferry landing on the mainland side is currently on Lummi Nation land, and there is a negotiation going on between the county and the tribe to determine if the ferry landing will stay on Lummi Tribal land or if it will move, possibly to Bellingham.  The current lease is expiring on February 14th and as of today there is still no public announcement of a resolution to the negotiations.  

So, today our ferry took a test run into Bellingham which may be our temporary solution if they haven't worked out a new lease.  I thought it might be fun to have some photos of the Whatcom Cheif on this new route. 

Going, going still going, she has to run a long way before making the turn into Bellinham Bay

Here she is heading to town.  They got lucky with a beautiful day for a test run, but this long trip could be scary on a stormy day. 

The county crew checking the dock fit for the Victoria Star

Here's the Victoria Star, a passenger only ferry, testing their fit on the dock.  I haven't heard anything official, but I assume there will be some supplimental passenger only runs to Bellingham.

That's Bellingham way off in the distance. 

That's Gooseberry point in the background

Here she is on her run back from town a couple hours later.  This is what we'll be seeing from the deck of the cabin if the route goes permanent to Bellingham.  You can see in the photos that Gooseberry point is a whole lot closer than Bellingham.  The run across to our current ferry dock is about 7 minutes.  The run to Bellingham is about an hour or more depending on the weather.

I'm not sure how this change will affect us.  We already try to limit our trips to town and we really love our life here on Lummi Island.  Hopefully we'll be able to adjust and adapt to whatever the final outcome of this ferry situation is.

No sense in worrying. We'll just have to go with the flow

~Christi

Silent Sunday

Still on house arrest with my cold.  Don't want to spread it around.  Movies, tea and Theraflu - my company for today. Here's a few nice shots taken at the ferry landing, wish I could be out enjoying the day.  Sigh.

Looking north to Canada

A Lummi crabber pulling pots

Looking west toward Mt Baker

Stormy days

Brr!  Stormy and cold, but this view is always beautiful!

A storm can be a gorgeous thing.  I mean yeah, it's a pain when the power goes out and tree limbs form an obstacle course on these narrow island roads, but mother nature can slow down your normal pace and "force" you to have a beautiful day!

After we got the fire burning in the woodstove and made sure the generator was ready for action, we jumped in the car to take a tour and see if there was any damage around the island.  We lucked out at our home, no trees down, no big limbs down, just dancing trees on the hillside.  So pretty!

Not all of our neighbors were so lucky.  Down the road a piece, a car was completely covered by a large cedar tree.  The car took some serious damage.  Thankfully no one was hurt!  Hopefully their insurance will take care of the costs.   

We did the bloop, noting all the new downed trees and such. Then driving home we got stuck in an island traffic jam!  Less than a mile from home we saw a line of about 6 stopped cars.  That's odd!  As we pulled up to the end of the jam, we could see a line down across the roadway and a concerned neighbor was flagging all traffic in both directions to stop.  The worry was this line could be live still.  Yikes!  

We turned the car around and headed down to the Beach Store Cafe.  They've got a generator!  So we sat down and watched the Whatcom Chief being beaten up by high winds and very large waves.  After a nice meal we made a stop in at the Islander to check if anyone had reported what was going on with that line down in our neighborhood.

Turns out it was a communication line and not power, so we were clear to head home. We pulled up and I looked over into the garden.  I had been concerned that all these gusts would blow the cover off of my green house, but no.  She held through 90 mile gusts!  

A peek into the greenhouse and everything is

doing fine! Looks like we will be having fresh 

organic garden lettuce for Thanksgiving

We stoked the fire, started the genny and broke out the dominoes!  All in all it turns out we had a great night.  It's funny how a little change like the cable/power going out can turn into such a lovely evening spent together.

Dem Bones!  I got whooped at the game, 
but we had so much fun playing.  
No TV, no computer, just good company 
and a little background music!.  

Island life: Finding community

Rural living is for me! I love my semi-reclusive lifestyle here on Lummi Island. The longer I live here, the more I love it!

Neighbors helping neighbors!

After the summer ends and the vacations are over, we are a small community of around 800 full time residents. Although I don't know everyone, I recognize most when we cross paths at the beach, the ferry line, or our local store, The Islander.

Waiting on the ferry can turn into a visit with a friend

Everyone waves hello when passing by and a quick trip to the Post Office can easily turn into a 20 minute visit with a friend or neighbor. I imagine this is what life in early America was like when towns were smaller and neighbors weren't just the strangers that live nearby.

Here neighbors become friends easily. Here if you have your hands full, someone will offer to assist. Here if you're walking from the ferry, someone will offer a ride. Here there is a small town feel with open hearts and minds.  Here neighbors pitch in to recycle aluminum through the Grange and raise money for programs like the Dolly Parton Imagination Library which provides island children a hard cover book each month.

I remember living in the city.  I used to enjoy the hustle and bustle and the annonimity of it.  But then again, there were those times when I would look around me and see sooooooooooooo many people and realize how odd it was that I didn't know a single one!  I even lived in my suburban Seattle neighborhood for more than 5 years and only knew 2 of my neighbors.  How strange and lonely that seems to me now.

Traffic! What traffic?

Even a passby on the road can become a quick visit with a friend and neighbor.

I've lived in a lot of different towns and cities over the years, but always had a yearning to live on this island where I'd spent my childhood summers. Now that I'm here and living the dream, I'm even happier than I could have imagined.  I've found community. I've found home.

Did I mention its also BEAUTIFUL here?

Here's the Willows Inn's page for live sunset cam for more beautiful views from the Island.