Gabriolan.ca

On Gabriola, we have serious problems with invasive plants. Broom, daphne, honeysuckle, holly, English ivy, blue iris — these are just a few of our problems, and they’re spreading at an alarming rate. They Aren’t From Here. They take more resources than they should, and steal nutrients and water that native plants should be getting. They threaten — and sometimes destroy — whole ecosystems.

Many of these plants started off in somebody’s garden, then got out-of-hand and escaped into the wild. And now? We may never be able to fix the resulting problems.

Given all that, I’m very concerned with the problems invasive plants cause on Gabriola, and I’m a huge fan of using native plants in one’s Gabriola garden. Native plants fit right in, after all, and offer beauty without fuss. They often need little water in the summer, for example. And some are stunningly attractive.

Last week in Nanaimo, this was my day-brightener: a whole seed rack devoted to native plants. Imagine! I came away with seeds for beauties like Blue Huckleberry, Ocean Spray, and Vanilla Leaf, all of which I love. I can’t resist seeing how they’ll do when sprouted from these seeds.

My only complaint? The full directions are inside the packet, so you won’t know that the directions say …we recommend sowing in late fall or early in the new year… until you’ve bought the seeds. In March. Well, whatever. I’m still inspired to see native plants getting the promotion they deserve.

(The seed rack full of native seeds is at Dig This in Nanaimo. The seeds are Native Canadian Seeds from NaturesGardenSeed.com.)

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases

Because it’s a fungus, that’s why.

(Apologies to John Keats.)

I’ve been wondering where the YOGI trail got its name, and stumbled across the answer on the on the Gabriola Land and Trails Trust site. The Cox Community Park History page says:

It was named the YOGI Trail because of its proximity to the landmark rock figure erected by the Youth Organization of Gabriola Island in the 1960’s along Taylor Bay Road at McConvey in what is now Cox Community Park.

Well, there you go. Of course, those of you who’ve been on the island for ages probably knew this already, didn’t you?

Tags: YOGI trail

Do you know about yurts? They’re round dwellings, made of fabric over a light wood frame. (See a variety of Yurts here on Google images.)

Traditionally used by nomads in places like Mongolia, yurts can be set up or collapsed within a couple of hours — just the thing if you want to move around a lot, yet still want something more solid and comfortable than a tent.

Yurts have become popular in North America over the last few decades: there are books about yurts, blogs about yurts, dozens of companies making and selling yurts, and so forth. Modern designs tend to use waterproof fabric (instead of the traditional felt) and various modifications and improvements. Some people use yurts as temporary accomodation, while others live in their yurts.

If you want a yurt, you can build your own, or buy a yurt from one of the many yurt companies around the place these days — the one in BC is Yurtco, where prices range from $5,545 to $17,725, depending on size.

What I’m wondering is:

• Are there any yurts in use on Gabriola?
• Suppose you have property on Gabriola, and want to put a yurt on your property and live in it. Will you need to mess with building permits or anything like that?

Tags: alternative housing, housing

As a child, I spent many summer holidays with an aunt who was fascinated by cemeteries and could hardly pass one without stopping to take a look. She would have loved the one on Gabriola. It’s a spot I enjoy visiting even though I don’t know anyone buried there and am not at all religious. It should be no surprise, I suppose — given all the creative energy on the island — that the cemetery is filled with beautiful and sometimes idiosyncratic memorials.

It was hard to pick just a few to include here. But here goes:

This wooden memorial has a tantalizingly ambiguous form. Is it a bird? Is it a fish? Or should I just enjoy the organic shape without trying to force it into some mental mold?

Continue Reading »

Tags: Gabriola Cemetary, history

Whalebone is in shadows in the late afternoon, but beautiful still. See those dots in the water? Most of them are seals — I counted sixteen of them, though they don’t all appear in this photo. They pop up, look around, pop down… and I can never seem to get a clear zoom shot of any of them.

Tags: seals, Whalebone

See those sticks, carefully wedged between the two trees? They make a nice seat. Then there’s the ring of stones on the ground in front of the seat — a campfire circle, it seems. A bit further along there are clothes draped on a tree. Pillows and bedding hang from a log, probably to air out.

I don’t know how many people live in the Gabriola woods, but apparently somebody’s been living here. And there. And elsewhere as well. I presume it’s a matter of necessity, not choice.

Tags: homeless

So, old cars. There are a lot of them in the Gabriola forest, you know, rotting away. Mostly they’re in pieces, and being gradually covered in moss and salal. They’re usually a bit off the beaten path. Sometimes car parts become trail markers or salal decorations, like this tire rim.

Of these old cars, there seem to be a disproportionate number of them that are turquoise. Really! Now, why would that be?

When I blogged about a previous turquoise wreck in the Gabriola forest, a commenter, SL, came along and said

This is a door panel (or what is left of one), off a 1955, 56 or 57 chevy. From what I can see it includes the inside window roller handle, door handle and the arm rest. Probably a 57 because the turquoise colour was more popular in 57.

OK, so how long do you suppose a car made in 57 lasted, before somebody finally wanted to get rid of it by dumping it in the forest? 15 years? And, if so, can we assume that dumping turquoise cars in the Gabriola woods was the 1972 thing to do?

I know, I know, you’ll tell me I need to get out of the house more. But I do, you see. And that’s when I find old cars in the woods.

Until now, I’ve done all the blogging on Gabriolan.ca, which is why each blog entry says Posted by Gabriolan right under the title. I plan to keep blogging as usual, but there will be a few guest bloggers appearing from time to time as well. Here’s what I’ll tell you about them: they’re fascinating people, and they know stuff.

I let them decide whether to blog under their real names or not. The first one wants to be anonymous, and has chosen the username Anon E. Mouse. The second one wants to blog under his real name, since he thinks you’d recognize him anyway based on his writing style and choice of content. I’m not sure about the third one.

Anyway, meet guest blogger number one, Anon E. Mouse, who says:

Continue Reading »

From The Guardian: The ‘waterless’ washing machine that could save you money.

Dry cleaning is set to become a domestic activity with a washing machine that uses 90% less water than a normal laundry cycle and could be available by the end of 2011. The device, developed by Leeds-based Xeros Ltd, replaces water with tiny plastic beads that suck up stains and its producers claim it will shift stubborn pounds from household energy bills as well. [continue]

If it works well and becomes widely available, that could help a lot on Gabriola. Our summertime water shortages are serious enough that we really think twice before doing laundry in the summer.

Tags: water, water shortage

You know those things people buy to cover the backs of their pick up trucks? I think they’re called canopies. (Example photos from Google images.) Most of them are rather ordinary.

And then there’s this one, which I spot at Folklife Village quite regularly. Look at that: all wood, reflects trees. Wow.

Here’s another invasive plant that’s taking over swaths of the Gabriola forest. Pretty isn’t it? Beautiful, in fact. But oh, such a problem!

At least when I find honeysuckle strangling trees, I can get in there with my clippers and free the trees in a matter of minutes. But this? I think I’d need knives and a lot of time.

Are Gabriola bees in trouble? The Vancouver Sun reports that 90 per cent of bee colonies have been wiped out on Vancouver Island. Since Gabriola is so close to Vancouver Island, it’s hard to imagine that our bees have fared much better.

If bees don’t polinate your veggies and flowers, and if bees don’t pollinate local crops, who will?

Here’s what the Sun article says:

Vancouver Island beekeepers are reeling from the worst commercial honeybee die-off in recent memory, with some estimating almost 90 per cent of colonies have been wiped out in the last few months.

Many blame a harmful parasite called varroa mites that has become immune to some pesticides, and fear the shortage of bees could affect spring pollination.

The amount of bees that have been lost is just phenomenal, said Sol Nowitz, a veteran commercial beekeeper who breeds bees and produces honey at the Jingle Pot Apiary in Nanaimo. It’s the biggest catastrophe to kill bees on the Island ever. [continue]

Tags: beekeeping, bees, farming

They’re not very obvious, these: I walked past this trail blaze for years before I finally spotted it. There are a whole series of arrows on Douglas fir trees, leading one through the Gabriola woods.

Of course, these days there’s a very clear path as well, but I expect that the arrows came first.

Tags: trailmarker

From physorg: Catalyst could power homes on a bottle of water, produce hydrogen on-site.

With one bottle of drinking water and four hours of sunlight, MIT chemist Dan Nocera claims that he can produce 30 KWh of electricity, which is enough to power an entire household in the developing world. With about three gallons of river water, he could satisfy the daily energy needs of a large American home. The key to these claims is a new, affordable catalyst that uses solar electricity to split water and generate hydrogen.

Using the electricity generated from a 30-square-meter photovoltaic array, Nocera’s cobalt-phosphate catalyst converts water and carbon dioxide into hydrogen and oxygen. The process is similar to organic photosynthesis, except that in nature, plants create energy in the form of sugars instead of hydrogen.

The hydrogen produced through artificial photosynthesis can be stored in a tank and later used to produce electricity by being recombined with oxygen in a fuel cell, even when the sun isn’t shining. Alternatively, the hydrogen can be converted into a liquid fuel. [continue]

How cool would that be for Gabriola?

Related

Continue Reading »

Are you concerned about pollution in the ocean and along the seashore? Does it bother you that it doesn’t seem to bother other people? Do you enjoy guerrilla campaigns and a bit of subversion now and again? Yes? Then go see the catch of the day at the Anti-Advertising Agency’s site.

Tags: pollution

Sorry about the snow this morning, kids. It happened because I thought about taking my snow tires off, and that always makes snow happen.

Those cursed telemarketers called me at 9:47 am yesterday (Sunday!) morning; I bet they’re targeting all of Gabriola Island. (See previous blog entry about them here.)

The call display said unidentified caller. The recorded message began Local septic tank owners… Good heavens. I want to know which slimeball company is behind this, because these morons keep calling and calling. So this time I did wait on the line, and I did press 1 for more information. That got me to more recorded nonsense. It’s all about some miraculous product for my septic tank, yadda yadda. They asked me to leave my name and number so they could call me back.

I hung up, and grumped about people who call before I have enough caffeine in my brain to be awake. And then I went to the CRTC’s website to see if this is even legal. Apparently not. The CRTC says that telemarketers must follow these rules when they call:

Continue Reading »

Tags: local septic tank owners, telemarketers, telemarketing

I am smitten with this fungus. Smitten! I obsess about it, because isn’t it gorgeous? Ok, maybe this photo doesn’t do it justice. See more photos here.

I wish a mushroom expert would arrive to help me identify the fungi I find in the Gabriola woods, because that would be ever so helpful. I think this one is probably Phaeolus schweinitzii (Fries) which is also called Dyer’s Polypore. (Because yes, one can use it for making dye.)

I thank God every day for what decay and fermentation produce. Decaying wood gives us mushrooms, and all manner of fungi. And then of course, we get into fermentation, with glories like sourdough, beer, and wine. Fermentation, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s have a hand for the good things produced by decay and fermentation!

(Sounds of applause fill the room. The curtain comes down. Gabriolan.ca takes one last sip of a fermented drink, and goes to bed. Gabriolan.ca dreams of fungi.)

Hey, do you remember the time when the person-who-shall-be-nameless cut some trees down, and caused one of them to fall across power lines? It took the power out for all of Gabriola.

Given things like that and Gabriola’s frequent power outages, I thought you might like to see this Youtube video of a branch on a power line. Bzzt!

• The little gnomes have gone missing from the Elder Cedar Nature Reserve. Did their owner come and reclaim them? Did somebody steal them? One wonders.
• Swamp lanterns are starting to bloom.
• Salmonberries are in bloom.
• The salal deep in the woods was dry one afternoon for the first time in months.
• Annoying weeds are back in one’s garden. But rhubarb is coming up, too, so that’s a consolation.
• Frogs are singing their hearts out in the swamp every night.
• Tour-buses are back. Expect tourist crowds any minute.

Most of Gabriola has been logged at least once. I understand the whole idea of cutting down trees and selling the wood for profit. What I don’t understand is why there are so many massive logs like this rotting away in the Gabriola woods.

This tree didn’t just fall over: it was cut down. And left to rot. There are so many like it, all over the island.

Tags: logging

This sign is at the top of the Stalker Road hill near Drumbeg. Every time I see it I wonder: is this the steepest bit of road on Gabriola, or is there something steeper?

Surely one of you will know, because you know everything about Gabriola. Right?

Tags: sign

Those who love Gabriola petroglyphs had best head over to Northwest Coast Archaeology to read qmackie’s latest blog post: Adams on Gabriola Petroglyphs. It begins:

One recent M.A. thesis I was really looking forward to reading is by Amanda Adams entitled Visions cast on stone : a stylistic analysis of the petroglyphs of Gabriola Island, B.C., from UBC Anthropology 2003, and available for free download here.

I was particularly interested to read the instructions she received on proper deportment when visiting the rock art:

Sites were visited in a manner and with a personal code of conduct adhering to Snuneymuxw wishes. Petroglyph sites were not visited at either dawn or dusk. A respectful demeanor was expected as was an open heart and mind (Bill Seward, Snuneymuxw elder, personal communication 2002). I was asked to give my full attention to the petroglyphs and their sacredness, not allowing daily distractions to interfere with my concentration on the ancient imagery. These expectations were met to the best of my ability. (18-19)

While many archaeologists are under the impression that there is little to no ethnographic information about petroglyphs, I have long felt that more likely such knowledge is private or highly privileged and not readily shareable. In this self-serving sense, it was gratifying to see that Adams was able to record some such information: [continue]

Tags: petroglyphs

From the Nanaimo Daily News: Kerplunks earn second consecutive Juno nod.

A group of Gabriola Island children entertainers (sic) have taken a second giant step toward becoming a household name in Canada. The Kerplunks were nominated for a second consecutive Juno Award and the odds of winning are better without stars like the Barenaked Ladies in the running. [continue]

(They mean children’s entertainers, of course. The Kerplunks are all grown up now.)

I don’t listen to much children’s music, but I do hope The Kerplunks win. They’re so sweet and friendly and fun that one can’t help but wish good things for them.

Tags: Kerplunks