Gabriolan.ca

Associated Press reports Golfer’s swing sparks 25-acre blaze. The article continues:

Over the weekend, a golfer’s routine swing in the rough at the Shady Canyon Golf Course in Irvine, Calif., struck a rock. Not so different from the way you play, right? Only this time, the impact caused a spark, and the spark set off a blaze that eventually covered 25 acres, according to Steven Buck, General Manager of Shady Canyon Golf Course, and required the efforts of 150 Orange County firefighters… [continue]

Wow. As a non-golfer, I have to say I never would have thought of this – makes sense though, flint and steel operates on the same principle. Any rocks on the Gabriola golf course?

Tags: golf

The Songhees Nation isn’t far from Gabriola, so many of their traditions were probably ones practiced on Gabriola, too. On their website you can read about the Lekwungen summer of many years ago:

This is a time when the bountiful crops of the year (including the sweet camas bulbs and clams) have been gathered from choice, often family owned sites, and are waiting to be properly prepared for winter.

The fall harvests for shellfish and chum salmon have already begun. Though before turning attention wholly to this work, the land will be fired to cleanse and clear it for winter’s sleep.

The broad scale fires are purposely lit near the water and allowed to burn toward the hills. The flames move rapidly consuming only the driest and finest of fuels, dancing in eddies behind oaks and crackling through the open, wind-swept prairies. The blackened earth captures the sun’s rays during the day and keeps the soil warm. Together with the fall rains, the underground world of roots, bulbs, and seeds begin to reallocate their reserves and renew their structures. The earth is reclaiming the impacts of intensive human efforts. [continue]

I’m not usually that fond of calendulas, but this one I love. It’s in my garden, and I’ll be very careful to save seeds from this flower!

It seems to be wasp season on Gabriola now, so I got out our glass wasp trap the other day and set it up. Marvelously effective, though we did have only thirty or so wasps to murder.

Our wasp trap is boring compared to Matthias Wandel’s wasp sucking machine. That thing’s amazing!

Tags: wasps

If I had the ability (and workshop space) to build a boat, I might build one like this: the skin-on-frame Adirondack guide boat. Doesn’t it look fantastic? It would be perfect for puttering about in the waters around Gabriola.

Good thing arbutus trees are interesting, considering that we have a gajillion of them on Gabriola.

When another Gabriola blogger posted a closeup photo of arbutus entitled some trees, I thought now that photo wants a response. Here ’tis.

Maybe one day we’ll be able to use urine as an energy source for Gabriola. The Toronto Sun reports that Urine could be energy source of the future.

Discovery.com has more: Urine: A ‘Clean’ Energy Source.

Using a nickel-based electrode, the scientists can create large amounts of cheap hydrogen from urine that could be burned or used in fuel cells. One cow can provide enough energy to supply hot water for 19 houses, said Gerardine Botte, a professor at Ohio University developing the technology. [continue]

Who would have guessed? Until the technology comes our way, consider these blog posts from our archives:

• Men of Gabriola, your help is needed
• For your Gabriola garden — urine?

Uh-oh! What’s that, there on the beach, Gabriola? It has several names, like if you mess with that I will give you a bath, dammit!, and putrid, vile, smelly thing. To be more precise, one might say stinky, dead animal or rotting carcass.

If you were planning to go to Whalebone with your dog anytime soon, you might want to consider another beach instead. No words can describe how horrible this thing smells to humans, nor how irresistible it is to dogs.

In the Gabriola woods there are sometimes sparkly patches of slime on ferns and things. I’d surmised that slugs might be responsible, but why a patch of slime instead of a trail?

So, hmm. I guess this is why.

Related blog post: Slugs. Oh my! If you haven’t already seen the video there, go take a look.

Tags: slug

Are oyster mushrooms a spring thing, a fall thing, or what? It doesn’t matter on Gabriola, because we’ve got them through the year here, if you know where to look. In the cold they turn to mush, but if it’s not freezing, we’ve got oyster mushrooms somewhere in the Gabriola woods.

The leaf, it is not so small. The spider… hey! I thought we weren’t supposed to have bugs this big on Gabriola?

Tags: spider

After reading the Underwater power lines to Gabriola? post, Nick Doe sent us this text and photo:

A core from the BC Hydro drilling investigation at Brickyard Beach, August 2010. It comes from about 60 feet down. Gabriola’s bedrock is sedimentary rock (sandstone, shale, and conglomerate), which originated in the estuary of a large river, or rivers, flowing from the Coast Mountains. The mudstone core here has captured the deposit of wisps of silt and clay on the then seabed some distance from the land, and likely several hundred feet below the then surface of the sea. Apart from the science, what’s neat about such pictures I think is that they connect us so directly with events from so long ago. The silty-sandy layers in the middle are the result of the partial collapse of a submarine cliff of sediment that existed at the river mouth, much like the ones at the mouth of the Fraser River today. The collapse took may be what, five minutes, yet here we are looking at the turbulence it caused some 70 to 75 million years later. It would be another ten million years after this event before the many species of dinosaurs living at the time would be wiped out. Time, like space, is deep.

Click on the photo if you’d like to see a larger version.

Tags: Brickyard Beach, drilling, Nick Doe

In January I asked what’s this plant at the Gabriola Commons? I was wondering about the dead flowers on some bush, and what they might be. Gabriola blog readers came to the rescue and told me that I’d found some hardhack.

I meant to go back and see what the bush looks like when in bloom, but of course I forgot all about that. Well, no matter: yesterday, in the Gabriola woods, I found lots of hardhack. Pretty, isn’t it?

For more about this plant, see the Wikipedia Spiraea douglasii page.

Tags: Douglas Spirea, hardhack, Spiraea douglasii

The Daily News has published a rather odd article about Green Wharf.

Mudge Islanders are a step closer to local control of Green’s Landing Wharf.

Negotiations are underway between Public Works and Government Services Canada and the Regional District of Nanaimo to resolve the issue of upkeep for the only dock on Mudge.

Um, on Mudge?

Continue Reading »

Tags: Green Wharf

Oh, Gabriola. Every time I think I’ve seen all the strange and wonderful things you could possibly leave in the forest, you surprise me again.

(For more information about spiral triskels, see the Wikipedia spiral triskele entry.)

Gabriola’s fire risk is listed as extreme at the moment, which is enough of a concern. But then to hear that some stupid twirp of an arsonist set a newspaper box on fire…. well. What if you come across some just-started fire on your way home? (Find cell phone, hope it’s charged, call fire department, wait in horror for minutes until they come, watch fire start to spread in the meantime….)

Thinking about this the other day, I concluded that it would be an awfully good idea to keep a fire extinguisher in the car. But what fire extinguisher to buy, and where? I saw Rick, Gabriola’s fire chief, and asked him.

Get this: The Gabriola Volunteer Fire Department sells fire extinguishers. Get a five-pound fire extinguisher from them for 55.00. No taxes. Stop by the fire hall on North Road.

So that’s what I did, and this is my new fire extinguisher. Apparently it’s good for a fire extinguisher to be kept on its side and be gently sloshed around a bit as one drives, so that’s good. Fire extinguisher now lives next to hiking stuff and emergency chocolate supply in the back of the car.

Tags: fire, fire extinguisher

In one particular part of the Gabriola woods, I find spiderwebs like this dome-shaped one. What kind of spiders make webs like this, and what are they smoking?

Update: more webs like this have appeared, and I got to see what the spiders who make these webs look like, too:

Continue Reading »

Tags: spider

Driving along North Road, you’ve spotted that green box on one side of the Tunnel. But what on earth is it? I stopped to find out.

A sign on the box explains that it’s Well 197 in the Ground Water Observation Well Network. It adds that This instrument has been installed to collect hydrologic data to aid in the assessment of British Columbia’s water resources. It also notes that we can see data from this well at this part of BC’s Ministry of Environment website. Well, cool. Thank you, sign-poster people.

Sure enough, we can see the Hydrograph of Observation Well No. 197 Sec 16 North Road Gabriola Island, B.C.

According to this watery website, the inside of the green box probably looks like this observation well equipped with a digital data logger and pressure transducer inside. But wait, the box could have a Stephens Chart Recorder instead, I guess.

Apparently the newer data for Gabriola wells is here, but you have to wade through a disclaimer and slow-loading frames to get to it. On that new area of the site I learned that Gabriola’s other water observation wells are:

• Observation Well 194: Highways Yard, North Road
• Observation Well 196: Buttercup Road
• Observation Well 316: Oyster Way
• Observation Well 317: Wild Cherry Terrace

Why those locations?

Tags: aquifer, water

Did you see the drilling equipment down at Brickyard Beach the other day? According to the Daily News (and some Gabriola friends) it was test drilling for power-lines.

Contractors for B.C. Hydro wrapped up two days of drilling on Wednesday to see if powerlines feeding Gabriola Island can be routed underground.

With the lines nearing the end of their life, B.C. recently started looking at the possibility of moving the lines underground on Mudge Island and possibly running the lines beneath Northumberland Channel between Mudge Island and Gabriola. [continue]

Tags: BC Hydro, Brickyard Beach

I wonder if Gabriola’s kelp beds will re-establish themselves at some point. There’s an awful lot of kelp on the beaches these days, or maybe I just notice it more than I used to.

Our phone died, so the Executive Chef went off to town to get us a new one. I would have come back with a basic and boring phone, but the Executive Chef got an amazing one instead.

This phone makes technology worthwhile: It can block numbers, so annoying callers will be sent directly to the appropriate circle of hell, and I’ll never hear from them. It can block those people who identify as ‘private caller’ or some such nonsense, too. The phone can reject calls that come when I’m napping or in bed at night, hence foiling mother-in-law’s tendency to disturb sleep.

It can store numbers, and put those numbers in groups, like friends, family, delightful Gabriola people, annoying creatures, and so forth. Then – oh, this is the best! – it can assign different rings to each group. So now when the Executive Chef phones home the phone plays a symphony to announce that it’s my beloved.

It’s sad that one should need this kind of thing, really, but if this is what it takes to avoid telemarketing on Gabriola and other annoyances, so be it.

Tags: Whalebone

This is the dog’s most recent catch – a flat fish at Whalebone. Is it a flounder? It’s about 8 inches long, and all grey and boring on the other side.

I often wonder how they do things at the Gabriola Golf Course. Is it a typical golf course, using lots of chemical herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers to maintain the perfect fairway? Or does the management refuse to use chemical products in order to reduce the environmental impact of the course?

The New York Times published an article about an all organic golf course the other day:

Opened eight years ago, the club is thought to be the only completely organic golf course in the United States, its 18 holes groomed without the use of a single synthetic pesticide, fertilizer, herbicide or other artificial chemical treatment. (…)

With golf courses increasingly being criticized for environmentally unfriendly practices, the Vineyard Golf Club has become a petri dish for alternative maintenance techniques. Carlson has learned to kill weeds with boiling water and a natural foam cocktail and to remove moss with kitchen dish detergent, and he has transported microscopic worms from Iowa to attack turf-ruining grubs. He has disrupted the mating cycle of damaging oriental beetles with a strategically placed scent and has grown grass that he believes is more resistant to disease because it developed without chemicals. [continue]

Is the Gabriola Golf Course doing this kind of thing?

(You’ll probably need to register at the New York Times website if you want to read the full article from which I quoted. Or you can borrow a login and password from Bug Me Not instead.)

More information:

Continue Reading »

Tags: Gabriola Golf and Country Club, golf

Last fall I blogged about planting garlic. We’ve now harvested about 200 bulbs of garlic, so that ought to last us for a few months.

This here? These garlic cloves grew half way up the plants’ stems. How weird is that?

None of our Gabriola Garlic plants did this, but a garlic variety called Tal gave us quite a few of these oddities.

Tags: garlic