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?

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!

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

The federal agency has been trying for years to divest itself of costly maintenance and repair bills for all federal wharves.

Green’s Landing gives Mudge Island tidal access to nearby Gabriola Island (…)

Is that because the wharf is actually on Gabriola? Everybody else seems to think so. Maybe we should go see if that wharf has wandered over to Mudge while we were snoozing.

Here’s the Sounder’s latest article on Green Wharf: Green Wharf stakeholders have one year to find answers.

(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.

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

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?

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]

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.

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:

• Environmental impact of golf courses – Wikipedia
• Golf Courses Are Devastating the Environment – Organic Consumers
• Golf and the Environment – Beyond Pesticides
• Audubon Cooperative Sanctuary Program for Golf Courses – Audubon International

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.