I have written and inferred that things are slow and verging on routine, mundane and all-too-ordinary right now. No adventures! Chores are the highlights. And that is true. But, remember, chores and routines in paradise aren’t all that bad. I was thinking about what we have been up to since the last post. We have still been busy.
We dismantled and recycled the wood from our big marine cradle, the one we used to store a ‘spare’ boat on (I will then use some of that wood to improve our marine ways down at the lagoon). We ordered and received (and carried) a bunch more wood soon to be employed in the construction of a small storage shed up by the house. And we hauled it all up the hill on the highline.
My Wacker miracle genset conked out on another chore and I spent hours on it and fixed it. Then, carrying it back to put it in place, it fell over, the oil ran into the top of the cylinders and I had to ‘go at it again’. A couple more hours, a thousand pulls and it all started up again. One step forward, two steps back. All on irregular ground.
And we worked the garden, of course – tis the season. And the water system that had been working like a charm quit on us and so Sal-the-intrepid-creek-climber went up the creek to fix it. And then she conducted further investigation along the entire line when it still did not run – but, after a bit of sleuthing, she found the errant valve and that is now all back in order. Plus she snagged a log and pulled it in.
Of course, community work continues, too. Sal worked the post office, did yoga, distributed the food and still had time for a few ZOOM meetings on other projects (like gathering/recording stories from the old residents). We run the home care program, too. And I picked up the doctor for his monthly visit. I had a few ZOOMs, as well. Helped a neighbour or two. Putzed about in the workshop. Still seem to ‘consult’ a lot.
Spent the odd ten-minutes now and again staring at the empty blog screen.
Socializing is not back on but there is some. Those vaccinated and isolated and masked come by. We go to others. One friend brought us a fish. People gather – a bit. It is reduced but it is feeling OK.
We drove the island the other day in our new-to-the-island vehicle. That was kinda fun but the old AWD is a bit low to the ground so I will be jacking it up an inch or two. There’s a new challenge.
The Commercial prawn season came and went in a week. Good ol’ DFO opens up an area for ‘fishing’ based, theoretically, on healthy early sampling. But, of course, the sampling is contracted out to prawn fishers so the reports may be a smidge suspect. Still, the real proof is in the presence or absence of the commercial boats once the season opens. If they stay, they are catching….if they leave, they are not. They stayed a week. They moved around. They left. Conclusion, DFO has managed the prawn fishery here as well as ever. ‘Fish ’em til they are gone or so bloody reduced in number, the area is no longer producing.’ Man, they got some kind of geniuses in DFO, don’t they?
So far, summer boat traffic is greatly reduced. It is still only mid-May but typically the first week in May is the beginning of the tourist season. It was NOT last year and, even tho it is likely to be busier in 2021, I suspect that this will be another ‘down’ year. I am OK with that.
We had fewer whales last year. We have had none so far this year. All that may be an indication of further climate change. Or maybe not. Hard to say but, another indicator is the Arbutus tree. Seems they are dying rather alarmingly in the southern Gulf and, to be fair, ours don’t look all that robust either. Fewer Hummingbirds for us, too. Fewer urchins, fewer prawns, fewer, fewer, fewer…..
The other shoe? I dunno….I mentioned last post that I ‘felt’ that there was another shoe to drop and listing the examples of ‘fewer’ suggests that it may just be those observations leading me to feel that way. Fecundity, fertility, reproduction, growth……I guess I am seeing a bit less evidence of all that and thus the gut-feel…….but it doesn’t make it so…….
These are clearly not the heady days of scootering Thailand, writing novels or doing big projects. I am not getting run over by boats, chicken-busing El Salvador or otherwise hurting myself either. No blood being spilled. Nothing broken or damaged requiring medical attention.
This is good. This is very good. Dear diary; ‘I am happy’.
Our Off the Grid Home 
Weird our arbutus are thriving! The disease we had for years seems to be gone!!
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Good to hear. Ours seem ‘meh’. And Victoria is losing them by the bushel. But, if recovery is possible, I am OK with that.
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Or not enough rain? We have had a lot of dry years, which has reduced the level of ground water to an alarming level. Trees are dying because of this. Now we have had rain the last 3 weeks on and off, so maybe we are returning to “normal” a little bit. Although it seems that when it’s raining, it’s raining harder on a shorter period, with lots of thunderstorms (bit tropical like). So climate is definitely changing! Give it a few more years and we no longer have to fly south to have hollidays on sunny beaches, Spain in our backyard! Don’t you kinda miss Trump a bit? At least you had lots to be worried about or get angry at another of his crazy tweets 🙂
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I confess that, if Trump is not in the main news feed for say a week, I am inclined to look for him. He is fascinating in his grotesque and bizarre way – like the train-wreck that was his administration. The New York Times published a piece on his last four years described as Machiavelli meets the Three Stooges. They write that it was not only ignorant, stupid, bigoted and confused, it was also fractured and without any real direction. Trump was the worst president in US history and yet, and yet, he had and has maintained some kind of weird appeal to the ignorant, fearful, bigoted masses which unbelievably number around 70 million!!
That is a HORROR SHOW in itself!
I am actually relieved that he is NOT in the news so much but, as you point out, I am occasionally curious as to his current situation. I would be so happy to see him go to jail for a very long, long, long time – or a short one made abruptly shorter by an angry big boy in the ‘yard’ called Leroy.
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Things are definitely not normal, Dave. Did you listen to the Guardian interview with Dr Shanna Swan about the decline in men’s fertility? This is problem not limited to our species alone.
After drought, floods and now a mouse plague here, Aussies will be lucky if we can feed ourselves, let alone be the food bowl for the rest of the world. The latter description is a piece of marketing that has been flogged to death.
I hope the SC2 reproduction rate is going down in your part of the world? We are fine here with borders shut, except for coal and gas being shipped out.
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Sorry to hear about the drought, floods, mice and pandemic – enough for an apocalypse movie in itself. But I am glad you wrote to confirm. It is not so much that we are in the End of Days so much as there are trends, hints, threats and little outbursts of it. Signs, omens, feelings, intuition keep popping up….that kinda thing. It feels as if another shoe is about to drop…..
“What to do?”
No idea. Build inventory of something useful, make sure everything is working (especially a bug-out vehicle), plan for an escape and a place to escape to…..but that kind of planning is carrying the feelings a bit far. It doesn’t feel as bad as that. Not yet. All I can really say is, once the little hairs on the back of your neck go up, don’t hesitate. Is there a remote water hole in the great outback a few hours from home with no one around it and only you and your 4×4 can get there? If so, keep it in mind.
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I think from now on, we will have to “on standby” always, if not for another pandemic then drought, floods or blackouts in winter. I think I’m going to buy a woodstove, when nothing else is working, at least we will have heat and a place to cook our meals. Funny what civilazation has brought us!
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Staying alert is good, of course, but history has shown that we human beings don’t usually make a move until the last minute when virtually all doubt has been erased. We want to cling to home and hope, I guess. Since I grew up a vagabond, poor and always on the move, I do not have as much investment in ‘home’ as many. I could leave in a heartbeat from virtually any previous home I have had. The irony to that is that this home OTG has been and is the best home for me NOW and it has developed a magnetic pull on me, too. I would not want to leave even if I should. Still, the hobo in me would make moving familiar at the very least. A wood stove is largely symbolic without a source of wood, a chainsaw and the gasoline to fire it up. All doable, of course, but that, too, needs planning and preparation. Poor people out here (the truly marginal) have been known to partition off a large portion of their home with plastic sheet and reduce the space-to-be-heated to something smaller (tent-like) that a small stove can handle easily. Less wood used, too.
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I’ll keep looking, Dave. After the mice plague. Mice freak me out. I’m going to clean up the yard today and to try to cut down on mice habitats. The numbers are increasing where I live.
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I have to say, a mouse has never scared me although I tend to associate them more with cartoons than real life. When we get them, it is usually just a couple or sometimes a few more. A few traps and they are gone. Having said that, the image of a carpet of mice flowing across my yard in my direction does kind of FREAK me out. So, I shared that with Sal and she said half-way through my description….”AAAAAaaaaaaaaarghhhhhh, no more. Don’t say anymore. OMG that is the very worst! The worst!!!!.” So, I guess numbers kinda act exponentially on phobias.
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I always have a supply of wood to last me at least 1 winter. recently, I have bought a bushcraft knive, a firesteel and a small axe….maybe my subconscience is telling me something? these are strange times indeed!
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I waxed my truck today.
Rain predicted on Monday.
One of the wetter Springs in a while it seems.
It’ll look good for two days at least.
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A veritable symbol of readiness, you are!
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