May 05, 2018

Time for the May calendar girls

This was taken in the botanical gardens just behind the RV park.  Colin wanted some alone time with the girls before we put them to sleep.  Carmeh is certainly enjoying her unlimited supply of treats.  A very sad time for us.  Fortunately we have so many memories documented in the thousands of photos we had taken of them over the years.

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May 04, 2018

Another full day

Things are getting done and we are starting to look forward to leaving.  Today we picked up my sunglasses with the new lenses.  So nice to see clearly again and they gave me a great discount.  Colin also picked up his two pairs of glasses with new lenses which due to excessive scratching in just a few months, were no charge to us.  Just writing this reminded me to be sure to send flowers to the manager of Lake Country Optical.  We managed a few more errands before we had to rush home re two sets of folks showing up.

I took this about a week ago.

The tree is now full of green leaves.

We had someone come by late morning re needing to have our outdoor caulking redone on our add a room/aka as an Arizona or Florida room.  He mentioned to us that our wicker colour window frames which are guaranteed for life are turning white.  For that matter so are the windows frames by a different manufacturer on the main side of the house also turning white.  We think that it is totally due to the intense sun we get most of the day.  The window frames on the street side of the house are just fine.  I really don’t want to have to think about dealing with this problem 🙁

We brought a suitcase home for some Isla friends last month.  Janet is a blog reader which is how we met and she and her husband Grant came to the Isla several years ago and now rent a house there for five months of the year.  We do have a lot in common so it was great having them over for a late lunch this afternoon.  They live in Osoyoos, about 150 miles south of here, almost next to the US border.  They came to town to do some shopping and pick up their luggage.  They lost their dog on the Isla just four months before we lost the girls and we all still miss our pets.

Our posed photo with Janet and Grant before they left.  We were too busy talking during lunch and during our tour of Holiday Park in the golf cart to take photos.

We pass this magnificent tree whenever we go to our wee garden.

The perfume from the blossoms is wonderful.  The color is so very unique.

The person who had this plot was mixing in sawdust to help break up the clumps of soil.  I Googled that and depending on the type of sawdust it may be more of a detriment. I will have to ask her if the sawdust is organic or if it has chemicals in it.

We went to water twice today. These are my perimeter flowers coming up.

Finally back home about 6PM and time to relax. Looks like this lady had the same idea.

She sat there for a very long time and finally got up. All the while her partner was swimming just out front.  You can see from the waves that it was a very windy day.

Time for a stretch.

She slowly waddled toward our steps down to the beach but I think she saw me in the window and suddenly flew off to join her mate.

So ends a long day.  But it is only 8:35PM and now I get to relax.  Colin has been playing for the last 2 1/2 hours.  Tomorrow we have to make some final decisions re our trip.  Best to rest now.

Thanks for checking in.  Hope you all are planning to have a wonderful weekend.

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May 03, 2018

Not the day we planned

Colin left @ 6:45 AM this morning for his 8:30AM appointment in West Kelowna with Freightliner.  He got there 40 minutes early ( better to go early than get stuck on the only bridge during rush hour ) but they did not take the RV into a bay until 9:45AM.  This was to be a simple 3 – 4 hour appointment for our annual oil change as well as inspection.  Colin has created a long list in which he asks that many small items be checked.  Getting the RV in the bay late affected coffee breaks and lunch time.

Here comes Colin in our RV. Taken from our patio with me still in my nightie.  That is a nursery up above the RV.

While there he got a call from a client who was only 12 miles away who was in town from Calgary and wanted to do a walk through of his development which had won four Gold Tommie awards in January.  Colin created magic and with some photoshop the photos looked great.  In real life the house next door was still under construction and there was debris everywhere.  Each view outside of the windows involved construction but not in the final photos. This company had hired another photographer and basically had to toss all of his photos.  So they wanted Colin back to do more photography of the almost finished project.  Each home sells for 2.5 million but they are so close that you could jump from roof to roof.

There he goes.

Fortunately he was able to get a mechanic from Freightliner to drive him over and then was able to get someone else to drive him back to the RV.  Still it was not ready.  At the very end of the day Colin mentioned the fan noise we hear each time we run either the heater or the A/C.  This fan is an auxiliary fan who’s purpose is to cool the freon.  After an hour of diagnosis ( $$$ ) it appears to be that the thermostat is malfunctioning.  The part is only $20.00 and is on order and likely Colin can install it himself.

These ducks have been hanging around for about 10 days now.

Due to groundwater from last years floods, we are still not parking in our parks storage area as it is still being rebuilt.  The winter was so severe that they could not get the work done then.  Once we get back from Europe our two month alternate storage will be up and we plan to move the RV back to the Holiday Park storage lot where we will take our ICBC insurance off the RV and just coast with our Aviva storage insurance until we leave again the end of September.  Might as well save some money on the insurance.

Not certain if this is a small beaver or a muskrat.

We had all kinds of errands to run together this afternoon but it was not to be.  Colin never did get back until 6:00PM.  A long day for him.  I meanwhile got caught up on the business work and started to check a few things out for our trip.  Eventually I headed out to the bank to pick up the euros I had ordered.  I had to go the grocery store right next door to pick something up for our dinner.  I also mailed a USB to a client along with my first invoice of the year 😕

Our dinner the other night.  Thank you to Croft http://croftsmexico.blogspot.ca/ for this recipe found at https://www.themediterraneandish.com/greek-omelet-recipe-tomatoes/

Colin finally got the RV parked not too far away in our alternative storage area and I picked him up in the golf cart.  We had to go water the garden and sure enough it was dry.  Is it okay to let the surface get dry?  The peas still had some dark soil spots over them.  I noticed that a few of my flowers are sprouting.

It was delicious and so easy to put together as you can see at 9PM for a late dinner,

Not the day we had planned but things still got done.  Best of all the RV is ready to head south in the fall.

The soft color of the sun reflected in the south from the sun setting in the west.  Yes still lots of snow still to melt.  We have yet to decide what we are going to do before we head out on the 13th.  Likely put every thing up on the kitchen counters.

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May 02, 2018

Que pasa

We are scheduled to leave our home at 5:30AM May 13th.  It is going to take all of our energy to be ready on time.  So many last minute things to attend to, including business issues.  My last two medical appointments were today and Colin will complete his the end of June.  We are finally able to pick up our new glasses tomorrow.  So many simple things that are taking hours to sort out.

For instance I had installed Uber on my iPhone while in Mazatlan using my Telcel SIM card.  Not so easy to change it back to my Canadian Virgin SIM card.  As I am planning to get roaming on my phone to use in Europe I do need my current SIM to be working. and with Uber.  It took three days of back and forth and my having to prove that I had changed my SIM card to be able to set it up with with Virgin SIM card but fortunately that is good to go now.

The next thing was paying our Good Sam Roadside Assistance card.  It appears that they have changed their system over the past few months.  Rather than just having a regular Roadside Assistance membership we have had to upgrade to the Platinum membership.  Yes Platinum does mean more money.   Anyone with a Class A now has to pay more that they did last season, likely due to the fact that it costs more to get a Class A up and running from a roadside breakdown.   A new tax 🙄

Colin has been mumbling about replacing our 32″ 2006 TV.  The sound is the main reason for the change.

The other day as we walked through Costco we saw a 40″ TV on sale.  We had no plan on buying a TV that day but it was $300.00 off until midnight that night.  It is a Samsung Smart 4K TV on which we can also get YouTube with as well as Netflix.  The old TV had a silver frame around it as opposed to this one that is very sleek.  The height is the same and we are only 2.5 inches wider on each side.  The picture is excellent, sometimes I feel like I am inside the screen and the sound is fabulous.  We don’t watch a lot of TV but it was time for a change and it had turned out to be a good one.

Had some friends over the other night for appies and dinner.  As you can see we had a lot of laughs.

This guy provided our entertainment.  First time we have seen an outrigger kayak on the lake  He was moving fast.

Well it is 8:25PM and time to get our dinner going.  Looks like it is going to be a good one, BBQ tuna steaks.

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May 01, 2018

Our new endeavor

Last Friday it was time to tame our new garden plot.  It was going to take some young muscle to clean things up.

So I asked Walter ( on the left ), the owner of Greenworks Landscaping who looks after our yard, if he and Chris would please clear it for us.  They were able to fit it in for me between their other jobs.  Fortunately they didn’t have far to take all the wheelbarrows of foot long grass with deep roots embedded in soil as the compost was right next to us.  It all had to come out.  We really added to the compost pile.

As we were right next to the newly delivered topsoil ( that is provided for us by the park ) they added that onto our plot for us.  I will forever more refer to them as the Greenworks Miracle Workers.  It took us a while to figure out how to lay out the garden.

First thing Saturday morning we were at the nursery to buy some bamboo poles and tomato plants. I found out that I can’t plant the latter till the May long as  they say here.  Well we will be in Europe for the May long weekend so we will plant the tomatoes just before we go.   We figured out how far to space the rows and to leave a walking area between the rows.  It was cold work and we were getting drizzled on but we persevered.  So one row each of carrots, kale, swiss chard and peas were planted.  We planted all the beets that we had room for at the far end.

Colin is putting together a chicken wire screen for the peas to climb up.  I have also planted some flowers along two sides of the plot.

We plan to have two seedings of everything, one now and one when we get back in June. Here we have decided to plant a row of peas on either side of the mesh.  Despite being newbies I did soak the peas overnite.  We have a second mesh with room to plant more peas on either side of that in 4 – 6 weeks.

The before shot taken Friday afternoon.

The after shot taken Saturday afternoon.  In the foreground I have five cages waiting for my tomato plants.  Definitely a 24 hour miracle.  I can hardly wait to see those tiny green shoots poke through the soil.

The end of April full moon shot.

 

 

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