A Spot of Nature

We were up on Orcas this weekend, Ian, me, Spackle, and our friend E and his dog KD. Hoover went to the dog spa for the weekend, and he literally screamed and pulled against me, trying to get back into the playground with the other dogs, when we went to pick him up today. Of course, once we were outside and he saw his car and his big dog, he had a complete reversal of attitude and tried to jump in. Even though his legs grew something like four inches in length in the three nights he was gone though, he didn’t make it and crashed back to the ground. He’ll make it soon, though, and then watch out.

Anyway, we went up because E had the brilliant idea to plant some nut trees on our land, and we thought we’d maybe add a couple tasty tidbits of our own. We ended up with two walnuts, three chestnuts (one called “Colossus”, which is just a cool name for a tree. Except if you’ve planted it in your city back yard.), and two cherries, to add to our plum, pear, and maybe apple that seem to have lived through a previous tenancy. I left the boys to dig the holes—seemed like a manly job—and I hiked almost ½ mile away to the stand of invasive Scotch broom and worked on pulling that out. Note: even with the brilliantly designed Weed Wrench (hard not to call it the “Weed Wench”), Scotch broom takes a long time to remove. I worked for maybe three hours, and took out one garbage bag-sized pile of plants. If only this were even remotely how much Scotch broom is living on that hillside. It’s not in bloom yet, though, so that’s good.

We stayed at the North Beach Inn, which accepts dogs (only two—another reason to send Hoover to the spa), and has a spectacular view of Patos, Sucia and Matia Islands. Our little cabin was about 50 yards from the water and a long, quiet, stony beach with lots of driftwood logs. Not surprisingly, Spackle was either damp or soaking wet most of the weekend. KD stayed dry except when she rolled in something S M E L L Y, and had to be forced into a bog to clean off. Which actually helped.

Ian and I forgot our cameras but E had his, so I’ll try to post some pics in a couple days when I get them. In the meantime, I leave you with a view from Turtleback Mountain onto our outhouse, snapped by friends of friends taking advantage of the new public trails on the new conservation land.