Summertime Picture Post

So, where has the Witch been for the last month? Well, I’ve been a bit of a beach bum. Yes, you read that right. I purchased a new bathing suit, a bikini no less, and we have been going to the shore every chance we get. Even I, who is deathly afraid of the water (there are CRABS in the water, you know!) have been in for a swim. We have just been in the water, on the beach and under our umbrella while the winds were blowing so hard I literally had to hold on to keep it from blowing away! But it has all been fun and I’m loving it, when we get any sunshine that is. I even had a wardrobe malfunction with the new suit (Hubby was surprised) but sorry there are no details I’m going to share.

Here's me trying to keep my beach umbrella from blowing away again.

Look at my brave Hubby, out there wading amongst the CRABS!

So now you know why the Witch has been derelict in her blog posting. I decided the summer is too short to waste inside on the computer so it’s off to the beach we go. Well, okay, we have also been busy with the gardens, and of course the MOTHER!*//%** gazebo. What’s that Hubby? It’s almost finished? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha… what’s that?.. oh… you were serious… sorry!

Anyway, for now, I’m going to leave you with a collection of pictures which I hope you all enjoy. They are just a random collection from the past month or so.

Also, we are trying out a few changes to the design of the Witch’s Island so please be patient as we gear up some new stuff. Let us know how you like them.

Enjoy your day everyone, I’m heading to the beach again and I’m going to try to keep my swim suit on this time!

These shorebirds were having a field day running back and forth. I don’t know if they were feeding or just playing!

Some black headed gulls on the beach at low tide.

I found this message painted onto a rock while I was hunting for driftwood. They were obviously talented people but who goes to the beach with their paintbox?

The sky has been looking ominous for most of the summer. This particular system was very intense but not the worst we have had this year.

The vegetable garden was doing pretty good back in mid July.

By early August it was doing even better. The carrots, the beets and beans have been on our dinner menu almost every day for the past week.

My gazebo has finally got some stairs so now I don’t need to crawl in. Here are the stairs just minutes after Hubby finished building them (Please don’t tell him that I let it slip that it took him over SIX hours to make them!).

Here are the stairs again the next morning after being treated with the water sealer. We used Thompson’s brand and it did a great job on the cedar.

The final bit of construction prior to adding the siding was the window casing and now that is all done, too.

Okay, Hubby. You did great getting all that finished. Go and get that beer… Hubby? Hubby? All right, now where did he get to?

The flower gardens are doing pretty good, too. The lilies have all come out in bloom at the same time and they are just a riot of colours.

Here’s a close-up of one of the pink ones. They are huge, about 6 inches across and they smell wonderful, too.

The grapes are doing great this year. It’s going to be our best harvest ever as long as we get to them before the birds do.

The farmers have planted a lot of canola this year and when it blooms it turns this intense colour of yellow. So beautiful!

That’s me standing out on the back deck admiring all our hard work.

As another summer storm builds in the evening sky I will say see you later.

One last picture of me staring down the world’s ugliest Llama. That is all.

Summer Holiday Building Project

Hubby starts his summer holidays in a month or so and he is starting to get the itch to build something. Truth be told, he gets 4 more weeks of vacation than I do so he needs something to fill in the time while I’m at work. I mean, after all, I can only expect him to do just so much housework before he blows a gasket. A little building project is just what he needs. Besides, back in early March he spent $700 for a new Bosch mitre saw and he hadn’t even plugged it in before today. Building something complicated out in the backyard will put his new toy to the test. It had better be worth the money!

So, what is it to be? Have I mentioned before about the insects here on the Witch’s Island? Summer here consists of about a month of Black Fly season followed by two months of Mosquito season. We are very blessed to have a beautiful backyard and a nice deck to view it from but it can be a bit uncomfortable to sit outside unless you are willing to bathe in insect repellant. We need something to screen out the bugs and still be out in the fresh air.

It just so happens that we found an old copy of “Country Home & Kitchen Ideas” magazine from 1982 with an interesting article about gazebos which included some basic framing plans and dimensions. One line in the text really caught our attention.

“A gazebo can integrate your garden into your homelife by luring you outdoors – not to work or weed, but to relax and enjoy.”

And hopefully to escape the bugs, too! I like the relaxing and enjoying part! A screened-in gazebo sounds like just what we need.



Okay, now how big should it be, where should we put it and what should it look like? We started looking at our neighbourhood and found some nice examples including one at a local nursery. Really, they are not that complex. It’s the trim work that makes them seem so intricate. The size is going to be the most difficult problem to solve. Hubby decided that the easiest way to decide would be to draw a few diagrams and then make a full-sized template and actually place it out in the yard. It’s a good thing, too because the first try was too small.



We have decided that our gazebo will be octagonal and we thought that 4 feet would be a good length for each facet. A little trigonometry said that we should get an octagon of about 9.5 feet across using that dimension. After building a pattern we decided that the interior would be too snug for any more than two people at a time. We increased the length of the sides to 5 feet and the octagon grew to about 12 feet across. Surprisingly, this felt much roomier, almost too big. Maybe somewhere in between but closer to 12 feet than 9.5.

After we got the size more or less set we had to decide where in the yard we would put our gazebo. We dragged the pattern around the yard for a couple of hours, stopping here and there to gauge the view (okay, there might have been some beer consumed while pondering but it is a holiday weekend), finally deciding that we had it right at the start. A couple of feet to the west of the existing deck and at ground level on the high side is where it will likely go. Subject to change, of course!

All we need now is access to a lumber yard and a few weeks of vacation time. Wish us luck!