It has been a magical fall weekend here on Bowen. The weather has been clear and crisp, with cool temperatures in the evening. We have started burning our wood now, for an evening glow, and the air is laced with the smells of woodsmoke and leaf litter. Fall has begun today, and the harvest moon is on the rise.

Bowen Island Football Club started up today and Finn joined a couple of dozen other Under-8s for a hour long session today. They played a couple of four on four games and did some dribbling drills. There is no standing around in this club - these kids spend the whole hour with a ball on their foot or running in a small sclae game. This capped a weekend of athletic endeavour for him, which also involved him and I hitting a few buckets of balls at the Bowen Island Golf Course with Clive Scarff, the resident teacher. It's fun watch on's kid come into sports, and to have it all happen locally to boot.

And I think I have a golf partner for life.

From BowFest to BowFeast...next weekend the island will be exploding in a fit of local eating. Our little One Day Bowen coalition has put together a festival of local foods during which farms, food stores and restaurants will all be on board. You can read more at the One Day Bowen site and even follow along on the map as well.

The challenge is for as many Islanders as possible to eat as much of their food as possible from local sources. I'll be participating and I'll blog it all here.

Another summer is coming to an end here on Bowen, and there have been a number of highlights over the past couple of weeks that bear some note in passing:

• Bowfest was fantastic this year, with the celebration of island life taken over by a lovely community committee who worked their butts of to make for a great day. I was pretty busy, involved in taekwondo and juggling demonstrations, playing music with the Headless Ceili Band (so called because the tent on the day music stage prevented us from seeing the audience) and singing a commissioned song for the Bowfest masses. I also managed to score first place in the jam contest for my Bowen Island salmonberry jam.
  
• Speaking of songs, I've collected my Bowen Island songs and published them on my website. I'll post mp3s of the songs as well as I get them done.
• The summer has continued to be variable weather-wise. We haven't had a long stretch of sun and high pressure this year. I have been musing a little about this and posted a question at Ask MetaFilter which elicited some interesting answers.
• I have finally made it down to the Bowen Island Golf Course and played a couple of rounds with my parents. It's tough, with some tricky hazards, two holes that start with drives over deep stream beds and some rolling terrain and the greens are wicked. They are fast and impossible to read, have no mercy and the rob you of your dignity. Other than that, it's a lovely way to spend a couple of hours.
• The water is a glow at the moment with bioluminescence. Very pretty.
• Lots more blasting around our house and over on the other side, where work is proceeding apace on the Eagleridge Bluffs section of the Sea to Sky Highway Upgrade Project or what I have taken to calling The Scar. There was lots of opposition to this project and the extent of the blasting in incredible. It sounds like thunder blasts followed by ten to fifteen seconds of gravel rumbling. It's pretty ugly too.
• Our sessions are going again at The Snug and the kitchen junkets are on too. There is still music on the pier on weekends and the Paradise Grill is still open. The summer season is over, but the summer itself still lives on. Enjoy it!