We have had glorious spring weather the last few days. Bright sunshine in the day with t-shirt temperatures and the smells of spring and summer all around - sunlight baking the fallen fir needles on the side of the road, and warming the vernal sweetgrass in our little meadow in front of the house.



The tulips are in full bloom and the camillia bush which has sat for so long on decks and patios for years without flowering has put out a dozen big pink blossoms.



The other day I took the kids down to Pebbly Beach, which hugs the north edge of Deep Bay a couple of hundred feet below our house. They played on a huge old cedar log for four hours, foreshadowing the kinds of summer activities that they usually get up to.



We have towhees at the feeder, which is new. They hop around on the railing outside my office window and try to figure out how to get on the feeder. Juncos are still around as of today, but they'll be gone soon. And the robins are flocking together, and the warblers are back in the forest.



Idyllic.

More on the benefit for Remy:

"In light of Remy Jannenette Walen's recent accident, many people in our community have expressed their condern and wish to assist him and his family during this difficult time. A group of volunteers has gotten together to plan the first fund raising event for the Bowen Island Community Emergency Fund and the Jannette Walen family will be the first recipients of the funds raised during this event. On Saturday, April 17, 2004 at BICS, we will be featuring a dinner of delicious home cooked food, salad, bread and dessert and great entertainment is provided by many of our very talented local musicians, including: Rob Thompson and friends, Toni Dominelli, Brenda Reid, Moritz Behm and the Fiddleheads, Teun Schut, Wayn Kozak, John Bottomley, Jay Rosen, the Morrice Dancers and More!!



Doors will be open at 7.15, dinner starts at 7.30 pm and the $25 tickets can be purchased at VONIGO, Cates Hill Pharmacy, A Bit of Everything and at the door. Babysitting may be available.



Volunteers are still needed for a variety of jobs. If you would like to help, please call Mo Miller (947-9494), Christine Smith (947-2347 or 2113) or Betty Dhont 947-9237. Financial contributions and/or goods and services will also be gratefully accepted. Please call Pernille Nielsen at 947-2210 (P.O. Box 19) if you care to do so. Tax receipts are available.



Thank you in advance for your support and concern. Let us once again prove what a wonderful community we live in."

If you're on Bowen that night, come on out. Remy did much to support musicians when he and his partner Miriam owned La Mangerie, and now it's time for us to give back.

Helen is out of commission for a while.



Helen runs Bow-Mart, a remarkable place, if only because it is the oldest business on the Island, attracts the same five or six guys for coffee every morning, and never seems to be open.



The Bow-Mart is an institution, couched in more history than I can go into here. The patrons are few but loyal, and Helen has served them coffee for decades now as they discuss the current state of the rock. The guys that meet at the Bow-Mart in the morning are sort of Island Elders. There is almost nothing they haven't seen or talked about. And taking a place in this pantheon is next to impossible. When one dies, as sometimes happens, the stool is still referred to as "his" chair for evermore. There is no farm team for the Bow-Mart boys. They are in a league of their own.



All of this I have only heard about, of course. Having lived here for merely three years, I cannot come close to laying any kind of claim on the knowledge of the inner workings of this place.



But I do know one thing. Helen is revered as a stalwart in the community, and the fact that she can't be there to sling coffee for the boys in the morning is an event of astronomical importance.



We all wish her well in her recovery.



In related news, Remy, the former owner of La Mangerie fell from a roof and ended up in hospital with serious injuries to his hands and head. There is a benefit concert for him being planned. He and Miriam were so good to the musicians of Bowen when they ran La Mangerie, that it is only right that we pay him some tribute and raise some money for his recovery. Prayers are with him too.

Back from New Zealand. It's warm tonight, the air holds scent from the blossoming trees. Birds in full spring song now and the flowers are dotting the garden. Daffodils, grape hyacinth and Camillia in bloom. Time to think about really fixing up the garden this year, figure out how to keep it alive during the drought and free of weeds during the rain.

I live in a neighbourhood that is called "Seven Hills" by locals. I still don't know whey it is called that. It lies on a hill between Deep Bay and Miller's Landing. But it's only ONE hill, not seven.



At any rate, the neighbourhood has given its name to a B&B at the bottom of the hill, and the propritor of the establishment, Anne, has a blog!



So welcome to my growing list of the Bowen noosphere, Ann! I'll pop by next time I'm heading down the hill to pickl up my mail.

What a great day yesterday. I hooked up with my friend Leslie, father of four kids, and all seven of us bundled off together to do some beachcombing at Tunstall Bay. Leslie was in search of some cedar which he was planning to split and turn into a gate for his garden.



It was a really nice day yesterday, sunny and warm with a slight wind coming from the northwest when we set out, so it was a little chilly on the beach. But we quickly found a beautiful log which Leslie sawed in two with an old four foot crosscut saw. As we were hauling the log off the beach and tying it to the roof of his van, a couple of carloads of Saturday visitors from the mainland arrived in new luxury automobiles and fine clothes and stood around watching us. I had this distinct feeling of myself as a spectacle...a couple of hardy Islanders salvaging their own building materials while their kids ran around popping bladderwrack floats and looking for crabs, and playing in the caves on the rocky shore. It was like a scene out of an Enid Blyton novel. I could hardly restrain myself from laughing out loud.



To make matters more fun, one of the Island oldtimers and his son showed up right at low tide to launch a boat on the primitive boat ramp. Primitive begins to describe the ramp, only because there isn't a word that comes to my mind to describe pre-primitive. The ramp bascially consists of the road ending in a small drop off onto a rocky beach, which at low tide, extends about 40 feet out into the ocean. Buddy showed up with a rebuilt 1970s Jeep and they pushed and bounced their way into the water, pausing only to force the whole apparatus over a sizable boulder that didn't show up in their rear view mirror. I thought the trailer was going to come right through the bottom of the boat.



At any rate, they got the boat into the water where it started up in a cloud of blue smoke, took off a couple of hundred yards off shore and then gave out. It limped back to the beach and got hauled out on the trailer and they took off to make the necessary repairs.



By this time, the wind had died down and the sun was really warm. We sat on the beach watching seals and oystercatchers, mergansers and loons ply their trade near shore while out on the water fishing boats jockeyed for space with log barges, log booms and skiffs full of woodchips motoring up and down the coast.

On and off the island...travelling to various parts of the country and then home again for short stretches...it all makes for a very disengaging time.



So now I am surprised when I see that the daffodils are in bloom, the heather and lavender are flowering as well and the birds have really started into their mating calls in earnest. Black-capped chickadees and towhees are whistling and whirring in the forest and warblers are returning. It's lighter in the mornings and dusky until 7:00pm and the quality of light has changed too. Instead of grey scale landscapes, Howe Sound is painted in shades of blue. The old fruit tress in the lost orchards around Deep Bay and Crippen Park are in full bloom.



Spring really just arrives on the coast. One day you wake up and you're outside in short sleeves enjoying the sun, cutting kindling for the nighttime fire, becasue it's still cold. You notice the change in the soundscape and the colour and the light and it's just so clear that something has shifted. No more storms, lighter rainfall, more sun.



Bring it on!