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!
  

It has been an interesting summer, variable weather, quite wet and cool in places (63 mm of rain in July, more than ten times what we usually get!) and alos hot and sunny, like today. The water has been too cold to swim in regularly and so we haven't really been in a beach mode much. Still there has been lots going on.

Every weekend there is some kind of festival. The Dock dance was a couple of weeks ago, and then last weekend was the men's softball tournament and Dog Days. In a couple of weeks we'll have Bowfest to end our summer together on the island.

The ball tournament was a blast this year, with many close games, and some upsets and some amazing triumphs. Perhaps the greatest triumph of all was Eddie Weismuller's home run. He's 55 years old and he's been playing ball for more than 30 years and never hit a home run. Saturday, he hit one off his son and received a standing ovation, and the tournament MVP award. Great stuff.

This week the weather is relaly stable, although it is supposed to deteriorate again a little towards the weekend. We're enjoying soaking in our new hot tub, watching meteors and planning our garden.

Our traditional summer high has crashed and let the cold northern low pressure masses in. It's pouring rain right now and pretty cool out. No change expected for a few more days.

Took the recycling over to the new depot today, even though the hours are Thursday to Monday, 8:30am - 2pm for now. It's amazing. Nice clean concrete floor and tons of space. They are taking tetrapaks now.

Look what I discovered today: Bowen has a disc golf course!

There could not have been a more perfect evening here on Bowen. After a day of hosting juggling at the community school, we headed home for a bit and then decided to go down to the Cove for a barbecue dinner on the Pier at the Dallas Marina. This is one of my favourite spots in the Cove, tucked away between the little cliff on Snug Point and the quiet side of the little Cove which is the entrance to our island. The tide was so high tonight that the blackberry bushes growing in the seawall were underwater. Nancy, who owns a taco stand was laying out Greek shishkabobs and the retro tunes of Taunting Mabel - a band of, shall we say, refined older women - belted out the tunes. Lots of friends there and to quote my friend Tom Moynihan, everyone had smiles on their faces.

When an impromptu shower came down around 8pm the party broke up and we wandered up to the ballfield to catch the last few innings of a convincing Firefighter's victory over the Cruisers. When that ended we decided to head home but got stopped by a party happening on the north east corner of the crossroads. The owners of Cape Roger Curtis had purchased a lease on the ld gas station and turned it into a temporary gallery and they were hosting a party with more kabobs and beer and fruit and juice for the kids. I stayed for a while, caught up with more friends I haven't seen in a while and met some of the people involved in the project. They are putting up a good front and to paraphrase one friend, they seem to have finally realized that their development project is actually taking place in a community full of people. One hopes that they will quickly come to realize that these lowly burghers are in fact the biggest asset that the Cape Roger Curtis consortium has going for them. It is us, well fed and libated on this night that make the project worthwhile and easy. The land itself is the star player, but the biggest asset for the project is the community. They owners seem to be realizing this, but I'm not sure it has fully sunk in. When it does, something magical may happen down there. Until it does all that will happen there will be business. But tonight it was a hopeful gathering so let's take it at face value.

As a result of everything happening, the Cove was hopping and just looked really good. The village was dressed in its finest - a warm night a high tide, lots of music floating on the air, the sounds of groups of people enjoying each other and the smell of food on the breeze.