Tasty dinner at Blue Eyed Marys

Blue Eyed Marys is my favourite dinner spot on Bowen. Every month Carol and Stephen design a new menu, emohasis on the seasonal and local with nothing bought off the Sysco truck that idles in the Cove. The menu is small the bread fresh baked and the deserts lovely and rich. This month they are rotating a tasting menu every week - a hearty three course dinner for only $25 which is insane value. Tonight Caitlin and I escaped the clutches of our crazy kids and we settled in to see what was on offer. We started with a beet, fennel and apple soup which was spiced with black pepper. The vegetarian main was an incredible roasted cauliflower and cheese pie baked in a grated potato crust with winter veggies and leek chutney. For desert, a slice of moist carrot cake with cream cheese ice cream. This is no mere comfort food menu. Carol trained at Bishop's in Vancouver and brings a deft hand and a regional eye to her cooking. Stephen runs the room with banter and non-sentimental approach to quality assurance. The place was buzzing tonight - full of locals trying to stay out of each other's way but still offer greetings. It's hard in a small community to get out for a date when you are surrounded by friends. You get the feeling some nights that we'd be better off just pushing all the tables together and having one big party. If you haven't been for a while now is the time to give BEM a try and see what's cooking this week. http://www.blueeyedmarys.com/

Winter colours in the meadow

At the close of the day, mist hangs over the meadow in Crippen Park and the colours wash a winter pastel.

Dolphins in the sound

Via my friend Wynn Nielsen: "Large pod of beautiful dolphins racing the ferry to Horseshoe Bay this morning. What a gift to see up so close. Makes me happy to live here!"

New buds on the salmonberries

Things are warm and moist and spring is nascent on Bowen even in late January. The robins and chickadees have changed their calls and the salmonberries are setting their buds.

Coming into Snug Cove on the Bowen Queen

I love this old ferry.

Life and death

Apropos of this time of year, o walked to the Cove this mining in thin grey morning light. The robins were in their spring song mode already and the dawn chorus has begun its first few movements of its annual concerto.

Down on pebbly beach, lying flat on the gravel by the waterline was this headless deer. It's too freshly dead for me to poke around with and see why I can't see its head. The eagles and crabs have cleaned out its insides and it won't be long before the flesh is gone and the sea carries away the bones. Death and rebirth as we head towards a full moon and the light noticeably begins to return.

A new year's blessing

From our own poet of the woods, LIsa Shatzky:

Had we one more day 

it would not be stuffing envelopes 

to save the world, 

citing love as our reason 

for feasting on romanticized 

atrocities in the nightly news 

(which are still atrocities, cold 

and ordinary, come morning) 

and believing 

that if we analyzed and dissected 

our suffering long and hard 

enough and set up camps 

in stations of the lost 

and joined the victims 

and survivors and born 

again wounded, 

some kind of healing 

would happen. 

Oh, perhaps some good came of all that 

learning and unlearning the languages 

of sorrow which hung heavy 

around our necks and cut 

deeply in our lips, 

but had we one more day 

I imagine we might have 

chosen instead the laughing 

geese above us and their gawking 

lamentations 

at the melodramas 

we made. 

Under the cedars we might have 

lingered, graced by slowness 

of breath and the utter importance 

of the hummingbird 

and petals from delicate 

flowers falling 

with the fragile forgiveness 

of the seasons 

and the godliness of laughter 

and the tenacity of the beating heart 

carrying on without needing 

to know why. 

As remarkable as finding ourselves 

awake, at last, trembling 

and seeing each other 

for the first time. 

lisa shatzky (published in The New Quarterly, 2010, and Simple Praise,2009) 

Happy New Year Bowen Islanders, you irrascible, joyous, generous, garrolous, irritating, humourous, faithful, caring, bunch of humans.