Thomson cross-country bronze!

The Vancouver high school cross-country finals were at Fraserview Golf Course today - two times round the course.  Five runners had been vying for top spots through the season - well in front of "the pack" - and it promised to be a tight race.  Doco and I made it back from New Denver last night to be there.

Ready for the start.  The Kits group, plus Kieran (Lord Byng) tying his shoe.
Left to right: Sepand, Liam, Alexander, Matthew, Julian, Sam, Thomson, Brodie (Jules Verne), Kieran.

At the first bend.  Thomson in the lead for a slow first lap.  It got too dark for my camera on the second lap, but Doco says it was much faster.  The four broke away and by the time they passed me, 100 metres from the end, Kieran led by maybe 10 metres, Simeo (Jules Verne) and Thomson a tight second/third, Thomas (Point Grey) fourth and Brodie fifth.

First and third.  Kieran and Thomson are good friends and long-term rivals in Vancouver  cross-country.  Kieran is "a runner".  Two years ago, Kieran was out with leg-growth problems and Thomson had the field.  Last year Thomson was in Oxford and the races were Kieran's.  This year Thomson is back and Kieran is in form (as a serious runner and cross-country skier) and the two are enjoying challenging each other.  Thomson says, "It was FUN!"

Now, on to the next race - the BC Cross-country meet at Jericho in 10 days.  Here, planning strategy with Ann Hayes, Thomson's Kitsilano School running coach, now retired but still very involved and interested.  She insists that what he needs for the next week is REST.  Hard to do with Canadian Junior Field Hockey training sessions and Vancouver Hawks games scheduled for the weekend.  Ah well.

Chris's chicks - 2015 crop

So, for those of you who watched in vain for chicks to hatch, here is what happened.  Mama #1 (of 2014 fame), who sat on a dozen-or-so eggs for weeks in August, produced no chicks.  But, mama #2 hatched four, now six weeks old, all happily rooting around in Chris's vegetable garden.  They were especially happy when I was pruning raspberries - and finding a few of the fall crop to offer them.  Here, three are with mama, pecking Russian kale seeds, and the fourth is off on her own foodly exploration (back end only in the photo).  Chris is pleased.  He rescued one of the hatchlings from its shell.  He thought it might not survive and now can't tell which one it is.

a start to re-planting our forest

A symbolic start at any rate.  Thanksgiving Day, 2015.  The family (Douglas, Thomson, Molly, Ellen, Meo, Doco, plus Chris and Julia) walked up the field to the creek and grove behind "Aunt Heather's tree".  There we found tamarack, Douglas fir, birch, and cedar cones and seeds.  We climbed up the logging haul-line to "Sandy's flat".  Thinking that the flat might one day be a field, we planted our seeds on the ridge to the lake side.  Wonderful elk-dropping fertilizer.  Likely a symbolic planting because, as Julia says, the time to gather evergreen seeds from cones is in September.  So the ones we gathered are likely dried up and "dead", but still …

Earlier, in August, before we had any hope that the forest would be "our" land, Lily (with Rachel, Ing-Marie and me) planted about nine acorns that Lily had brought from Quebec, at intervals along the clear-cut from above the clay house to the cedar swamp.  Also symbolic, I expect, but a start.  Next year ...

Thanksgiving doings 2015

Assorted photos from a lovely New Denver Thanksgiving with Douglas, Molly, Ellen, Thomson, Doco, Meo (photos found in Meo's draft collection in Oct 2016!)

the great delight of fall burning (Molly and Douglas) ...

… more pyromaniacs at work (Thomson and Doco)

Douglas at work in the 100-year-old apple ...

… the pruned apple and the immortal (I hope) tamarack

Ellen, with Doco,  harvesting Doco's large orange mystery squash ...

… with Mick, digging potatoes ...

… and scrubbing Mick-and-Ruth beets

a large 'art piece' rolled up from the old ranch road (to keep it from rolling down!)

new sleeping quarters appearing in the hay barn ...

… and just a lovely view

"Not For Sale Beyond This Point"

In early July a huge "FOR SALE" sign went up at the foot of Harris Road - 240 acres of the Bosun Ranch … Not us!!!!

That day, Doco and I were about to head off for a day's exploration with our ten Unitarian friends, but I thought "Oh, oh.  We'll have everybody and his dog coming to see our end of the ranch.  We need to put up a sign.  How about "Not for sale beyond this point"?  To put at the start of our chunk of the ranch."  So Doco quickly penned a sign, stuck it by the road, and it did its job all summer.  By Thanksgiving it looked a bit weathered and sad, so Molly took it in hand.  It is now back in its spot, still doing its job, but as a work of art!

So there!

a Thanksgiving bath

Saturday night in New Denver.  Thanksgiving weekend.  Douglas got the outdoor bath stoked up for an after-supper treat.  Thomson first. Then Molly. Then Molly and Ellen (works better with two). Then Molly and Ellen and Meo (a bit of a squeeze, but great-great-grandfather JC Harris, whose indoor bath it originally was, was 6'6" or thereabouts).  Finally the stoker (solo - Candy was stuck in Vancouver, getting a grip on her first weeks of the UBC nursing program).  Sprinkles of rain, but the water was hot and getting hotter.  The garden-hose thermostat kept us all from getting cooked.  Perfect.

A first for the young-uns.  The bath, set up by Thomas Wright in 1974,  has been out of commission for two decades until Stephen Hornsby made it his May-this-year-visit mission to get it back functioning - mainly to get the smoke to go up the smoke stack instead of into our faces - and it works!  A great treat for all.  To be repeated for others in 2016.

P.S. I seem to have fried the battery in my little camera, coming up with so much light in the dark night.    Or maybe it was the subjects?  Ah well.  

new Harris land - Thanksgiving 2015

Old news (one year old), but still amazingly good news!  These photos have sat in draft form for a whole year, waiting for me to find words and, as they haven't gone stale, I'm posting them in October 2016.

In September 2015, after many years of worrisome speculation about the fate of Uncle Sandy's major portion of the original Bosun Ranch, we managed to purchase a large chunk of the ranch to add to Cole's inherited piece.  In the words of Mike Sweeny: "The purchase of DL1799 remainder and DL2411 has been completed."  Phew!

The "new land" includes: the field adjacent to our inherited piece (photos #1 and #2), the dam on Harris Creek that supplies most of the ranch water, and the mountainside above us as far as you can see (photo #3).  Granted, much of the mountainside is either either clear-cut (by the speculators in 2013) or formidably steep, but we are thrilled.

Photo #1 - the field to "Aunt Heather's Tree"

Photo #2 - the fence marks our old boundary

Photo #3 - to the top of the ridge

Thanksgiving weekend 2015 - Douglas, Molly, Ellen, Thomson, Doco and I were all at New Denver and, with Chris and Julia, we all walked the upper land, south to north, from the dam and cedar swamp to the east end of the Bosun Lake.

Halfway along - in a grove of big cedars and even bigger stumps, near the skunk cabbage patch, where the creek wanders in and out of the ground.

Near the far northern end of our land - at the top tunnel of the Bosun Mine (the bottom tunnel is at Slocan Lake level)

Finally, down a steep gulch to the Bosun Lake

idyllic for some (Thomson) ...

… precarious for others (Doco)

But we all made it down - for a gummy-bear stop in the 'field' at the eastern end of the Bosun Lake, still on our 'new land'

 

All in all, lovely!  Thankful we are!!!