June 2022

 

The older we get, the more lessons we learn.

A couple of signs in town have proclaimed:  Beer is cheaper than gas….drink, don’t drive.  Gas is about $2.199 a liter here.

Going for a short walk in our neighbourhood, we met a pastor and his wife who had just moved to the area and were hoping to find a rental property.  Like any first acquaintances, we were chit-chatting, asking about each other.  The pastor asked how long we had been married, to which we replied “36 years”.  He promptly said that that was like 5 minutes…………………………underwater.

We wonder what his marriage counselling must be like.

Nelson, BC

              On May 31, we left for a quick trip to Nelson, BC, about 4 hours east of us.

Nelson, BC is a fascinating study of BC history.  A silver rush in 1897 led to the incorporation of the city, followed by some notable achievements in infrastructure.

Before incorporation of the city, Nelson had the province’s first Hydroelectric dam in 1896.  

The electricity provided allowed for an electric tram to be established in 1899 along Kootenay Lake.  It still runs today, staffed by volunteers and accepting fees by donation.

The tram runs along a city park by the eastern lakefront, filled with beautiful plants interspersed with unique sculptures and visitor-friendly venues.

The town itself has made an effort to keep some local interest by allowing fast food franchises only on the outskirts, while more local restaurants populate the city interior.  Our quick favourite became the Library Restaurant, with fascinating interior décor (and really good food!)

Further efforts to enhance the town involved mural contests for each year since 2017.  Noted graffiti artists were invited to decorate city buildings, mostly in the back venues.  This meant that walking alleys was clean, safe and interesting.  Modes of art differed considerably, but all of it contributed to a much more interesting and lively landscape.

Two railways went through Nelson to service the mining industry, and one had been converted to a beautiful rail trail with trestle bridges, lush scenery and waterfalls.  The climate is temperate rainforest, which made for more deciduous trees and wonderful smells that you don’t get in the desert.

For a three-day stay, it was a wonderful get-away-from-dodge experience.

Weather

This June has been one we have never experienced before.  Just to start, we had 46.2 m of rain during the month over 10 days.

Temperatures were cool to the extent that June 26 was the first day warm enough this year to wear shorts in the morning.

Having said that, the landscape has never looked greener, and everything is growing lushly.  Unfortunately, that includes the weeds that are now approximately shrub-size in no time.  The dampness has allowed me to pull these suckers out by the roots, but the battle is relentless.  On the other hand, as you might expect, the wildfire risk is low so far, and that is a welcome change.

We have a hiking trail nearby which has exploded with alpine wildflowers at the moment.

Oh, by the way, I have been showing you picture after picture of wildflowers with beautiful sounding names, and have to provide a bit of a reality check with this guy.

You are looking at “Meadow Death Camas” which is poisonous to livestock.  We have it all over our property, and are now fearful when those US cows escape their bounds, which they have done again this year.

Construction and land values

There is an astonishing amount of construction activity on the mountain this year.  Last year featured a big surge of Vancouverites cashing out on prices there and coming to establish more luxurious places here.  Last year featured supply chain delays, and shortage of builders/tradespeople, but that has only escalated to where owners are now hiring crews from as far away as Calgary.  Land prices have gone up form $175,000-$200,000 for a 3-acre lot up to $500,000 plus.

In the meantime, land assessments have gone astronomical and we have gone from $700,000 to $1.4 million this year.  Heaven knows what that is going to do for municipal taxes!!

I think the peak has passed here, and properties that flipped for $400,000 in a few months last year now are getting no interest.

We have construction going on on three sides of us, and every morning is punctuated at 7-7:30 am with the sounds of heavy equipment backing up.  The nature of the mountain is changing as more city people move out to this rural area without any idea of what rural living entails.

Criminal activities

I can only end this with a confession.  I went down to the US last week to get cheap gas and buy a grocery or two.  Dairy products, poultry and some meats are much cheaper down there, and the cheese especially is tasty and good value.  I had three missions:  buy gas, buy peanuts in the shell for my feathered freeloaders, and get some cheese and a chicken for guests arriving imminently.

I was totally successful on all three counts!  Of course I keep receipts and declare everything to the cent so there is no problem.  The lineup took a while, and the guy ahead of me obviously had some issues since after 8 minutes discussion with the border guard, he was sent aside to secondary search.  When you are white-haired and friendly (me, of course), I just breezed up and declared what I had bought, saying the birds got the best deal ($75US vs $55 gas vs $21 groceries….)  Laugh, laugh.  He asked what I bought for groceries.  Then he wanted to see receipts.  Then he asked whether I had bought a chicken, and whether it was cooked or not.  Then I got sent aside to secondary.  What?

Unbeknownst to me, there was a virtual embargo on raw poultry coming into Canada because of avian flu.  The bird was confiscated, I was given a receipt and assured that since I had declared it voluntarily, there would be no adverse repercussions for me on future trips.  There is no photo evidence of this transgression.

Slinking back into Canada, I started thinking.  People 10 km away from me could eat this without adverse effects?  Avian flu is transmitted in faeces.  The bird I had bought had been eviscerated—it couldn’t poop if it wanted to.  In fact, it was dead.

Still determined to serve a chicken, I bought one in Canada for $20 Cdn instead of the $12 US.  Most expensive chicken dinner I have ever served!

 

Summer might be coming yet!  Hope you have a good First of July!

May 2022

 

Aha!  The arrival of May!  The arrival of……continuing cool temperatures.

In fact, we learned the new Anarchist Mountain Weather Prediction:  May be spring, May be summer, May be winter….

Let me show you an example of what we woke up to on May 13:

Wildflowers are blooming about 2 weeks later than normal, and the cherry growers are anxious about the slow ripening and potential losses from the cold weather this month.

Of course, our in-floor heating system failed on May 7 (inadvertently depressurized) to be recovered May 9.  Temperatures never got above 10C.  Might I suggest that it is quite unusual to be wearing long underwear in the Okanagan in early May?  Fortunately, we had some nice romantic fires around dinnertime to compensate for not being able to sit outside without a sleeping bag.

Wildlife

May featured our regular bears coming out of hibernation.  We had one at our bird feeders, but it turned out to be a different female than we had seen before.  This one, called “Cinnamon” was well-known several roads down the mountain from us.  She had ditched her two juveniles this spring after 2 years of heavy-duty parenting and was footloose and fancy free this year.  The two juveniles were photographed by friends of ours documenting them licking Gerry’s custom-made Muskoka chairs!  He had seasoned them with linseed oil, which made them irresistible.  So irresistible that one took a chomp out of one chair to get the added benefits of fiber.

On May 19, our neighbourhood was again invaded by US aliens—cattle!  They broke through the border at an unauthorized crossing, were not wearing masks, were not vaccinated (but probably had been given antibiotics), and just wantonly toured through several neighbourhoods before being rounded up to return home.  Illegal immigrants pose a big problem here,

The Meadowlark Nature Festival

After a 2-year hiatus due to Covid, the Meadowlark Nature Festival returned on the May long weekend to give us a cornucopia of walks, presentations and events featuring different natural highlights of the area.  At least 40 events were offered, and we took advantage of three of them.  Sorry, but I didn’t take any good pictures because a lot of the information was too subtle to benefit from my meagre photography skills.

In Osoyoos, at the Nk’Mip cultural centre, we attended a presentation on the seven snakes found in our region, with live demonstrations including the Western Rattlesnake.  With other walk-ins, including a number of children, the presenter did a fabulous job of imparting information, and ended with a contest of skill-testing questions between kids and adults.  The kids won, much to everyone’s pleasure.

Our second tour took us about 14 km up forestry roads away from a small town to view endangered William’s Sapsuckers.  Our guide had studied them for 27 years, and took us easily to a few sites just off-road where the birds were nesting. The terrain we were taken through is being actively forested by companies such as Weyrhauser, some of whom are more than willing to cooperate to leave minimum 100-acre stands for the sapsuckers.  Others are not willing when there is no money in it. 

It seems Wehrhauser is very concerned with worker safety, and had an impressive safety sign along their road to reinforce the message.

A final tour was in the next mountain valley over, conducted by a senior citizen who had lived there for decades.  Her local knowledge was impeccable, but regrettably the tour was a little slow given that she had just had knee replacement surgery in November and was dealing with a muscle injury that had set back her recovery.  The first clue was when she got out of her care, using a cane!  Having said that, we still had an insight into another ecosystem.

Weather Again

Gosh, the temperature hurtled up to 17.5C on May 25.  The highest this year!  Peel off the long underwear……

The Grand Finale

What was exciting for us was unfortunately a real loss for a couple of people we met on the 29^th of May.  A friend of ours who is married to a firefighter called to say there was an RV fully engulfed in fire where our road intersects with Highway 3.

We walked up to find this view.

 

Although the fire department was responding at that point, there was nothing to do to help, and in fact the whole area was dangerous due to exploding tires, the fuel tank on each vehicle and propane tanks on the RV.  We met the owners who mentioned they had just filled the RV with 100 litres of diesel, and the propane tank on board carried 60 litres of propane.  The fire progressed quickly, with the black clouds of toxic smoke drawing many neighbours in to watch the spectacle..

We ended up taking the owners and their two little poodles back to our house to wait for the fire to die down and the RCMP to interview the owners.  Apparently, they had just bought the RV second hand, and were planning for a 5 week-trip through Alberta. Some truckers honking madly at them alerted them that there was a fire in back.  They were basically able to get out with their wallets and cell phones (and the dogs) and virtually nothing else.  The woman was wearing slippers. The RV cost them almost $300,000, their jeep was destroyed, and they had considerable belongings in the RV.  The shock must have been almost overwhelming as they watched it practically dissolve before their eyes.

 It was quickly enforced how isolated we were because we had to drive them to Penticton, 1 ¼ hours away for the closest possibility of obtaining a rental car to drive back home.  Even in Penticton nothing was available on that Sunday.  We subsequently learned they had to take a cab another ¾ hour to get to Kelowna so they could get a one-way rental.

 The smoking ruins were stark, and it wasn’t until this stage that the fire department could foam the remains and subsequently cool them down with water.

 

I was unaware how much aluminium is used in the construction of an RV, but you could see molten streams of it hardening on the pavement.

All around the site was debris that had been spread by explosions which were numerous and ongoing.  We even saw an airbag from the Jeep detonate and fly up in the air about 15 feet.

The pavement will also need to be cut out and replaced after the intense fire.

 

Such bad luck in a short period of time!  There but for the grace of God……we will try to feature something less catastrophic for June.

Thanks for visiting!

 

 

 

 

 

April 2022

 

April has managed to finally provide some excitement in our long-standing dull lives.  With Covid restrictions lifted, we were able to resume our neighbourhood get-togethers, fondly called “TGIF” for Thank God it’s Friday.  These events always highlighted copious amounts of junk food and mind-liberating beverages, making for very entertaining and talk-filled evenings.  Because we featured it on April 1, we decided to turn it into a more formal evening with fancy duds and hors d’oeuvres (as well as copious amounts of mind-liberating beverages).  This was an instant hit with everyone, who responded fully.

Both the ladies and the gents turned out in fine style.

 

Our two military men present were instantly recruited by other ladies to feature in tuxedo-style pictures.

 

We had hoped that April would bring clear signs of spring, but that hasn’t been the case.  Temperatures were cooler than normal by a couple of degrees.

The month was also about 20% drier than normal, which didn’t appear evident up at our level.

Imagine our pleasure waking up to this view!  Yes, winter fog in the valley, and that 4-letter S-word.  The cacti Did Not Like It, but the intrepid spring wildflowers acted as if this was nothing unusual.

Later, we got a new view of what it is like to have Water “Front” Property.

Water to the Left Front, Water in the Middle, and Water to the Right Front.

 

Things have been so cool in the valley that farmers running cherry orchards were hiring helicopters to keep air circulating over the cherry trees to prevent frost.

Nice sunsets were the saving grace after wild weather days like this.

 

In the middle of the month, we took a break on the Easter weekend.  Brian succumbed to Omicron BA.2 on Good Friday, and I followed on Easter Monday.  Although we were testing negative 6 days later, we are still fighting fatigue and coughing.  The only consolation is that we have much better antibodies than we did a few days prior.

 

On April 30, our community had its annual Wildfire Preparedness Day, featuring information how to mitigate against possible wildfire damage to your home.  This year, BC FireSmart has a new mascot, a fox named “Ember”. Ember was very popular with the children, and the human inside benefited from costume warmth since it was a very chilly damp day.  Ember has quite a bushy tail, and getting tail lash appears to be a common hazard when it turned around.

 

Finally, a little bit of trivia for April.  With the release of new census information, it was determined that the median age of people in Osoyoos was 62, making us the oldest community in the Thomson Okanagan region.  Furthermore, 44% of the population is over 65.  Clearly there is going to be a run on long-term care homes soon.  We might have to start looking!

 

Thanks for visiting!

 

It is finally looking like spring!

Our first chipmunk was out on March 2, but our driveway was still covered thickly in ice.  A week’s worth of playing like children (cutting out channels to watch the water run, unblocking dams, and sliding down the remaining parts…) finally cleared things for a safe passage downhill into the garage without taking out structural pieces inadvertently.

Walking took us to spectacular local views, with a little bit of natural sculpture thrown in.

 

On March 9, the announcement was made that Shackleton’s ship, the Endeavor, had been found well preserved under 3 miles of water.  It seems so fitting this came shortly after our trip there, and was an amazing wrap up to an amazing feat.

The spring birds are arriving in daily—Redwing Blackbirds, Mountain Bluebirds, the Say’s Phoebe and tons of Dark-eyes Juncos.  The western ones are quite differently coloured than the eastern ones, featuring a rusty chest and a buff belly as well as their slate-coloured top.

March 14-20 saw the disappearance of ice on Lake Osoyoos, a little earlier than last year.  Our roof avalanches started, shaking the house when a large portion fell.  Neither of us stand near the roof edge at this time of year.

Winston the weasel showed up on March 20, still decked in winter white with the black tip on his tail (he might be Wanda...).  In the vineyards you could see workers prepping the vines, while some orchards were being torn out to be replanted as vineyards.

By the end of the month, most snow was gone from our yard other than the few remaining snowbanks in the shade or by the side of the driveway.

The first spring flowers are out:  Sagebrush Buttercup, then Western Spring Beauty, and finally Yellow Bells.

As might be expected in a dry environment, these plants are tiny.  The Sagebrush Buttercup flower is equal to a dime in size, and the tallest, the Yellow Bells, are only 2" high.

We had our first bike ride on March 27.  Although this all sounds very benign, the highest temperature we’ve experienced was on March 27 (15.3), quickly followed by single digits.  This year to date we have had only 26 mm of rain, and the snowpack is approximately 86% of normal, so it looks like another start to a dry season with great concern about wildfires.

Our social life has still been circumspect, but that will enlarge shortly.  With the warmer temperatures, we’ll be outside more and that will liven things up considerably.

I suppose you can say “No news is good news”, so this has been a good news month.

 

Thanks for visiting!

February 2022

 

Zzz…..zzzzz….snore….Huh?  It’s March?  What the heck happened?

I don’t think I can present a more boring month than this one. Temperatures haven’t been too hot or too cold, and spring is making itself known with the beginning of roof avalanches starting on February 10.  (This is only a big event if you are standing under one at the time when gravity prevails….)  The lake below us is still frozen over completely, reflecting the cold conditions experienced while we were gone.

We have had only a little snow, with Brian snow blowing the driveway only once.

Covid is still ensuring there is a minimum of socializing around here.  One family just below us all got Covid, probably brought home by a little girl going to school.  All four adults, who had been vaccinated, suffered only mild doses, while the two little girls experienced stronger symptoms.  Everyone has recovered nicely, fortunately.  Nonetheless, we haven’t returned to dining out much or hosting neighbourhood gatherings at all, so our social lives are circumspect to say the least.

I did get out snowshoeing once with a friend and Brian and I visited a local ski hill twice with good success.

I don’t even have any good critter pictures, although I can offer you an amusing story.  We have had three deer visiting under our bird feeders, happy to pick up cracked corn on the ground.  One was big, one was mostly big, and one was smaller.  A household tradition is to name these guys; the big one was obviously Hercules, the next one became Socrates, and the smallest one?.....ok Pilates.  Hercules has figured out there is a sunflower seed feeder just above the ground, and he now rears up on his hindlegs, bats the feeder with his forelegs and then proceeds to eat the rewards sprinkled on the ground.  It is more expensive feeding deer than feeding birds.

Last year, we booked a trip to the Russian Arctic with Quark, our favourite polar expedition outfitters.  It was postponed until this year because of Covid, and now it has been cancelled completely due to the Russian invasion of the Ukraine.  Certainly an ill-fated trip…..  The good news is that we will get a full refund, and now plan to figure out some smaller excursions.  Stay tuned.

We hope you are all well, and that we get out of this hiatus soon.

Thanks for visiting!

January 2022

Sorry for a bit of delay folks, but I had wanted to post another blog before embarking on this.  From December 19 to January 13 we were away in the Antarctic.  (Same old, same old, what can I say?)

(This has also been updated February 4 to correct some egregious spelling/style/picture mistakes....)

You can see the description at themalloysatlarge.blogspot.com

To summarize, it was a fabulous trip, worth it in every way.  It also provided us a welcome break from the routine around here, and protected us from Covid more than we could have expected at home.

We arrived back in Kelowna after numerous airports and hours of travel, having passed 7 Covid PCR tests and 2 antigen tests during the trip.  We won’t complain about the precautions, but they added a number of hours of waiting and considerable uncertainty.  Fortunately, all turned out well.

We were fortunate in neighbours who plowed our driveway and checked our house during our absence.  Go figure—while we were gone in the Antarctic summer Osoyoos experienced a week of considerably belower-than-normal temperatures, and two major snow dumps of 12” each.  We were in warmer temperatures with less snow.  Obviously going south is still the best answer.

A neighbour posted a great photo of our house while we were gone.

Upon our return, there has been little snow and steady temperatures, but we have endured two weeks of mostly overcast skies and fog.  Fog where there is zero-zero visibility.   Nada.  Can't drive safely.  Often it starts in the valley and then sneaks up the hill to envelop us completely.

There is a great video of driving through the fog down the road we travel to Osoyoos.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JL08f53na2U

In reviewing it, we anticipated every one of those gnarly turns!!

The meteorological explanation is that with the angle of sun so low, the warmth of the rays do not penetrate to the valley bottom, and convection currents do not dissipate the cloud below.

Here is a picture of us out with our friends for a walk.

The only benefit has been the most exquisite hoar frost we have seen yet.

Things are still so quiet because of Omicron, so there is little else to report.

We hope this finds you healthy and coping (?!) and thank you for your visit.

Cheers!

January 2022 The Start to Another Year

First I will note that we were gone through the first half of January, visiting in the Antarctic.  That bog has finally been posted at malloysatlarge.blogspot.com.

We apparently missed big snow and cold temperatures.  Neighbours below us gave us a great picture of our house in the midst of it.

A kind set of neighbours on our street used their bobcat 3 times to clear our driveway, while generous ones below watered plants and shovelled sidewalks.

The latter half of January featured fog, valley fog, overcast skies, fog, and the occasional day of sunshine.

The explanation for this comes from the levels of sunlight,  In the winter, low levels of sun rays do not stir the upper layers of air in mountain valleys.  Inversions form and fog predominates down below.  We could watch fog come slowly up the valley to eventually envelop us in mist.

A beautiful outcome is that of hoar frost everywhere, sparkling in the occasional sunshine we get.

Back to Omicron, we have continued to do little outside the home, other than go for occasional walks with friends.

This particular set of friends is to be treasured, because Gerry made home-made Montreal style bagels the next day and shared!

Weather has been nondescript, at the best, although we are happy to avoid stronger systems affecting other parts of Canada.

We hope the New Year is treating you well, and hope that brighter weather, less constrictions, and less worries are in sight for 2022!