Wine Tasting, Fall Colours & Dianne comes to visit - October 15 - 23

 

I'll have to get some of this for my garden next year, with its gorgeous colours. Ray took this picture at Butchart.

( I put this explanation in so I can remember it next year lol)

Celosia is a genus of flowering plants that belong to the Amaranth family. There are two main types of Celosia plants: plumed and crested. Plumed Celosia plants have feathery, upright blooms resembling flames or plumes, while crested Celosia plants (Cockscomb) have dense, compact buds resembling twisted, velvety crests. These heat-loving annuals thrive in full sun, so provide them with at least 6 to 8 hours of direct sunlight each day. 

Penny came today, to help me repot the rose bush. It got bugs in it and they're eating the leaves. We took it down to sticks and then cleaned the root ball from dirt before replanting it. She is ready for Halloween. lol 

Our neighbours Roy and June gave me this rose bush as my 65th birthday present, so I don't want to lose it. Penny found spider mites and a couple of insect worms in the bush after we cleared it from any foilage. Hopefully that will be a good start for next year. She also planted some daffodil bulbs from last spring's pots.

With our recent wine tour and Roy and June just getting back from one on the weekend, we decided to have a little wine tasting party here Wednesday night. Pat and Darryl are wine drinkers as well, so the 5 of us partook and Ray kept our glasses full. :)

I made a charcuterie board, using my Christmas present from Jason. It was almost all eaten up with a couple of refills. I must admit I googled pictures to get an idea of what to put together. :)

These were the wines we were sampling tonight. The sparkling wine, Crown and Thieves from our supply is the overall winner with the ladies. Notice it's the only empty one. lol Roy and Darryl preferred the South African Chardonnay that Darryl brought. June and I also like my red from Summerhill Pyramid Winery, Marechal Foch. The white wine Roy and June brought, Ruby Blues Gerwertztraminer is pretty good too. A great couple of hours. I'm sure more would have been drank if it hadn't been a week night instead of a weekend. Roy is still working. The group decided that the next tasting we choose a type of wine to compare, ie. Rose or Reisling etc.

Thursday morning featured a beautiful sunrise. The weather is changing again, back to showers. I think this is the last stretch of nice weather we'll have for awhile. Lots of rain in the 14 day forecast.

Hard to believe that 2 years ago, we were in Cortez, Colorado watching the solar eclipse. How things have changed for us, no motorhome and no going south anymore for the winter.

Thursday, before the rain, Ray cleaned out our BBQ and put hoses away for the freeze. I spent an hour in my front garden cutting back all the blackeyed susans and anything else with spent blooms. Rest of the day .... quiet.

Cliff's (our dock builder) employees came Friday to fix the rotten post on the ramp to the dock and install our new flag pole. They took a few hours, but it's all done. When they built the ramp 7 years ago, they didn't use a treated post and we backfilled it levelling the yard. All fixed now.

Later in the afternoon another visitor stopped by.

Ray's brother Ryan, recently lost his mother-in-law, so he drove to Parksville to attend the viewing. He would've arrived really early, so he decided to visit the Top Bridge Regional Trail. Plenty of fall colours, and with the Englishmen River so low, rock erosion.

Quite a rainy few days, but we saw this beautiful double rainbow on the lake.

Double Rainbow

Monday, Ray did a bit of a walkabout in town for fall colours. Since the weather's cooled and rain came, the colours increased substantially. Gorgeous.

Tuesday afternoon, Dianne arrives to spend a couple of nights, while Steve is hunting at McClure Lake area.

Ray took a short trip to Skutz Falls area while I was waiting for Dianne to arrive. Gorgeous fall colours and he saw the salmon jumping in the river. This year seems to be more colour. Last year, just as the trees were changing colour, we had some huge fall storms that basically blew all the leaves down.

Mayo Lake

On his way back home he stopped by the Friendship Forest Trail near Paulson School here in Lake Cowichan.

Ray also stopped for a quick picture at the Visitor Centre. These fall asters gave me the idea to plant some in my lavender bed here.

Dianne arrived right at 2 as she predicted. A quick unpack and then we spent rest of the afternoon on our sundeck with the heaters and firetable on.

Wednesday morning, a beautiful red sky. "Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning!" There is a big "atmospheric river" heading our way and will be really bad Thursday night, Friday and then another one on Saturday. No problem with filling the river with water now.

We decided to go on a car tour  before the forecasted rain began. Ray wanted to show Dianne Skutz Falls and the beautiful fall colours he'd been taking pictures of. More fish jumping at Skultz.

On the way to Highway 1, we stopped at Averill Creek Vineyards for some pictures. They are at a higher elevation and you can see all the way to the ocean.

Ray's finally able to get "fall colours" in a vineyard.

Next up we took a spin to Fuller Lake and Chemainus Lake, but didn't find any colour there .... we did find a roadside stand for fresh hazelnuts though. You can see this farm while driving past on the highway, but we've never gone in behind to actually find it before.

We took a quick tour through the Antique Barn, looks like under new ownership. Cool stuff but we came away empty handed. Time to head to Crofton to walk the boardwalk before having lunch at the Osbourne Bay Pub. 

It's a bit chilly outside at 7C, but we were dressed for it.

Perfect timing as we started towards home, the rain started. Arrived back about 1:30 pm. With it dark, gloomy and rainy, I made us all hot chocolate. Of course Dianne's and mine had a bit of booze in it. We all warmed up and relaxed so well, all of us ended up having an hour's nap as the rain poured down! lol No sitting out on the deck today.

Tonight an easy cook .... leftovers from last night's dinner. We watched a really weird movie (Vanilla Sky)... kept watching expecting it to make more sense .... but at the end we all went wow that was a waste of time. :)

Another great visit with "my sister from a different mister!"

Thursday morning, Dianne was out of the house by 8:45 to meet up with a friend downtown Victoria. Hopefully the roads were not too bad for her with all the rain.

Butchart Gardens Oct 14

Ray's been itching to go down to Victoria to the Butchart Gardens for some fall colour pictures, especially since we bought season passes. After looking at the weather forecast, Tuesday and Wednesday are the best days before the rains come again. We made the last minute decision to go on Tuesday, since we're having company on Wednesday for wine tasting.

We're starting to get great colour here at the lake.

It's a cold morning to start, with fog on the water and ice/frost on our sundeck. We headed out about 9:45 to Victoria. Traffic's light and roads were dry. A beautiful day to drive.

We arrived at Butchart 15 minutes before the Dining Room opened. Perfect. They're featuring an afternoon tea as the only item on the menu.

They have a beautiful dining room with lots of little rooms set up for guests.

Our table with a view of the Italian Garden

Dessert first and I had a flight of wines.

Ok, we're all fuelled up and it's warmed up some to start touring the gardens. It's 2C (35F) this morning at home with frost, first one of the season.

We decided to go to the Japanese Garden first, hoping that the maples have all changed colour. There's some colour, but not like this picture, which we were hoping for.

Butchart Gardens Fall Picture

This picture below, was one Ray took 2 years ago, not fall but still more colour than today's picture.

Ray's picture of same area.

It's still really pretty though.

Now off to the rest of the gardens.

They've planted fall mums everywhere in every colour imaginable!

Who knew begonias could grow so tall.

Off to the sunken garden.

Then came the dahlia gardens. Wow!

Currently they are planting hundreds of thousands of flower bulbs in preparation for the Spring bloom. They are also planting thousands of english daisy's for greenery in the empty looking beds. These will winter well apparently and offer some colour first in the spring.

 We also saw several workers working on the Christmas Light Display. Fall is a busy time at Butchart.

"In preparation for the spring season, there are hundreds of thousands of flower bulbs being planted throughout The Gardens, and along with that comes the sound of trowels piercing through the nutrient rich soil. Gardening staff are well underway digging up summer annuals, rototilling flower beds, and planting up a storm. This is one of the most physically challenging times of the year for horticulturalists, yet they handle this job with ease. To make this task even more challenging, autumn often brings with it intense storms, and those weather events can require an all-hands-on deck approach to cleanup. Navigating around storms during planting requires a well thought out approach that our staff do so well. Returning in the spring will allow you to see the results of everyone’s hard work that is underway in The Gardens right now."

We had a great day and arrived back home at 4 pm. The drive back was pleasant and we seemed to have missed most of the traffic. Bonus!