Arrowhead

James' little brother Jason came up for a weekend visit. We paddled from Shelter Bay over to Arrowhead on Upper Arrow Lake where there used to be a sizable community back at the turn of the century.

Arrowhead in 1905

Storm moving in

Boys throwing rocks

James' first smore

Mr. Catterpillar

Fibonacci numbers are so cool

Revelstoke Crags

Did some climbing on the weekend despite the rain. As usual most of my pictures are of plants.

Dwarf dogwoods

Brackenfern

Mossy rock

Look - we actually climbed! James cruising up yet another overhang.

Attentive belayer

Tiger lily with insect

Revelstoke Renos

When you go to a party in Revelstoke, people tend to talk about:

1) who's pregnant and when they're due
2) who's leaving Revelstoke to go to Smithers/Ontario/Newfoundland to be mortgage-free
3) whether you have firewood yet
4) renos

We are avoiding 1) and 2) and haven't quite got the hang of 3), but we dove full force into reno-land right from the get-go.

Work party to dig our drainage ditch - summer 2005 (photos by Chris Gooliaff)

The Vancouver crew

In addition to digging a ditch that first year, we also:
- painted every wall downstairs (it was all baby blue or pink sponge paint when we moved in)
- replaced the carpet with wood floors in the living room and built a lot of shelves
- put a new woodstove and hearth in the kitchen
- weeded the garden which hadn't been used for 4 years
- replaced all the fluorescent lights with nice light fixtures

Somewhere along the line we decided to build dormers upstairs. I didn't even know what a dormer was at the time. We started this project last June and finished last Friday. James was the superhero of this project - he did almost all the construction by himself (with some help from the internet). I basically painted things, varnished things and vapour barriered things. I'm ecstatic to have a dust-free house again. Here is the progress in pictures.

Pre-dormers

Cutting holes in the roof - the scariest step.

A finished dormer!

This is what we found under the flowery linoleum and 1940's newspapers.

James went nuts on shelves and cupboards. We just tripled the storage space of the cabin.

The office/gear room shelf

Our bedroom today. It used to be sponge painted dark grey-blue with lino and of course, no dormer. Now it's my favourite room in the cabin.

Clean Air Day

We played some tunes down at Grizzly Plaza for Clean Air Day.

Chickadee Nature Festival

A bumble bee pollinating a thimble berry flower.

The caterpillars were a hit with the kiddies.

Dandelion

Northern starflower

Baby Robins

I discovered a bird nest on a corner of the Cozy Cabin this spring. It had 3 bright blue robin eggs in it and I've been watching their progress from egg to teenager. Here are some pics of them growing up.

May 28 - My first sighting of the babies, all pink and fuzzy.

May 30

June 1 - getting some feathers.


June 3 - It's getting crowded!

June 5 - There were only two birds in the nest when I went for a visit. Right after I took this picture one of the birds flew out of the nest, so I'm hoping the other robin has gone for an explore. I hope the bird I scared away can make it back to the nest - she's not flying super well yet. I don't dare go and check on the nest in case I scare the last one away. I think this might be the end of pestering these babies.