Tag: planters

Crickets And Tree Frogs

Crickets and Tree Frogs

OLD BOATS NEVER DIE
They just become planters
This delight was found in a suburb of Victoria
On the way home from Silva Bay. A few days ago, folks were complaining about the heat. We need the rain.

September 10th. I’m back in Silva Bay. I have some work to do on the engine of a small wooden schooner. I know and love the little boat and hope I can put things right for the new owner. I scan the bay with my first morning coffee in hand, recognizing a mast here, a power boat there and realize how much of this place is in my heart. A bleak rain borne on a southerly wind intermittently lashes down. Summer is drawing to a close. On the journey from Ladysmith sunlight between the squalls lit the sponge-brown meadows along the shoreline. The earth drinks greedily. For the first time in months I pulled on a pair of jeans. I slid them up over my sponge-brown legs but I won’t be stashing the shorts away just yet. After this bout of rain we should have at least another month that we can wear our summer gear. Meanwhile the crickets still sing their dry rasping late-summer song “Winter’s coming, winter’s coming…” and yesterday I heard a tree frog, a sure sign of damper weather ahead. Where did summer go? It was just the long weekend in May! Wasn’t it?

Autumn comes
A little rain as a maple leaf begins to turn

I raft ‘Seafire’to ‘Aja’ which is secured between a mooring buoy and an anchor to the aft. She is facing off the prevailing wind so every time the hatch and companionway are open the rain wants to pelt right in. It makes for miserable work. The boat broke loose from her mooring two years ago, running aground, then filling with seawater on the next high tide. The engine was started after the boat was pumped out, but without all the electrical connections being thoroughly cleaned, there is a mess to deal with with. Electricity requires good wire and clean contacts to flow correctly so there is a challenge at hand. I remove all of the brine-seized components and head back to Ladysmith to find and repair the parts I need; a “back up and reload” situation.

Rafted up
‘Seafire’ alongside ‘Aja’
Aja’s stern rails. A squid is beautifully carved on either side by a local artist, Tony Grove.
A Yanmar 2 cylinder, 16 hp marine Diesel. Sadly, during a winter storm, ‘Aja’ broke free of her mooring, went ashore and filled with seawater on the next tide. Run briefly, the engine has since sat idle for two years. I will make her run again, achieved in part by stuffing my corpulent self in beside the motor. It’s a greasy pig show.

In Ladysmith, the first block of the main street is being feverishly transformed. That block is being made over to become Green Hills Montana. Paramount is shooting part of a movie called “Sonic The Hedgehog” starring Jim Carrey with James Marsden and Tiva Sumpter. Tsunamis of money ($7 million) are being splashed around. I’ve got to manoeuvre downwind and try to catch some of the spray. Up-island a section of highway has been closed for several days, with traffic being re-routed while segments of the same film are being remade. This island, with its wonderful scenery and stable climate, I always remember the final scene in “Five Easy Pieces” with Jack Nicholson. When driving south one crosses a bridge over the Chemainus River. This is the background for that scene when Jack hitches a ride with a loaded logging truck and heads off into the sunset. There are many places om this beautiful island which I am sure would make great settings for filming. At the moment, looky-loo tourists are filling the streets, all adding to the excitement and annoyance in our sleepy little town. I wonder if somewhere in darkest Kansas there is not a movie set being erected called Ladysmith, British Columbia.

Wot? Whose gonna be the sheriff? Wyatt Twirp?
The local art and framing shop becomes the Sheriff’s station of Green Hills, Montana.
The Framing Shop as it was
The film crew is hard at work. Locals, including the municipal works crews, watch in amazement.
WIRED
everywhere!
Movie be damned! You’d better come out of that store with a treat.
Waiting to load cargo across the Strait in Vancouver. Waterfront locals are decrying these vessels as eyesores and environmental hazards. I wonder what they would have said about the parade of coal ships in days gone by.

I recently watched part of an interview on YouTube between Joe Rogan and Elong Musk, our contemporary Techno Guru who is pushing the boundaries of many technologies including Tesla and SpaceX. His conjecture is that Artificial Intelligence is a real and growing reality, an insidious and unstoppable force. He suggests that the force is gathering intellect by taping into social media. Whether you use Facebook, Twitter or any of the other Cyber venues, you are feeding the monster. I don’t understand anything about this, or the parameters of the coming age but what I can grasp scares the hell out of me. I hope I do not live long enough to experience what George Orwell so clearly predicted. I think I’ll keep the boat.

Rail apples.
Any fool can count the seeds in an apple, but only the Gods know how many trees can come from that fruit.
She had always been dead funny and so she had asked to be buried in her beloved truck.

“ While there may be such a thing as artificial intelligence, so far all stupidity is real.”…hisself