Can’t go too long without posting a sunrise. Not a very colourful one as now were having a somewhat cool, damp summer.

My rock garden bloomed nicely. It used to be that the fireweed did not flower until August, but now it emerges the middle of July. The brown-eyed susans I collected as seeds from grasslands further east, and they are multiplying well.

Neighbour Jade wanted to go away with the kids for three weeks. I would look after her dog, and the kids brought around the hanging plants so I could water them.

My deck now had a lovely display.

The first tomatoes ripened.

Alyssa, who has volunteered here several times, offered to come. She is a tree planter and an expert digger. My greywater drain blocked over the winter. Trouble is, I wasn’t exactly sure where it ran. I knew it was under the garden. Fortunately the ground is fine silt and almost rock-free. Alyssa dug a couple of humungous exploratory holes.

Can you see her head?

Eventually, she found it. It was only three feet deep. Rather than dig up the culvert pipe that had done duty as a drain, and which was full of rocks, I had her cut it off.

She dug deeper; we placed rocks in the hole, covered them with a bit of roofing tin (I found a huge supply at the dump), then filled in the hole. It worked for a while but couldn’t take the volume from the washing machine and I was worried it would freeze in the winter. So I now direct the washing machine water elsewhere; I eventually shovelled 2 more pickup loads of dirt on top, and I’m keeping my fingers crossed it will function until spring.

Alyssa is a passionate long-distant hiker, and cyclist. (Last year she went from Panama to Tierra del Fuego.) This summer, she had planned an ambitious route over rough logging roads and a high mountain pass to arrive at Goldbridge and eventually Vancouver. A tree-planting friend came up to join her for the trip. He was a logger as well as a tree planter and the two of them spent a day on my firewood.

Some soopolallie bushes were laden with berries.

It was great to see the woodshed starting to fill. I had done the garden alone and, because of an arthritic hip, it had taken forever.

Finally, the two of them were ready to start on their trip.

A moose wandered past the trail camera.

An enormous crop of rosehips appeared.

The garden was producing well.

It was now the middle of August and usually the fire season winds down by this time; we all thought we had escaped it. But all of a sudden we got a slew of thunderstorms. My place was surrounded by fires. The cursor is sitting on my place.

I could see smoke plumes from four of the fires from my place.

Soon, we were put under evacuation order (the fifth time for me.) (The pink area was extended south over my place.)

But I wasn’t going to budge. The nearest fire was 12 km away, which would have been of concern if the wind had been bad, but only moderate winds were forecast. Soon the weather forecast included smoke warnings. The temperature was quite hot at this point, around 30C.

At first, the smoke filtered the light.

Then it blocked it.

This is the sun.

It was at this time that a moon eclipse happened that was much touted as a blood moon. The eclipse was not visible from Western Canada, but we had our own blood moon because of the smoke.

But surely, at this time of year, the fire season could not last. However, it took until 20th September, over a month since the thunder storms, before rain came.