We had guests come down for dinner last night. As is the custom here on the island our guests are always seated with the best view of the ocean.  As we caught up on the latest news and unwound from our work of the day, glass in hand, BD says oh so very casually.. “There is a porpoise in front of us”…. One lone young porpoise slowly made its way up and down before us in the flat seas of a late summer afternoon..

I was grateful to be relaxing with good friends on the deck. I was tired. While in the big city last week I bought the material to make a queen size quilt.. A winter project which MB assures me will likely exceed the dark days of February and take ten years to complete. She is still working on a quilt she started for her thirty something year old son when he was a boy. Craft projects, they tell me are like that. One project is set aside and another begun. Eventually everything is finished.  The women on the island call them their UFO’s.  (unfinished objects)

On Sunday after “church” MB got me started cutting squares and laying out the blocks. It was fun and I couldn’t wait to try it on my own. With my new to me $75.00 sewing machine, I got into the rhythm yesterday and have now completed 23 of the 90 blocks I need before I move to the next stage of the quilts’ construction.

The island quilters managed to finish the quilt for the AGM raffle just in the nick of time. I was pretty sure I was going to jail for selling raffle tickets for a quilt that didn’t exist but the women went into high gear this month and it is finished… We had champagne to celebrate … and chocolate cake.

I had beautiful sunflowers in the garden. My plan was to dry them to feed to the birds in the winter. The birds, however have a completely different schedule and have finished the flower heads as they stood in their eight foot splendor in the garden….The squirrels have taken the whole heads off any of the flowers the birds missed.

I am picking a handful of tomatoes each morning and canning them every few days. One quart and two pints are already in the pantry with plenty more to come. Three pints of beets sit beside them on the shelf above the strawberry jam and blueberry conserve. It will be rewarding in the fall to have those shelves full.

All in all life goes by….. chore by task interrupted by porpoise visits and good friends.. You ask me what I do all day living off grid on an island without stores and hydro and noise….My answer is, as always… I

do quite well