When we moved to the island in 2012, the previous owner of the our property told me that I was moving to a house on the nature channel. The problem with the nature channel is you never know when the show you like is coming on. I might have just gone up to the garden when a whale stops in for a visit down at the house or I might be down at the house when an otter cuts through the garden or the one I can’t believe I missed… A couple of bucks locking horns on our driveway in the middle of the night. The only way we knew what had gone on was to find the resulting scuff marks in the dirt by our truck.

But sometimes as luck would have it, something cool will happen when I actually have a camera in hand.

Like seeing a humpback whale standing on its nose, two Orca standing on their toes or one seamingly hanging mid air

Or catching two eagles kissing and another swimming with his salmon breakfast. https://studio.youtube.com/video/dGJB4pvqRMQ/edit

The weather forecasters promised us light showers last night for twelve straight hours. All three of the weather aps I followed promised the same thing. We did, however, not get one drop. I showered anyways. All indicators are that it is going to be a wet winter. Surely to goodness it will start soon. As little water as we are able to pump from our well, we are only using what we pump so are fortunately still sitting at 900 gallons in the tanks.

I spent the morning roasting my pumpkin to freeze for fall pies. It is one more chore done that I will appreciate on a dark, stormy October night. During the afternoon I spent some time reading old blog posts from Septembers over the last nine years.. It’s interesting in that it is always similar topics and similar worries. But what I also noticed is how far we have come. How many changes E has made to the property, especially to the systems. For example, we used to have to run the generator just to pump the well. Every day we turned the generator on, but now we have turned it on just once since March. The solar panels power the batteries which power the well pump.

If you get my blog posts in your email but want to read old posts on the main blog, ’cause maybe you can’t sleep, the older ones are interesting. Just go to deergarden.me and search your month of interest.

People looking to buy properties here rarely consider the systems. They look at the views and the wildlife and the privacy and the lifestyle and the relatively cheap prices but rarely consider the systems. We sure didn’t. But I have long held that this island is undervalued. You could buy a lot here for a reasonable price, some of them even have basic cabins on them and then with a whole bunch of money spent on systems you could still have a house with land and all of the bells and whistles for one quarter the price of a house on an island with a ferry. You just need a boat and be willing to problem solve. Again, it isn’t for everyone.

Properties which long stood unsold here for years have all now sold. Covid has prompted a lot of people to spend their vacation money locally. Some, who realized they could work from home, have bought beautiful properties here for the price of a one bedroom condo in town. At this point I think there is only one house for sale on the island at the moment. They don’t stay on the market long anymore.

We have had no cause to be disappointed in our life on the nature channel and part of the fun is not knowing when our favorite shows are going to come on. We never know what we are going to see and when we may get that perfect picture of something unusual. Today, I was able to get a picture of one of the rarest sights of all. E with his tools down, reading a book during the middle

of the day.