From Glenrosa Farm.

I'm currently writing from the sun room at Jill's family homestead. I can see down the hill, past the barn to the shoreline of Pedder Bay where a little marina is located. We're going to walk down there later this week to check things out. Jill's farm is just outside of Metchosin, BC. The farm is a hobby farm at this point, but it's been here since 1881 and was named Glenrosa in 1885 by J.D. Reid, a Scottish immigrant. Jill's family has a horse named Brandy, a mini donkey named Snowy, a pony, a dog named Riley, 4 cats, egg-laying hens, and 10 sheep, one named Phantom. They also have an apply orchard and they make juice each Thanksgiving. I'm going to have to come back for that one of these years because I love their apple juice. This summer Jill has also been running a market garden. It is beautiful and I will definitely add pictures later. The internet connection is a bit slow out here and I can't upload any pictures today. That's okay, I know how difficult that sort of thing can be.

Since I last posted, these are some of the things I've done:

-Swam 6 lengths of Kits Pool. My goal was 5, but I would have ended up at the wrong end and wasn't about to walk back. My swim was great and good for my knees after being cramped up on the airplane the day before.

-Strolled around the Kits shopping district in Vancouver. Such a cool part of town. All sorts of neat stores and restaurants. I had lunch at a place called Sejuiced. It was all organic, vegan hippie food, but it was tasty.

-Went to a beach called Spanish Banks with Crystal and Geoff after they got home from work. Watched the big ships and volleyball players and had a picnic dinner. We could see the Gondala going up the mountain at Grose Point.

-Went to a fantastic gelato place for dessert. It was called La Casa Gelato. They have 218 flavours of gelato and ice cream at any given time out of the 500 flavours they make!! These flavours include about 50 chocolate variates, garlic, wasabi, and a huge range of exotic fruits and spices I had never ever heard about. I sampled fig and almond (YUM), grapefruit champagne (YUM, you can totally taste the alcohol), and apple cheddar (YUCK no one needs shredded cheese in their ice cream). I actually purchased one scoop or pear ice cream and one scoop of strawberry champagne sorbetto. They made a good match. Crystal had spanish coffee and Geoff had Praline. Delicious. This particular gelato castle is in the middle of an industrial area so we ate at the garden area beside their parking lot. very interesting experience and I would recommend it to anyone visiting Vancouver.

-The next morning (yesterday), I took the BC Ferry across to Victoria. The ferry is gigantic and it sails through the gulf islands. It was a great 1.5 hour trip. I have some really good pictures which I will add later. Jill picked me up at the dock and we headed back to her place.

-Once we were here, I said hi to Jane and Peter (Jill's parents) and then we rode the bikes into town. We had lunch with Jill's friend Megan at the Broken Paddle then went blueberry picking. I had never picked tame blueberries before. They are huge and there are so many of them this year. They literally fell off the plant into our hands and buckets. YUM.

-We came home and explored Jill's garden. We picked zucchini, summer squash, potatoes, beets, little round carrots, and 3 artichokes. We took the produce to Jill's bootcamp workout. I joined in. It was a tough workout, but I made it through.

Now, we're about to head out to the lake to go swimming with Jill's friend Tracy and her kiddos. Should be a nice afternoon before we head into Victoria to see the town and have dinner.