August 2013 – Skelton Sketches

Island Living…

Posted on August 23, 2013April 28, 2017 by lindaskelton

We don’t actually live on an island, but still… you’ve got to take a ferry to find long flat miles to pedal… So one fine morning in order to make the most of some pre-fall sunshine we took off for Vancouver Island to pedal…

Ironically, our ultimate destination was another much smaller island…

via a smaller ferry…

Lovely country roads wend by pastures and quiet haunts… even a picturesque marsh.

We even got to do some walking this time around…

up a woodland trail in cool dappled shade to an overlook of …

the lighthouse station on Chrome Island!

Now that would be a little place to live; we’d have to get a stationery tandem!
I think I shall count my blessings…

Whew! by day’s end we’d pedaled 68 miles and I was more than ready for the ferry ride home…

–LS

He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. Ps.23:2

Reflections…

Posted on August 15, 2013April 27, 2017 by lindaskelton

We buzzed slowly up Loon Lake in little old Bombie

to our favorite deserted island,

pungent with the irresistible elixir of sun-baked sphagnum moss…

to spend the afternoon alone

together

Well, not quite alone…the beach was rather crowded with these miniature frogs…

and there definitely were onlookers who viewed us with suspicion for having come to spoil their repose.

But otherwise, we had the world to ourselves.

And I couldn’t help reflecting, why us, here, now…

At leisure to enjoy such beauty… (and such reflections!)

I don’t have the answers except to know that it is all of grace,
and I am grateful.

–LS

He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all—how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Rom.8:32

To Water or to Dig…

Posted on August 8, 2013April 30, 2017 by lindaskelton

I went strolling out for my morning garden tour with no particular mission in mind. But when I got to the potato patch I wondered… shall I water these sad looking plants–some yellowing, some clearly dead, others chipper and green and trying to thrive despite their want of regular watering–or shall I dig…

Bracing myself for disappointment I grabbed a hand rake and scritched at the surface of some of the withered lifeless vines…when what should appear but a lovely dusty potato!!! YIPEE!

I scritched and scratched some more, and more potatoes–whites ones and red ones, even one JUMBO one (there’s always one fellow that taps into the water just right and busts his buttons outgrowing the rest). And soon I was hunting down the pitchfork and digging deeper to turn up buried treasure.

Wonderful hot sweaty work it was in the morning sun. But I turned about a square yard of that bed and I have potatoes for many potato salads to come!

The moral of the story is, don’t judge a garden or a life by its surface. Fruit may not be visible but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. Dig a little. Get to know what’s beneath the surface of that foliage, that face, that lifestyle….You may be in for a surprise!

————-

In other news this week…