Garden Labour

What a nice way to end August and those two lovely summer months of July and August this year.  We had a nice warm late summer day in the Bella Coola Valley with little wind and few bugs (late August and September is the time for black flies which can be really pesky some days).  Today's photo is of some of the garden harvest today.  Many of the tomatoes are over 1 lb. Grizzly

River

The Bella Coola River today.  Grizzly

Garden Bounty

A sampling of the garden bounty from the vegetable patch.  Everything grown outside (except the peppers from the greenhouse).  Remember my post from several years ago - Corn and Tomatoes - if you want a quick way to check the climate of somewhere you are thinking about, just ask gardeners if you can grow corn and tomatoes outside every year.  Grizzly

River Update

The Bella Coola River has stayed surprisingly high in my opinion for most of August - and very glacial melt colour, a consequence of the weeks of hot weather and some very warm nights which really chews into the very high elevation snow and glacial melt.  We should soon be going into the period where the river colour starts to go to a very pleasant late August blue rather than milky greeny colour it is now.  Then soon the majority of the coho salmon will start returning. 

Our weeks long 'drought' ended with a series of minor showers and rain, enough to freshen things up but far from a soaking down pour.  Grizzly

Thunderstorm

Another weekend of hot clear days in the Bella Coola Valley.  This evening though the skies darkened and thunder rumbled and a few bolts of lightning came forth.  Not much rain came with the storm so more forest fires are possible.  Cooler weather is finally in the forecast after a month of hot and mostly sunny weather for the Bella Coola Valley.  Grizzly

Spawning Chum Salmon

We are into the peak spawning weeks for the Chum salmon which return each year to spawn in the Bella Coola River and it's tributaries.  They have been out to sea for 3, 4 and 5 years and return in July, travelling through the outer coast where some are caught in seine and gillnet fisheries and then into Burke and Dean Channels where a few more are caught in the gillnet fishery in late July and August.  They are an important part of the history of the commericial fishiery in the Central Coast.  Only a few are caught in the river in sport fisheries, most fishermen preferring the earlier Chinook or later Coho. 

The bears really appreciate this time of year though as these are the weeks to put on lots of pounds as they start the home stretch into the late summer and fall.  Grizzly

Heat & Corn

The 2013 gardening season had a strange pattern.  It was warm at the end of March and early April, warm enough to get the garden ready and put in a bit of spinach and radishes.  When I planted the main season crops around the May long weekend, the weather just went downhill from there. Cold and wet.  I had serious doubts I'd see corn and tomatoes this year.  Then July hit and it was a different world.  The gardens exploded and the corn made up lost time.  I'm on track for a bumper crop in the next 10 days or so, early for me.  Grizzly

Smoke

The morning view in the Bella Coola Valley the past few mornings.  The smoke from a fire in South Bentinck Arm (west of Bella Coola) and the smoke from a fire east of Firvale hangs in the valley until the daily heating starts and the air begins to move.  By afternoon most of the smoke is cleared out with in inflow westerly wind we have nearly every day.  Grizzly

Where is the summer going?

July flew by and I missed posting a single post.  I've had a busy summer and when I looked back at the last two months there wasn't a lot noteworthy because June was wet and monotonous weather which soon after July 1st turned to mostly a stunning month of sun with very little rain. Gardens exploded and now it's so dry there is campfire bans and lightning strikes started a number of forest fires so that the skies of the Bella Coola Valley have constant movement of helicopters carrying water buckets.  So far none of the fires are threatening any homes.  The annual music festival in mid July was a big success judging by the turnout and the quality entertainment.  Hopefully August just slowly winds down to cooler weather later in the month and moderate rains to bring the green back to the lawns and that we don't have any extreme weather like 2010.  Grizzly

Note the helicopter just between the peaks carry a water bucket.