Alex and I left Vancouver Friday evening for a ferry trip to Victoria. My younger brother, Sean, and his family are in the final stages of building a 4,000 square foot house very near Beaver/Elk Lake. We were spending 3 days helping out getting the interior painted. As we loaded the car, we were treated to this rainbow. I've tweaked contrast and saturation a bit, but that's pretty much how it looked - beauty framed by potential tempest. A portent? Nope. The weekend went great. Not everything is symbolic.
That's Alex on the left, Sean in the middle, and me on the right. Spraying ceilings really sucks.
Sean and I sprayed out the house interior, with his wife and Alex helping out by pole sanding. On Sunday evening, after around 9 hours of working, Alex and I decided to walk to Beaver Lake (narrowly connected to Elk Lake). He, being freshly fourteen, suggested walking all the way around the lakes, 10 km, after we had been puttering along for about 45 minutes. I said sure, with only a minimum of qualm. Long walk, going to get dark, but the path is very good and I don't often get a chance to hang with Alex one-on-one for a good while. We left the house at 7 p.m., we returned at 10. Fifteen minutes before we got back, we passed a "Warning: Mother Bear and Cubs in Area!" sign. So that added an extra frisson to the end of the experience.
So many daisies.
Dinosaur-style skunk cabbage.
We managed to catch the 3:00 boat back to Vancouver on Monday. We primed all walls and ceilings, pole sanded everything, and put 2 coats of flat paint on the ceilings. An immense amount of work. I sprayed (I've got a lot of experience here) and Sean back-rolled (the far more physically demanding job). It went very smoothly and quickly, once we got in the groove. Thumbs way up.