So half way into our first week in Winlaw, and we have already had a many adventures and challenges!

We arrived to find our yard was exploding with meter high koch grass and weeds, and among the grass we found a few packed out areas of bedding big enough for a young bear, followed shortly by many piles of bear droppings. We were of course prepared to run into many bears living on the side of a mountain in a bear corridor, but day two found us face to face with a curious brown bear who was enjoying an old compost pile and some beer cans. He was determined to stay and settle into our front yard, and it took many hours our banging and sling shooting, yelling and barking to drive him away for a few hours, before he returned again, and again, and again.We were concerned that our little city dog wasn’t up for a bear chase but she impressed us all and his been leading the pack in shooing the bear! Mia even caught the bear spying on her through the front window yesterday morning as she was having some cereal in the living room, he was nosing the glass and gave her quite a shock!

The bear breached our deer fencing with ease, so we took it down and put our first visitor to work putting up a heavy gauge wire fence. Ben finished off the garden area, and we will re attached the fabric deer fencing over the 4 foot wire section. We need to build gates now.

Other than that excitement, the fruit trees and vines ae in full bloom, we have found many morel mushrooms in the front yard, dug out lots of the bin (not the motorbikes yet!). Dylan started setting up his temporary workshop, I painted the living room and all remanding traces of gross green paint, making the trailer just a little more liveable. Dave & Colin arrived last night, and we got our new washer installed, and the boys are gearing up for a dump run or 10 today while Mia and I will be in the garden bear watching for most of the stunning sunny Saturday! We are living in paradise, in a rusty tin can, but in paradise all the same!

We still have no internet, and have given up on the idea of dial up, now we are waiting on a satellite wireless service to be installed, at a whopping $500 set up fee. My PDC starts tomorrow, and the seedlings are going in the ground today! We have more sheet mulching to do, if we want to grow all the flowers Mia wants, as the koch grass is more lush than a Palm springs golf course, and it makes up the contents of my entire garden, except my single tier of sheet mulching, holding weeds at bay! more to come as soon as we are connected!