Daily: material concerns

Exserted orange tomato has ripened, three on three different plants. It's surprisingly uniform for an outcrossing tomato. I'm getting regular cucumbers, I got my first tomatillo (amarylla, small but basically an eating-out-of-hand fruit when ripe), the gaspe corn (the short one) is tasselling.

Last week I had two vehicle incidents at work, I wasn't harmed nor was my vehicle damaged in either (I wasn't driving during one but I was involved in some of the decision-making). Those always leave me shaken.

Last weekend Tucker and I took a trip to Quesnel, evaluating it as a place to live. It has a little downtown that's super walkable, a nice walking track, and walkable bridges going into and out of the downtown. It sits at the confluence of two large and quick-moving rivers and it smells like river. It also has a pulpmill which definitely effects the air north of town and the highway north runs right through it; many country roads feed into the highway without a light and the left turns across a couple lanes of what would sometimes be heavy truck traffic was sketchy.

The rivers carve deep into the landscape where they meet. The downtown is near water level, in the V formed by confluence, while residential, farm, and industrial lines the surrounding steep, tall banks. There are a lot of switchbacks and limited flow up/down the cliffs. In at least 2 places there were impassable washouts into the surrounding area, where detours added 20-50 minutes. A couple other washouts were very rough drives as they repaired the roads. I could see why folks were selling their houses on the far side, and it definitely led to accessibility concerns. Last winter was very, very hard on roads but as Tucker pointed out the climate isn't going to get better and there's a lot more left to slide.

A couple years ago there were big fires around the town -- not close enough to see on a short drive -- and there were evacuations. Then the lumber industry tanked for awhile and the post-pine-beetle cut reduction occurred so Quesnel lost a lot of jobs. It had a plan to diversify the economy, more than many places, but it was still hit hard. This seemed to manifest primarily in a lot of infrastructure for folks in rough places: addiction centers, emergency shelters, outreach centers. It's also a very pretty town, hanging baskets, lots of interpretive signs, public art and lots of benches. It seems to be full of massage therapists, health food stores, and restaurants that have existed for over twenty years. I guess it's got a bit of a Vancouver vibe that way.

It's only really livable if one can find a place close in enough to bike or walk into town, maybe? Maybe the most livable place we could afford with some land still? But it was nice, and nice too to get out and try some good restaurants and poke around some streets. It was good to wander around a climate warm enough to grow grapes. The north does seem to have finished with masks altogether -- I suppose Quesnel is southern interior rather than north, but still.

I came back and my new surprise ducklings are still all ok, the pigs didn't break out, and the grocery store has 17 crates of dairy for the pigs. A good cap to a rough weel, all-in-all.

Daily: material concerns

Exserted orange tomato has ripened, three on three different plants. It's surprisingly uniform for an outcrossing tomato. I'm getting regular cucumbers, I got my first tomatillo (amarylla, small but basically an eating-out-of-hand fruit when ripe), the gaspe corn (the short one) is tasselling.

Last week I had two vehicle incidents at work, I wasn't harmed nor was my vehicle damaged in either (I wasn't driving during one but I was involved in some of the decision-making). Those always leave me shaken.

Last weekend Tucker and I took a trip to Quesnel, evaluating it as a place to live. It has a little downtown that's super walkable, a nice walking track, and walkable bridges going into and out of the downtown. It sits at the confluence of two large and quick-moving rivers and it smells like river. It also has a pulpmill which definitely effects the air north of town and the highway north runs right through it; many country roads feed into the highway without a light and the left turns across a couple lanes of what would sometimes be heavy truck traffic was sketchy.

The rivers carve deep into the landscape where they meet. The downtown is near water level, in the V formed by confluence, while residential, farm, and industrial lines the surrounding steep, tall banks. There are a lot of switchbacks and limited flow up/down the cliffs. In at least 2 places there were impassable washouts into the surrounding area, where detours added 20-50 minutes. A couple other washouts were very rough drives as they repaired the roads. I could see why folks were selling their houses on the far side, and it definitely led to accessibility concerns. Last winter was very, very hard on roads but as Tucker pointed out the climate isn't going to get better and there's a lot more left to slide.

A couple years ago there were big fires around the town -- not close enough to see on a short drive -- and there were evacuations. Then the lumber industry tanked for awhile and the post-pine-beetle cut reduction occurred so Quesnel lost a lot of jobs. It had a plan to diversify the economy, more than many places, but it was still hit hard. This seemed to manifest primarily in a lot of infrastructure for folks in rough places: addiction centers, emergency shelters, outreach centers. It's also a very pretty town, hanging baskets, lots of interpretive signs, public art and lots of benches. It seems to be full of massage therapists, health food stores, and restaurants that have existed for over twenty years. I guess it's got a bit of a Vancouver vibe that way.

It's only really livable if one can find a place close in enough to bike or walk into town, maybe? Maybe the most livable place we could afford with some land still? But it was nice, and nice too to get out and try some good restaurants and poke around some streets. It was good to wander around a climate warm enough to grow grapes. The north does seem to have finished with masks altogether -- I suppose Quesnel is southern interior rather than north, but still.

I came back and my new surprise ducklings are still all ok, the pigs didn't break out, and the grocery store has 17 crates of dairy for the pigs. A good cap to a rough weel, all-in-all.