Seven months later. . .

 

After more than half a year away from Saltspring due to pandemic travel restrictions, we wondered what we'd come back to. There were changes, but as this view  of our swimming beach from the Vesuvius ferry  terminal shows, the basics remain. Photo by John Denniston.

In To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf describes what happens when a house, the summer getaway for the large and lively Ramsay family, is abandoned for 10 years due to the Second World War and its aftermath. Woolf’s images returned to me this past winter when I wondered how our Saltspring house, deserted for months due to Covid, was doing without us.

 Were windows cracking, the roof leaking? Had ants and mice founded colonies? Had it, as the Ramsays’ house had, “gone to rack and ruin”? I imagined the moonlight glancing into the empty bedrooms, my version of Woolf’s: “Only the Lighthouse beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter. . . .”

 With travel restrictions lifting, we got back to Saltspring this week after seven months away. The passage of time, one of the themes of Woolf’s novel, was marked by the wall calendar, frozen at November 2020 on this bright June day of 2021. Otherwise, the house seemed to have scarcely marked our absence – no leaks, breaks, mice or ant colonies. The only casualty was a toaster that decided its carriage-control lever would depress -- and toast -- no more.

But time hadn’t stopped in the little village around us. Beloved neighbours have moved away and promising new ones have arrived. One little waterfront cottage has been bulldozed into an empty lot, while two others have been renovated into better shape than ever. Trees have been cut, hedges uprooted, and fences built. Some gardens have been enhanced, others abandoned.

 Our house may seem to have escaped unscathed, but it’s seven months older, just as we are, along with all our neighbours and their houses. There’s no escaping the changes wrought by time, as Woolf knew.

 Here are a couple of her lovely paragraphs from the “Time Passes” section of her novel, followed by some of John’s photographs showing what’s happening in the neighbourhood:

 The house was left; the house was deserted. It was left like a shell

on a sandhill to fill with dry salt grains now that life had left it.

The long night seemed to have set in; the trifling airs, nibbling, the

clammy breaths, fumbling, seemed to have triumphed. The saucepan had

rusted and the mat decayed. Toads had nosed their way in. Idly,

aimlessly, the swaying shawl swung to and fro. A thistle thrust itself

between the tiles in the larder. The swallows nested in the drawing-

room; the floor was strewn with straw; the plaster fell in shovelfuls;

rafters were laid bare; rats carried off this and that to gnaw behind

the wainscots. Tortoise-shell butterflies burst from the chrysalis and

pattered their life out on the window-pane. Poppies sowed themselves

among the dahlias; the lawn waved with long grass; giant artichokes

towered among roses; a fringed carnation flowered among the cabbages;

while the gentle tapping of a weed at the window had become, on

winters' nights, a drumming from sturdy trees and thorned briars which

made the whole room green in summer.

 

. . . . The place was gone to rack and ruin. Only

the Lighthouse beam entered the rooms for a moment, sent its sudden

stare over bed and wall in the darkness of winter, looked with

equanimity at the thistle and the swallow, the rat and the straw.

Nothing now withstood them; nothing said no to them. Let the wind

blow; let the poppy seed itself and the carnation mate with the

cabbage. Let the swallow build in the drawing-room, and the thistle

thrust aside the tiles, and the butterfly sun itself on the faded

chintz of the arm-chairs. Let the broken glass and the china lie out

on the lawn and be tangled over with grass and wild berries.

During our absence, a terrific winter windstorm and high tides  pushed logs and a massive amount of ocean debris onto our local beach. Beach-lovers cleaned it up, and months later, just in time for summer swimming, the beach looks just like it always has. Photo by John Denniston.

Ever since we bought our Vesuvius house in 1999,  the walk to the ferry terminal has included passing by a little whitewashed cottage with a Mexican flavour. Now it's gone and work has begun on its replacement. It will have a lovely view. Photo by John Denniston. 

The plantings for this tiny beachfront cottage change year by year, but are always a work of art. Photo by John Denniston. 

This cottage, across the road from the beach, always looks good, but this year, the explosion of pink roses against the yellow siding has made it a head-turner. Photo by John Denniston.

This house has seen a lot of work, upgrading and painting in the last few years, but the flower-filled rowboat is new. Photo by John Denniston.

Across the road and down a hill from us is a farm that has been taken over recently by a hard-working couples who tend fruit trees, herbs and vegetables, as well as bees and a family of sheep. Photo by John Denniston.

 

Yes, there is a distressing amount of garden work to be done after so many months away from our place.  I began snipping away at blackberry brambles Sunday night. To the right is a huge bay tree that I planted as a twig about 20 years ago. I'll leave that alone. Photo by John Denniston.

The sunset, seen through the trees from our deck, marks the passage of another day. Photo by John Denniston.