This evening the deer family is in the lower orchard. They aren't easy to see, since they are the colour of fog, or of wet bark of old apple trees, or of rain-darkened boulders. They blend in. I can see them, though, because their movement attracts my eye. In this I think my eye has become more discerning during the past two and half years. I notice movement better now, and maybe shape: the patterned flicker of grass where a snake is passing; the cupped curve of a nest. My eyesight is terrible, but experience has begun to compensate. I have learned that if I notice something I ought to pay attention. Maybe that's the whole difference, right there, between now and then.
The deer remain mysterious, but they have begun to come into focus for us. One of the books that came with the house was The World of the White-tailed Deer, by Leonard Lee Rue III (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1962.) The book belonged to Howard T.Walden 2nd, who was Elizabeth Hyde's father and a well-respected nature writer, especially about fly fishing. His penciled underlinings and notes are a conversation between the reader and the writer. Maybe, too, they are notes on an inner dialogue inspired by his reading the book and remembering the deer he has seen in his life. It's like catching a few words from a distant thought, or like the hint of a deer as it leaps away, some foggy evening sixty or seventy years ago.
Rue tells me that deer stay in a three-generation matriarchal family composed in its simplest form of the older doe, the younger doe and the younger doe's offspring. He also says that they inhabit a one-square mile area for their entire lives, and move outside that area only in extreme conditions. That explains why, all fall, we have only seen this one family, and another solitary deer as well. There are other deer on the island, other families, but they inhabit other places.
The hunters were here only for the first couple of weeks of deer season. After that, they turn their attention back to the final touches of getting ready for lobster season, and the island grows quiet again. We call them the hunters, but really they are our same friends who have camps on the island and come over now and then during the summer. Their interest in the deer gives them an intimate connection to the island. Once a year they cut deep into the forest where nobody else ever goes, and build their secret places, and watch and wait. Because they take the time and because they pay attention they see more than the rest of us, I think.
Some of their wives tell them,"Fine, go off to McNutt's and hunt. Just don't kill anything." They do, though, and I think it's probably a good thing. There's not much killing of deer that takes place, but what does probably helps the herd as a whole. If there are too many deer on the island they will starve over the winter. Already the hunters are concerned about what they saw during this hunting season: deer smaller and thinner than they have seen in years past. It makes sense. This summer was not abundant for growing things. For a few weeks the hunters host the deer at lavish feasts of apples and carrots. But even so, the deer may be going into the winter with little reserve.
These treasures remind me of Thomas More's Utopia, where money was thought to be worthless and beautiful shells were highly valued. Whether we bother to notice or not, we are always encircled with the most precious and unexpected sorts of blessing, wherever we go. And you never know when an angel will bring you good tidings in curious ways.
Yesterday they came to visit and maybe to wish us well on our trip, although by the time they arrived they had forgotten that part of it.
In the next week or so Leroy will drop off the rams, and the flock will begin its next cycle of breeding -- new life beginning in the midst of winter.
I kept them watered when I remembered.
Now, it's nothing to brag about if some seeds you planted turn into teeny tiny greens after nearly three months. But, anyway, they did. Even though lately we have have very cold days and nights, with lots of icy wind -- the kind that cuts through anything. So my conclusion is that this little greenhouse will stand up to a lot more bad weather than I had thought.
Greg attached the orange flounder net over the teal herring net all the way around the garden. So now we have two layers of resistance -- the ultimate deer fence. 
Greg made raised beds for the whole garden, too. I brought up seaweed from the shoreline and put about three inches of it into each raised bed.
Some beds have mostly eelgrass, others mostly rockweed.
So now the garden is ready for its winter sleep. 
In this first week of the season the price for lobster has been quite low. Demand is down in a bad economy. Many lobstermen will hold their catch in lobster pounds until the price rises, instead of selling it right away. This gives them a bit more flexibility in dealing with the ups and downs of the market. But it extends their risk as well.
Most boats go a bit further out than this at the beginning of the season.
But a few set their traps along the island's shore. I watched this boat through the branches of the lower orchard.
The sheep are watching, too, while they graze kelp out on the point. We're all quite interested. This really, truly, is how lobster is harvested.
They are officially allowed to go out at seven o'clock, and we could hear the motors humming down the western harbour about then. It must be quite the traffic challenge to launch so many boats all at the same time, filled with traps and gear and crew, off the wharves at Gunning Cove and Fort Point. And this same scene is being repeated at every wharf in southwestern Nova Scotia.
So since we live completely off-grid, we are fortunate to have an integrated solar and wind turbine system that is reliable and low-maintenance.
But we have been worried that we didn't understand how to perform one of the essential maintenance tasks that has to do with keeping the batteries properly charged. In the meantime, the company that installed our system in summer of 2007 was folded into another Nova Scotia company called MaManna. And we worried that we might get lost in the transition and be stranded on an island with nobody we could call if things broke down. 
Here is the bank of switches and monitors that is the brains of our off-grid system. In order to live this so-called simple life I am on far more intimate terms with specific gravity, a crucial but not simple reality, than I would ever have imagined being. Actually I probably never thought once about the phrase "specific gravity" before coming here. And Greg now knows lots more about propane tanks and generators than he used to. Not to mention how to stare down this panel when necessary.
He planned it with a big overhang in front to cut down on the effect of weather that blows in from the southwest, as it mostly does. And also so I will have cover while I'm getting wood off the pile.
This is a huge improvement over our first and second winters, when I tried to keep the woodpile dry with big pieces of heavy plastic sheeting, secured against the wind by random logs and stones. It worked okay, most of the time. But I have a feeling that this is going to be lots better.
We keep waiting for the inevitable hard frost but so far we have only had a few light ones.
The days are sun-lit and the sunsets are golden.
Last night a crescent moon hung over the harbour in the west, and two nights ago we watched a meteor shower beneath the vast arc of the Milky Way.
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