Our micro-farming has rewarded us with a bushy abundance of kale in a rail-mounted planter, once the squirrels decided it was too healthful for their tastes.

OUR  HORTICULTURAL EFFORTS have met with meager results on our little piece of the rock — until now.

There is a real farm on Center Island, a 10-acre spread not far from our cabin. It is mostly idyllic pasture land dotted with groves of stately madronas and cedars, occupied by happily retired horses and pampered old chickens. Our friend Monique works wonders with her organic garden there and kindly shares occasional treats of cracking-good snap peas or tender crimson strawberries, as well as selling us beautiful brown or greenish-blue eggs, each marked in pencil with the date when laid by one of her “girls.” (It’s a special treat to fry up an egg jotted with “Easter” or “Mother’s Day.”)

Our rocky promontory doesn’t have soil suited to an in-the-ground garden. Efforts at growing vegetables in pots on our deck have mostly met with disappointment, stymied by our property’s limited sunlight (but oh, those gorgeous tall firs!). There were the long-pampered tomatoes that were just finally starting to ripen in September, only to be raided by deer so bold as to clamber on to our cedar deck. All they left behind were tragically denuded stalks — and the gardener’s tears.

But finally, we have success: Kale!

A yard-long planter hung from our deck railing and protected from deer by a strategically placed gate has yielded a nice little crop of vitamin-packed greens, thriving in our cool island climate.

Tonight we enjoyed the first harvest. We dined on Barbara’s delicious homemade pizza trimmed with kale, black olives, pineapple and vegan cheeses.

The only challenge to this horticultural endeavor came early on when a squirrel, hopping along the deck railing on its way to another felonious assault on our birdfeeder, paused to sample a few nibbles of baby kale. Happily, our homegrown greens apparently held no more appeal to the squirrel than they would to a finicky four-year-old of the human variety.

That’s fine with us. We’re ready to move beyond monoculture next year. Anybody know how squirrels feel about spinach?

My dad, Joe Cantwell, was among the legions of young, GI Bill-educated engineers who flocked to Seattle after World War II to work for Boeing. He imparted a love of the outdoors and the Cascade Mountains in his children (from left), Tom, Marcia, Brian and Doug.

TO ALL THE DADS out there, happy Father’s Day.

Barbara and I enjoyed a Skype breakfast with daughter Lillian. We all had waffles. I got a big, sweet dose of love from my wife and daughter, and some sweet gifts as well.

Thinking of my dad recently, I wrote an essay that my alma mater, The Seattle Times, published today (along with photos, including the one above). I’m getting nice comments and emails from old friends as well as people I’ve never met, which is another delightful gift. Here’s a link to the Times piece.

Photographed through the windshield,  WeLike’s cabin roof and vintage navigation light form the foreground in this view of the Deception Pass Bridge on a June morning.

SUMMER ARRIVED A DAY EARLY in the San Juans, it seemed. Barbara and I just spent a lovely Friday afternoon sitting outside on our deck, sipping wine, chatting lazily and soaking up sun. Bumblebees nuzzled the magenta foxglove flowers growing on our mossy cliff and birds sang their little hearts out, triumphing over the happily distant but somehow pleasantly domestic buzz of a neighbor’s weed whacker. Ahhh. (Even better that it’s him and not me.)

Tomorrow is the summer solstice, but in this typical Northwest June, rain is in the forecast.

As we finished our wine, the afternoon’s delicious warmth slipped a cog, as we’ve often experienced in these islands, when a breath of cool marine air suddenly whispered in our ears, “I’m the front of the front.”

The exciting news of our Friday came from Jim Smith, a marine canvasmaker on Whidbey Island, who emailed this morning to say that our boat would be ready by day’s end.

WeLike, the restored 1957 Skagit Express Cruiser you see at the top of this blog, needed new clothes — or, to be precise, a new canvas dodger and camper top, the roof and cockpit enclosure that provides shelter from wind, rain and sun.

The old white canvas seemed in good shape when we acquired the boat, and the material remained sound. But a few months ago, the seams all decided to start letting go, like the ripping trousers of a fat man who finally added five pounds too many. If you don’t pay the price for high-quality UV-proof stitching up front, you pay the price later. (Or, in this case, we are paying the price later.)

So WeLike is getting a new top, in UV-proof Sunbrella fabric and using polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) “lifetime” thread, which is supposed to stand up to just about anything the elements can throw at it. Instead of white, the new top will be aquamarine, matching the boat’s topsides.

It’s a big investment, but this will be our island runabout for years to come, and it will also be our vacation vehicle this summer. With COVID-19 truncating other travel plans, we hope to buzz around these islands and do some fun boat camping with our new weatherproof camper top.

The boat has been at Oak Harbor Marina the past two weeks for this project. We plan to go pick it up early next week. I’ll post pictures.

Meanwhile, atop this post is a photo I took two weeks ago when I took WeLike through Deception Pass on the way to Oak Harbor. It’s always a scenic ride going that way.

Happy solstice, wherever you are. To all my Northern Hemisphere readers — enjoy the summer!

P.S. If you’re getting sick of reading about how perfect life can be on our island, you can take comfort in knowing that yesterday a deer climbed on to our deck, walked 15 feet across it to a low-hanging basket of fuchsias that had finally turned the corner in my efforts to keep them healthy, and ate every blossom.

The upraised beaks of two hummingbird chicks are seen protruding from their tiny nest of lichen in this photo taken by John S. Farnsworth, aka Neighbor John the Mad Birder.

THESE TROUBLED TIMES are lightened for us by the wonders of nature, and the continued delight of getting better acquainted with birds as they migrate here and back again, build nests and raise offspring.

Having a next-door neighbor who is such an authority on birds adds to our enjoyment and education. Neighbor John the Mad Birder, as you may have come to know him in these columns, is John S. Farnsworth PhD, an emeritus professor in environmental studies and sciences from California’s Santa Clara University, and a member of the board of Seattle Audubon. John and his wife, Carol Farnsworth, relocated to Center Island about the same time we did.

From their window, Carol recently spotted a hummingbird nest on a limb, maybe eight feet off the ground, of one of the evergreens between our cabins. John shared this photo he captured of a parent and two hatchlings. He also let us get a close-up look through his spotting scope.

The nest is a marvelous construction of lichen lined with moss and spider-web silk to make it soft and cozy.

These are Anna’s Hummingbirds (Calypte anna), among the most common hummers on the West Coast. Through the scope, I saw one of the chicks experiment with poking its long tongue out, reaching well into the air like one of those birthday-party noisemakers that you blow into. John said he observed a chick preening at the edge of the nest on Monday, which, according to Cornell University (among the nation’s leading sources of research on birds), indicates the chicks hatched about 20 days earlier.

The Mad Birder estimates they should be ready to leave the nest three or four days from now.