After a decade of working as a technical writer, she earned a master’s degree in ecopsychology from Naropa University, and trained as a vision fast guide at the School of Lost Borders. She has studied the medicine wheel since 2003 and has been a student of the Diamond Approach for 11 years. She is a registered yoga teacher and Reiki master, committed to providing a safe environment for self exploration and growth. She is a member of the Wilderness Guides Council.

Munro Sickafoose is a vision quest guide, an initiated man, whitewater river guide, and ceremonial leader. He has been deeply involved with indigenous earth–based ceremonies for many years. He trained as a vision quest guide at the School of Lost Borders, and has been leading groups and individuals in the wild since 1996. He has also trained at the Ojai Foundation as a facilitator in the Way of Council. He is currently Netkeeper of the Wilderness Guides Council, and is working towards a Masters of Divinity degree.

He guides at Monkey Valley and in Oregon and Washington. He also guides through the School of Lost Borders, teaching a program on the four shields of leadership with his wife, Susanna Maida. Visit his web site for details of other guiding trips he has planned.

Angela James has run 18 marathons and completed Iron Man Canada in August 2008. Angela has been a Team in Training marathon coach with the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s (LLS) groundbreaking charity sports training program since 2004. She no longer has Achilles tendonitis since using the ChiRunning form. Now Vancouver’s only certified ChiRunning instructor, she plans to give workshops all over the world teaching others this revolutionary technique. Her shining spirit uplifts and motivates everyone she teaches.

Angela incorporates ChiLiving as a practice along with her tea business. “Chi Tea” is her catch phrase, because she believes so strongly in the benefits of both ChiRunning and health-promoting, organic Rooibos tea. Angela is also an accomplished cello player. Visit her web site to learn about Angela’s upcoming ChiRunning workshops in Vancouver.

Kim Ashley guides vision fasts at Monkey Valley and is a life coach. She is the founder of Transformational Learning and Coaching. She is a PhD candidate in East-West Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, is a certified life coach through NLP and Coaching Institute of California, and is a member of the International Coach Federation.

She trained as a vision fast guide at the School of Lost Borders. Her background and education blend the ancient wisdom traditions of the East with contemporary success principles of the West, resulting in a step-by-step coaching approach to living with greater courage, balance, abundance, and happiness. She loves walking in the wilderness with her dog, Chai.

Here is the posting on Craig’s List:

http://vancouver.en.craigslist.ca/van/vac/1484724729.html

If you have any friends who will be visiting BC this winter, and who are interested in a unique winter getaway with their own 160 acres of private snowy wonderland, please pass on the word.

Renting the Retreat Centre

The Monkey Valley Retreat Centre is pleased to create a rental arrangement customized to your needs, whether you are planning a private meditation retreat in nature or wish to bring a group of 30 for a yoga weekend. The remote location of the land is ideally suited to nature pursuits such as stargazing, bird watching, and winter activities such as snowshoeing and cross-country skiing.

Prices vary according to group size and whether you will be providing your own meals. Please contact us for a customized rate package.

Examples

• Winter special: log cabin rental for 1-6 people—$20,000/month or $12,500 for two weeks
• Camping groups of 5 to 50—$20/person/day (meals excluded)
• Summer log cabin rental for 1-6 people—$700/group/day (you do the cooking)
• Solo camping meditation retreat—$350/week (meals included)
• Solo camping meditation retreat—$150/week (meals excluded)
• Solo meditation retreat with indoor accommodations—$500/week (meals included)
• Organic meals cost $30-50/person/day.
• Rentals provide exclusive use of the land, affording your group complete privacy.

The log cabin

The original log cabin was built about 40 years ago, with a unique construction that stacks the shaped logs together, eliminating gaps and the need for chinking. The main room of the log cabin has a sitting area and dining area, shown here. The kitchen is to the left, out of view, and the living room area is located behind the dining area. Donald wants to go out on the deck to scamper with the chipmunks. The fire awaits a match. The chairs are pulled close for an intimate conversation…

The dining area is conveniently located by the wood stove, with views out the customized antique stained glass windows. The wood stove has a glass door to enhance enjoyment of the fire. The two eco-fans on top of the stove circulate the heat throughout the house without using an electric source.

The kitchen has a window overlooking the meadow, and another facing out onto the deck, handy for passing plates through the window to enjoy dining on the deck. The propane fridge is new, and the propane stove is just a few years old. Rustic cabinets suit the flavour of the log walls.

The living room and entertainment area feels cozy with the warmth of the log walls. My sister Kim made the stained glass lamp, creating a custom match with the couch, in shades of cream, orange, and brown.

I must say this couch is perfect for the house! I bought it and two matching chairs at an antique store in New Westminster shortly before I found Monkey Valley. I believe I had some divine guidance! Donald thinks so too. My Tante Anne crocheted the afghan, which also matches perfectly.

Here we find Mr. Moose sitting on another antique sofa, which I found at The Peg antique store on Commercial Drive in Vancouver. He is reading about himself in a book on BC Mammals. Mr. Moose was a gift from Eric of Colorado, and he loves living at Monkey Valley.

Here is a close-up of one of the two antique windows. I found this one at an antique store on 12th Street in New Westminster, and my sister Kim restored it and made a matching window in complementary colours. We had to get a guy with a chain saw to come in and help install the windows! They are triple-glazed for maximum energy efficiency.

The loft and master suite

If you climb the unique log ladder up into the loft, you will discover two rooms facing south down the valley. I use this area (not shown) for my office. Climbing a short set of stairs, you come into the master bedroom, shown here. This is an amazing room, with five windows and the glass door leading onto the upper deck. I love that it has windows facing in all four directions! It has plenty of open space for doing yoga with a friend.

This antique claw-foot tub has funky $-sign insignia on the feet. It was the first thing I bought after I purchased Monkey Valley, and I hauled it up here in a blue volvo station wagon! It took 3 strong people to carry it up the stairs. And it took Hugh and me two years to install the solar power and get hot water running to the tub! Note the charming pedestal sink. The tub also has antique-style fixtures.

The guest wing

From the loft you can take the log ladder back down, or use a regular staircase to come down into the addition. This wing contains two guest bedrooms, a bathroom with a large double-headed shower (not shown), a laundry and work area, two entry areas, and the power room.

This spacious guest bedroom with wood flooring has two windows, one facing east over the creek, and once facing west over the meadow. My Uncle Sebastian made this dresser and matching bed-side table when he owned a furniture factory in the 60s, and my dad designed this piece!

This guest bedroom has a window overlooking the meadow, with forest in the distance, and is furnished with some antique pieces. Hugh sold me this bed, which belonged to his grandmother, for $2 after we split up. I love the cozy green down duvet lined with velvet trim. This was always my friend Dorrie’s room when she stayed with me at Monkey Valley.

Inner workings: the heart of the house

In an off-grid home, keeping the house dry and warm, with electricity and hot running water, are the challenges to address. The heart of this house is the systems that accomplish these goals. I use power from the sun, heat from wood and propane, and heat water from the sun too.

I purchased this propane heater the second winter I lived at Monkey Valley. It is very handy for keeping the house from freezing when I go away on short trips in the winter time. On those rare occasions when the temperatures drop to -30 or -40 degrees Celsius in the winter time, this heater also provides great back-up for the wood stove. The rest of the time, the wood stove is more than adequate for keeping the house warm, due to the high R-factor insulation I installed in the ceilings and floor of the log cabin. The addition is also very well insulated. Past the propane heater you can see the workbench, which is featured below. It’s handy to be able to do small tasks right in the house.

Okay, so it’s just a washing machine. But it’s a very energy-efficient washing machine, suited for a home that runs on solar power, with a super spin cycle that finishes with the clothes much dryer than a regular washer. Clothes line-dry easily overnight, on the handy line I strung up in the laundry room.

There’s also a short line outside for drying stuff that you want right away, like your bathing suit!

I love this workbench, which Brent Ross and Tom of Tri-Ross Construction built for me this summer. Previously I had slung the boards, a gift from my friend Tricia, across some black plastic barrels. Now there is a proper wood frame support for it. Although there is 4,000 square feet of space for a shop and work area in the barn, I prefer to do most jobs here in this work area right in the house. The shelves are well-stocked with the most common household fix-it items, to prevent the need for a trip to town for most simple jobs.

This baby is the power board; I am as proud of it as a real baby. Hugh and I did the planning and installed the solar power system ourselves, and I did the wiring for the back-up generator myself after we split up. We learned so much during this process, and Hugh’s general carpentry skills sure came in handy.

There is a battery bank in a box below the power board, which stores energy for a rainy day—for three rainy days, in fact. I’ve very rarely used the generator while I’ve lived here. We get a lot of sun at Monkey Valley! The box at the lower left of the power board is the step-up transformer, which provides power to the water pump. The box above that converts the DC power from the batteries to AC power from the house. From there is goes to a regular electric panel that leads to all the power lines in the house.

Wow, look at all this cool water stuff! The blue tank is the cold water storage tank. Above that on the upper left wall is a water filter. Water is filtered before it goes into the storage tank. From the storage tank, some cold water goes directly to the house, while other cold water feeds through a triple system that heats the water.

The pink insulated box contains the solar boiler, which heats water using solar energy. It passes the heated water into the big white hot water tank for storage. The hot water tank is also fitted for propane heating, so you can do that when you need large quantities of hot water quickly. From the hot water tank, the water goes through the big square flow-through heater on the wall. This baby is a Bosch, and it uses propane to heat water on demand. If the water is already hot as it flows through, it can either add to the heat, or you can just keep it set to pilot and turn it on as needed (on those rare cloudy days).

Entries and exits

This doorway is the entry through the yellow door at the west side of the house. In the country, the back entry is usually called the mud room, because things get muddy out on the land, and people need a place to take their boots off before they go into the house. This particular mud room is quite unique because it contains two showers, and there is a drain in the center of the stone-tiled floor.

There is a curtain to divide the room in half when both showers are in use.

I installed these extra showers for times when I am hosting retreats for large groups of people. This is also why I added the solar boiler with the propane hot water heating option, to be able to provide enough hot water for the house’s three showers and bath tub when large groups are here. This could come in handy for other uses too though, such as a place for ranch hands to shower.

And now it’s time to go back out the door onto the deck. Take one last look at the cozy sitting area by the fire! The wood object in the foreground at the right is the log ladder that goes up to the loft. Climb it if you dare! I can actually go up and down it in the dark, with a book and glass of water in my hands. Soon you will too!

And so here we are, back out on the deck overlooking the creek. This is really my favourite place at Monkey Valley. It gets the morning sun, and provides cool shade during the afternoon heat. Birds dart about in the willow bushes down by the creek, and the resident chipmunk brings flowers onto the deck to eat. You can see the satellite dish mounted at the end of the deck. This provides two-way satellite internet. And in the background, down by the creek, you can see the roof of the pump house. It’s a great place to hang out and watch the birds, read a book, or chat with friends and family.

Thank you for joining me on this virtual tour. I hope you are charmed by what you’ve seen. I’ve put a lot of love and attention into developing this house for comfortable, year-round living in harmony with the earth. I look forward to putting this care in the hands of the next people who will live here and love this place.

So instead I’ll direct you to some other links that have photos. (Photos are now loading; I guess this was the post I was supposed to write today!)

Pictures of Monkey Valley

This is from my excellent realtor, Darch Oborne, on his web site:

http://www.movingrealestate.ca/listing-details.asp?id=1075

And this is the MLS listing:

http://www.realtor.ca/PropertyDetails.aspx?vd=&SearchURL=%3fMode%3d5%26id%3d83409&Mode=5&PropertyID=8603883

The main picture is one I took from across the valley, using the zoom feature on the great digital camera that Darch lent me! A magnificent view of the house.

Offering nature-based teachings in new places

The original intention of this web site was to promote the retreats that I offer here on the land. There are two kinds: the vision fast, and the teaching of the four directions. When I made the decision to sell Monkey Valley, I realized that the offering of these retreats, which is a gift I want to give to my people, has become intertwined with the land here at Monkey Valley. Of course, it is a great place to do these things! But it is not the only place where I can offer these gifts.

On Saturday I am leaving for Big Pine, California, to apprentice once again with the School of Lost Borders. This time, I am apprenticing on the California Fall Vision Fast, guided by Ruth Wharton and Larry Hobbs. This is the third year I am apprenticing with experienced guides to build on the training I have received with the school. I have also guided fasts twice at Monkey Valley.

Next year I am guiding a vision fast retreat group fast in the vicinity of Monkey Valley, and have added a new customized vision fast option to my offerings. There are some magical places on the land surrounding Monkey Valley, near Missezula Lake, and this is where I intend to hold these fasts once Monkey Valley passes on to her new owners.

The other type of retreat that I have developed and taught is the teaching of the four directions. It is based on the four shields teaching that Stephen Foster and Meredith Little shaped at the School of Lost Borders. I also incorporate teachings of the medicine wheel, which I received from my teacher Joyce Lyke and others, and ecopsychology practices that I learned while pursuing my master’s degree at Naropa University. These are all wonderful ways of connecting with nature to access the guidance and healing that lie within ourselves and the natural world. My intention is to adapt the two- or three-day retreat format to a day trip format that I can offer in Vancouver. This will have the advantage of making the teaching much more accessible to more people. And Vancouver is nestled in the bosom of many beautiful places in nature that will support this teaching.

The choice to sell Monkey Valley

It was a difficult decision to sell Monkey Valley, but that seems to be where the flow of my life is taking me. I have been here for nine years now. I bought this land within a few weeks of my father’s death. It has held much healing, learning, and growth for me. And a fair share of frustrations, too, which I think is part of the territory with any major undertaking. I have enjoyed most of the learning, and many fine times with family, friends, and co-journeyers on the path of inner realization, both with the Diamond Approach and with the nature-based spiritual practices.

At this stage in my life journey I find myself wanting to put down deeper roots in one place. Keeping two homes for all these years—Monkey Valley and an apartment I rented in Vancouver for a pied-à-terre—has required a lot of energy. I realize that I don’t want to spend my energy that way, and on the travelling back and forth. Yet if I have to choose only one place to be, I am sad to say that I can’t choose Monkey Valley. I feel too isolated there when I live there full-time. It has taken me a while to realize (and admit) that I am a social creature, and I like to be around people! So if I am going to choose a place to put down roots, I need to choose a place where there are people. I have noticed over the years how returning from Monkey Valley to Vancouver always feels like a home-coming. My appreciation for and love of this city have grown. (Though like most of us, I could do with less traffic!) This morning I spent some time reading the Georgia Straight’s annual “Best of Vancouver” issue, and love for this city swelled in my heart.

So these are some of the factors in my decision to sell Monkey Valley and move back to Vancouver full-time. I want to put down roots and weave into the fabric of community here. I want to spend more of my time offering my gifts to my people, and enjoying the company of friends and family, and less time driving on the Coquihalla and cursing because I don’t have the right tool for a job at Monkey Valley!

But, in case you are wondering, I am very happy with how the installation of my power booster turned out! May the new owners be very happy with their most excellent cell phone service!

All that “Searching for service” was for naught, since the power adapter had fried after less than a day of receiving phone calls. What gives around here?!

Positive thoughts about not being able to receive phone calls in the house at Monkey Valley:

• It gives me a reason to take the phone with me on runs, where I get reception at the higher elevation, and talk to friends while I’m running. Makes the hour go by more quickly.
• It makes me be more intentional about when I use the phone. I have to really need to use it to go to the trouble of going up on the roof.
• It means my day is not constantly interrupted by phone calls, and I choose when to collect messages and return calls, preserving the retreat-like atmosphere.
• It means I don’t waste time talking on the phone, and get more done.
• It helps me with that Greta Garbo “I vant to be alone” thing.

Ah well, it was good while it lasted. Kind of like relationships with men. I guess I need to take a look at my object relationship with my phone! I can’t get no satisfaction! Sounds like the frustrating object relation to me.

So I finally forked out some cash to get a power booster, hoping that this technology would allow me to use the existing Yagi antenna on the roof to channel the digital signal to my phone inside the house. So I went to Kamloops, and got the power booster (second trip, and after many preparatory phone calls with different providers). I brought it home, and hooked it up, hoping this would be easy for a change.

I put my phone near the inside antenna and saw the discouraging message “Searching for service.” Shit! I took the phone up on the roof to see what kind of signal I could get, and got about two bars. I called Telus to see what was up, and confirmed there were no outages in the area. So something was wrong with the setup. Maybe the Yagi had broken down since I last used it with my old analog 3-watt bag phone a few years ago, before Telus forced us all to switch to digital.

I thought the best thing to do would be to test the antenna by moving it higher up on the roof, to where I was standing with the cell phone when I got two bars. But how would I support the antenna? I looked at the spot, and saw my dining room chair balanced on either side of the roof ridge, with the antenna strapped to it. Okay, that might work…

So I went in the house, got a chair, and hauled the chair up onto the roof, along with some trusty duct tape. I went to the antenna, and tried to pull it out of the plumbing outlet pipe in which it was lodged. It wouldn’t come. I pulled and pulled. It wouldn’t budge. I pulled some more, cursing to give myself more power. Finally the antenna budged, but the pipe came with it. Darn! But since it was loose anyway, it probably wouldn’t hurt to pull it some more. I pulled the pipe out as far as it would come, gaining about three and a half feet of height for the antenna.

In fact, about the height it would have been strapped to the chair. So what the hell… I went inside to check the reading on the cell phone and lo and behold: four bars!!! It worked!!!

The ridiculous notion of the chair on the roof led to the solution: the antenna just needed to be higher. Since I had contractors coming this week to do some other work (Brent and Tom of Tri-Ross Construction—great guys), they agreed to mount the antenna with a more permanent solution than sticking it in the outlet pipe with duct tape, and they also fixed the pipe I had dislodged. Wow! For once the new problems I created were easy to solve. And now I have indoor phone service at Monkey Valley.

My first phone call was a real thrill let me tell you! By the fourth call, not so much! And today, the darn reception was down to “Searching for service,” even up on the roof. Well aren’t we all! So unfortunately, I am still at the mercy of the whims of the universe as to whether some mysterious force chooses to send the signal my way or not. I guess that’s pretty much what life is like. At the mercy of a mysterious force, which sometimes sends visions of dining room chairs on roof tops.

I also felt inspired to do some work on the medicine wheel. I went down there to pray for my friend Dorrie, who died recently, and felt spirit telling me it was time to finish the wheel, which was created at a medicine wheel teaching in 2005. At that time we laid out the direction stones and center stones, and filled in most of the rest of the wheel with pieces of wood. Now I started replacing the wood with stones—the grandfathers. I dug a narrow trench from the east door to the south door, in honour of the spring section of the wheel that we are in right now. And I filled in the entire curve with beautiful stones. That was a bit of a job, as the stones felt the need to periodically leap from the wheelbarrow on the journey from my house to the wheel. I did my best to be patient with them, but at one point my patience ran out and I pleaded for their cooperation!

The time at Monkey Valley ended on a sad note, with a morning discovery of weasel corpse in the downstairs bathroom. The poor little thing has expired. I don’t doubt this is due to torture by Donald. It was a real gift to get to see weasel up close, this time in his summer clothes, but I felt sad that his life is over. He emitted a perfumey, flowery musk smell, which I also noticed in the region of Donald’s nose. What a perfect creature this weasel was; whole and self-contained. His is-ness was striking, even though he was no more.

I didn’t feel as sad about this tiny animal death as I used to do when I found a bird or mouse that Donald killed. It used to break my heart. I wondered if my heart has hardened, but a dear friend suggested that perhaps I am just more connected with the natural cycle of life and death now, through the time I have spent in connecting with the land. So that I can accept the natural fact of death better. Maybe so.

Accepting the death of my friend is a different matter, which I don’t wish to treat lightly in this blog. I will say that I am missing her very much. I pray that she is held in loving light, and is at peace, finding her way in the new formlessness she has become.

To solve this problem I had dabbed some concrete over one side of the screws, hoping it would make them unscrewable. But in the morning I noticed that I had daubed the wrong side. Aarrghh! So what to do? My Krazy Glue was all dried out, so I couldn’t use that. All I had was ABS pipe glue, so I dabbed the other ends of the screws with this glue, and hoped for the best. Of course these white blotches somewhat spoiled the aesthetic values of the sign, but shikata ga-nai, as they say in Japan.

Anyway, I felt very excited about installing the sign, and put it in the back of the Tracker, together with shovels. It was very cold out, so I wore my parka and thick gloves. The propane guy was coming later in the morning, so I wanted to get it done right away, before he got there. I drove up to the corner of Starshine Way and Dillard Forestry Road. Woohoo! There was the hole I’d previously dug. I’d covered it with a tarp, edges weighted with stones, and scattered dirt to conceal the hole, but had accidentally stepped on the tarp and fallen in the hole (yes, I really did fall in the hole I had dug and had specifically reminded myself not to fall in), so the tarp was half-in, half-out of the hole, and some snow had covered everything.

I took the snow shovel and cleared away the snow in the hole and around the hole. I took out the garbage can with the sign in it, and then was the magical moment: I put the can and sign into the hole. Voilà! Beauty! I’d brought six sand bags, which I used to fill the gap around the edges of the can, as well as rocks and dirt from digging the hole. Likewise I filled in the can. Then I built up a slight mound all the way around the pole, stamping on the dirt frequently to pack it down. There was just one problem: The sign company gave me an eight-foot pole instead of the ten-foot pole I’d asked for. The hole I’d dug (before picking up the sign) was slightly over three feet deep, to accomodate the garbage can. So the sign is shorter than I am.

I kept cracking up as I looked at the sign. All that work, planning, ordering, digging, and what was the result? A Spinal Tap sign! (Due to a confusion between inches and feet when they drew their design on a paper napkin, the infamous heavy metal band Spinal Tap got an eighteen-inch-high Stonehenge stage prop—not quite the ominous, looming stones they had envisioned!) The propane guy later took my picture with the sign, so you can see for yourself. Ha!

Anyway, hopefully no one will steal it, and it will have an uninterrupted winter to set solidly into the earth. I’ll let you know if it’s still there when I go back in the spring! To complete this story, though, I need to draw the parallel between the story of the Starshine Way sign and the turning of the wheel from West to North. I’ll tell you about that next time. To be continued…

Have you ever noticed how humans tend to repeat things from the past, which didn’t work out the first time, hoping that somehow it will work out this time around?

I googled Vancouver sign makers, and within a day I had communicated with a Vancouver company called FastSigns, received a quote, and placed my order (all online). The sign was ready the following week. It took less than 1/10th of the time it took to get a sign made in Merritt, but cost twice as much. It was worth the price to save the aggravation! However, the company provided an 8′ pole, round and shiny, rather than the 10′ pole I had requested. But they gave me some advice on how to install it securely. My friend Dorrie helped me pick it up, and she also gave me some good advice.

The first time around the sign was easy to steal because it was just placed in the earth. I hadn’t realized someone might want to steal it, so I didn’t think any type of sophisticated anchoring system was necessary. But this time, I came up with a steal-proof plan! At first I was going to fill an entire garbage bin with concrete, and set the post in that. But my sister Katherine—who has some experience with pouring concrete—and various other people—told me this would take a lot of concrete, and be a huge hassle. How would I get the water for mixing the concrete up to the place where the sign was, 1.5 KM from the house? Yet if I mixed it at the house, it would be too heavy to carry, and might set before I could get everything in place to plant the sign.

Another problem was that the post was entirely smooth, with no holes to cause the concrete to penetrate and grip the post. Dorrie suggested I drill holes in it, but I don’t have the right equipment for that. She also suggested I put cross bars through the pole, which would help set it in the concrete more securely. But again, I didn’t have the tools and supplies for that. Winter was coming, and I wanted to install the sign right away, but if I got all the suggested supplies it would mean trips back and forth to town and waiting until spring to install the sign. I didn’t want to wait because I’d already dug the hole!

So I ended up improvising a solution based on what I had on hand. When I dug the hole I’d made sure it was deep and wide enough to accommodate the garbage bin. (Picture to follow when I return from Berlin. See top photo.) I had some Rocktite concrete that I’d bought for patching some holes in the cement floor of the barn. It wasn’t a lot—just two bags. So I would only be able to pour a few inches of concrete. I prepared the pole by sawing 6 slits in the bottom few inches, and inserted nails halfway into the slits. This would provide a bit of anchoring for the concrete to grip, plus it could penetrate through the slits. I set a smaller bucket inside the big garbage can, and hammered  9-inch nails through the garbage bin and into the smaller bucket, to attach these two firmly together. What a contraption!

I put the sign into the smaller bucket. I was doing this job in my workroom/laundry room, so I used the parallel clotheslines overhead to hold the sign in place, tying the sign to the lines. (Finally, something convenient!) Next I poured the concrete into the smaller bucket, so it could create a deeper foundation than if I had just used the garbage bin. Some flowed out of holes in the bucket into the garbage bin, anchoring these two together. Then I poured sand into the garbage bin, around the edges of the bucket, so that no more would flow out. I was concerned that the concrete wouldn’t be deep enough, so I put some stones in the inner bucket to take up some space. Then I mixed the second bag of concrete and poured it all into the inner bucket. Voila!

I had about a 4-inch depth of concrete in the inner bucket, which was higher than the level of the slits and nails in the pole. It seems the sign was firmly anchored, and the bucket firmly attached to the outer garbage can. I left it all to set over night, planning to install the sign the following day… (To be continued)