Anyway, I have a bedroom facing the back with one window from which I can just see the ocean where it curves around toward Beechey Head. I get the sunsets from there. And then there’s an empty bedroom, and up one floor from there are six small maid’s rooms (but no maids) and an attic storage room. It’s quite the Victorian wedding cake of a house.

There’s the bathroom with the clawfoot tub on the second floor. And the bathroom with the regular tub on the third floor. But no toilets. Because the house is Victorian, running water is a recent addition, but Old Tom and Sina never put in toilets or electricity. I asked Old Tom about this once and he said by the time they were done with the commotion of putting in the running water and workmen, workmen, workmen everywhere, they hadn’t the heart for it. I can quite understand. We have always led a wonderfully peaceful life, never bothered by family, friends, or visitors. So the intrusion of the running-water people must have been dreadful, but it was all done before I joined them. Sina said thank goodness it was, too, because after I got there, diapers became, for a time, the story of her life.

Finally, on top, there is the cupola, which has wide windows on all four sides and which just sat there unused until I claimed it. Out back, Sina has a sculpture studio where she works all day. Old Tom works in his gardens and on the farm. And, of course, there is the daily care of the animals with which we all help. Twenty leghorn chickens, two plow horses, five jersey cows, and a bull. Pigs coming and pigs going, which means don’t get too attached to the pigs. Pigs are very smart. Smarter than dogs, some people say, and let’s face it, you don’t want anything of great intelligence looking up at you from your dinner plate. It doesn’t seem to bother Old Tom too terribly, but then you’d never know. He isn’t one to suffer visibly.

From every room in the house except the extra bedroom and four of the maid’s rooms and the parlor, you can see the ocean. The property is in Sooke on the coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, and called East Sooke Farm. We are close to British Columbia’s capital, Victoria, and so Victoria is the city we use when we need one, which isn’t often.

From my cupola, with my telescope, I can see whales—orcas and humpbacks and occasionally a gray whale that has gone missing from its friends while making its migration down the west coast of North America, mistakenly taking a detour and floundering up the Juan de Fuca Strait. Quite often all you see is it spouting. Gray whales can stay under for a long time. I also see otters, seals, sea lions, cougars, bears, eagles, hawks, rabbits, voles, squirrels, and sometimes unidentifiable things. You used to see wolves. Now not so much.