Bass Boats Cometh As Summer (Almost) Arrives

6:10

6:12

It's now 7:30 and I have been up since 6:00, awakened to the sound of bass boats roaring out of the Long Point Marina, a sound of summer for sure.  So the lake has been busy, with boats zipping up and down the lake, others moving slowly along the lakefronts, throwing their lines under the docks, hoping to get that large bass.  At the moment, four bass boats are fishing off of Woodlawn.

Rose-Breasted Grosbeak

Yesterday began with yoga at 9:30, with a friend for our teacher, Julie Lescynski.  She called me the night before to tell me that a Turkish man had come to class and she thought I might like to meet him.  So, I went to class and we were able to talk a bit about why he's here.  His son has a internship for six months at Cummins, and he's staying with him for five weeks.  His name is Khalil, and I assume he is retired, from his job working at a bank.  He lives in Izmir, on the Aegean Coast, about four hundred miles from Istanbul.  I left it that I would call him, and we would have him and his son over for dinner sometime in the next week.  He seems a bit lost, having little to do during the day since his son is working, and I am not sure if he has a car.  I doubt it.

A Female Northern Cardinal

Checking Us Out

Afterwards, I stopped for coffee, then came home to a busy wife.  We were having the McClure's over for dinner, so Evie was prepping, getting everything ready by 2:00, so she could enjoy life 'on the dock', and relax when the McClures arrived.  I had some pizza for lunch, and the two of us then watched Jon Stewart's heartfelt take on the terrible shootings in Charleston, SC.  He's become the arbiter of American morality, it seems, and his message was the most read article on the NYTimes this morning.  We will miss him when he retires in August, for sure.  I then drove to the Smith Library, in the Chautauqua Institution, to see if I could find something to read.  All the books I wanted to read from the Chautauqua digital library were out, so it's back to reading a book in hand.  I am looking forward to it.  I came  home with four very different books, and I have started the THE SOUND OF THINGS FALLING by the Colombian writer, Juan Gabriel Vasquez who has gotten rave reviews; it's political of course, about the corrupt governments that at one time, oppressed the much of South American along with the drug cartels.  I then joined Evie on the dock for the rest of afternoon.

Summer Begins On Our Porch

Around 5:00, we both came in and took showers.  Linda and Ron arrived at 6:00, and we adjourned for the second time with company, to our porch, to enjoy the early evening, with beers and shrimp cocktails, a real treat.  I can remember as a kid that a shrimp cocktail was a big deal (and a rare occurrence) when going out to dinner with my parents.  Anyways, they were the perfect first course for our evening.  We ended up boring the McClures with more stories about our travels in Europe, camping each summer from 1970 to 1977.  For dinner, Evie made a dish called chicken boursin, fairly easy because you melt a couple of packages of boursin cheese, combine it with cooked chicken and mushrooms, and you have a easy and tasty dinner.  It was great, along with salad, asparagus, rolls and rice.  We then sat out on the porch until 9:30, welcoming the darkening summer sky, talking about our plans for the next couple of months here at the lake.  There are lots of things we want to do, places we want to eat.  We will have to see what we actually end up doing because it's pretty hard to leave our house, the best place on the lake to enjoy a meal or sit on a porch.  We often ask why leave to got somewhere else when we have this view, the lake at our fingertips.

Dusk

Today is an open field, nothing planned until 5:00 when we have the first of our three Woodlawn picnics, a chance for the summer residents to get together after a long hiatus, a cold winter.  It's always fun which is why we have three each summer.  It's now 8:30 and I thought I would go kayaking but it has clouded up and the wind has picked up.  I guess I will clean the gutters instead.