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| 6:43 |
I was up at 6:00 to a humid morning, a sky of gunmetal gray, a few bass boats and that's it. I just turned on C-Span and immediately my blood pressure began to rise. Time to change the channel. It's 9:20 and I just returned from a long paddle to Long Point, Tom's Point, Stow, then home along the bay. It was a good morning for wildlife as I saw six or seven herons, lots of kingfishers flitting about, a couple of cormorants, and a raft of wood ducks. It's easy to tell them apart from mallards; they have a high pitched squeal, a different neck and when they paddle, their head nods back and forth. And I have decided, the morning lake is my church, usually empty but spiritual. Oliver Sacks said it for me best: "My religion is nature. That's what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me."
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| Kayak Morning |
Yesterday we had to get used to an empty nest. It happens every summer when the last of our grandchildren leave for home and it happened yesterday when Jens family of five left. The quiet is deafening, the house an empty shell without the energy of three boys. Our answer always to this change is to get to work which we did. For me, I took a longer paddle than usual and it took quite a while to finish up the blog, not publishing it until almost 10:00. Once that was done, we started on the kitchen and both porches, neither of which needed much effort. Once the house was in decent order, we had two more chores in mind. Evie wanted to cut the lawn, taking her time and I wanted to work on my garage, starting to put summer things away up in the attic. So we both got busy. Evie was not done until after lunch and I was done with my rearranging and putting away by 11:00 so I could then drive to the Transfer Station with not only trash but junk from the garage attic which we no longer need. It's always a pleasure to throw something away, make more space for other items that I will eventually deem unnecessary and throw away.
Lunch was leftovers, again, the pork chops and ratatouille from Wednesday night's dinner. I watched another DSI Banks, then tried to nap but couldn't and came downstairs and read another Longmire having finishing WARLIGHT. Neither one of us spent much time out on the dock even though it was a pleasant afternoon. Around 3:30, Evie put together an appetizer of phyllo dough, ricotta cheese, tomatoes and basil and baked it because we were going to our neighborhood gathering at 5:00. It looked like rain but it held off so we were able to have it on the right away and about 25 neighbors showed up, a good gathering. We do this three times a summer and its a nice way to reconnect with neighbors who may have been away much of the year or just been busy with family and friends much of the summer. It's from 5:00 to 7:00 so that if you have plans, the gathering does not stand in the way. We left about 6:20 because we were invited to Linda and Ron's for dinner at 6:30.
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| Rock Painting |
When we arrived, they had just had a rain shower which nixed any plans of eating out. We were able to admire their new plantings, hydrangeas, Japnese Maple, boxwoods, and arborvitae before sitting on their front porch with a beer and appetizers. It seemed like a long time since we had seen them but was probably only ten days.
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| The Couples |
Dinner was great as usual, ribs, corn on the cob and a salad with green goddess dressing, dessert, grilled peaches with dulce de ice cream. We sat at the table talking until 10:00 when we headed home, just missing most of the traffic from the Chautauqua Institution.
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