Short June 2023 Island Trip – Day 1

The day has been long and good. It started with a tour of one of our regional gardens with my tenants! They stopped by our place, did a quick tour of our garden, and then we drove to the regional garden. At one point I was asked, “Are you soaking up all this Latin?” Um, yes!!

We drove separately as they had many stops to make and were on a much later ferry than me. I headed home, checked if there was a possibility to get on the earlier boat (nope), and then settled in for a couple of hours. I dove back into Toni Morrison’s “Mercy,” and finished it on the boat.

Voicemail came in that the bench frame (powder coating) for the perennial garden was ready to be picked up. Perfect timing… I picked it up on my way to the ferry landing.

The boat, miraculously, left on time, but had to wait outside of the harbor as the inter-island boat was slow to get out of the slip. Tim and I made plans for dinner here. Timing was a tad tight so I called him to let him know what was going on and ask if we could push off for15-minutes. He was hanging out at the yacht club ‘watching the ferry drama!’

I had no know idea I could set up Stella so fast. Part of this is that I didn’t have a lot of returning laundry/food/bits etc. It was kind of an object lesson in that I can deploy water, propane, and disgorge the car/truck into three spaces in very little time if I’m willing to be a little less exacting about it. It worked.

Tim was 25 minutes later than we rearranged for. I was getting worried, as one does about friends in their 80’s, and I called asking, “What’s your ETA?” He replied that he was looking at my two barns and figured it’d be 27 seconds 😂. We had a great dinner, hysterical and important conversation, and he headed home about 10.

After an end of day chat and a backgammon game with my DH, I finished putting things where they go, including food as the fridge had to cool down, made the bed, and washed an incredible number of dishes given the simple meal we had.

As I sat down to write this post I heard munching outside of Stella. I knew it was deer, but it’s not a sound that engenders calm. I grabbed the flashlight and headed out to scare them off. If they, two bucks and a doe, can’t see you, despite any scary noise you make, they kinda saunter away from you. Even shining the flashlight at them and making lotsa noise didn’t impress them much. Very different from driving the Subaru up the trailer and having a deer hurl itself into the woods from the far side of Stella. Not enough freezer space…