All Blooms Now!

This week the last bit of work at restoring the house is complete:  painting is done and the last finish carpentry is complete.  We are all fixed just a week short of when Hurricane Dorian came last year and did all of the destruction in one hour that it has taken a year to overcome for us.  We are ahead of many people on the island who are still in dire circumstances.

The freshly painted house makes a bright background for backyard blooms.

Early in the summer we planted flower seeds behind the house so we would have visible blooms outside the windows when we were working at the sink in the kitchen or caring for ourselves in the bathroom.  Now those blooms are at their apex and we enjoy them each day.

The zinnia blooms last for weeks.

The zinnias just seem to get bigger and bigger and the great thing about them is that the blooms last forever.  The sunflowers do not last as long but the birds are glad for that as they will eat the seeds right off the plant once the bloom has faded and dried.  It is all fun to watch.

Our birds do love the sunflowers.

Having things grow around the house is a thing that has given us a lot of cheer as we have gone through this long period of disaster recovery.  The blooms have been even more enjoyable since COVID has kept us at come to enjoy them constantly.

Birthday Week.

This week our son, Jonathan, and his wife, Kahran are with us for the week.  It is Kahran’s birthday week and we have been celebrating all week...why not?

When we were asking Jonathan about her favorite desserts and cakes, several of the things he mentioned involved pineapple. So, I made a secret plan and ordered some fresh pineapple shipped from Hawaii.  It arrived perfectly the day before they arrived.

The fresh pineapple arrived just in time. The package smelled wonderful!

Using my grandmother’s old cast-iron skillet, fresh pineapple, and Luxardo cherries, I made her a pineapple upside down cake for her birthday.  It turned out that this is her most favorite cake of all!  (We also discovered that Jonathan does not like pineapple, but, as usual, he always wants her to have what she really loves!)

It’s obvious that Kahran’s favorite cake is not Jon’s favorite!

We have had a wonderful time all week and shall miss them when they go home this weekend.

Jon and Kahran at her birthday dinner.

Tomato Time.

On our way to the mountains we had dropped off one car to be serviced in Durham, so, we had to pick it up on the way home.  That called for us to spend the night as we could not make the last ferry that day.

We had kept sleeping mats so we could use the living room floor at Doug and Jill’s house which also gave us the opportunity for a visit there.

When we arrived our son, Doug, was busy canning tomatoes.  The neighbor has a big garden with lots of tomatoes, but she had a health issue that prevented her using them.  Doug and Jill were invited to pick all the tomatoes.

A whole world of tomatoes.

He was finishing that day’s canning batch and we got to watch and smell.  I am not sure how many they have done so far but this is not the first batch.  The finished quart jars are so pretty and later, as we were falling asleep, we could hear the lids popping as the jars cooled down.

After that we had pizza delivery, cat play, and visiting until bed time.  Early in the morning we headed back to Ocracoke.

Cat play time on the back porch.

Chickens and more.

On our way home from Asheville, we stopped in Durham to have a short back-yard visit with our son, Kelly, and his wife, Erin, and  their son, Frank.

When we arrived, Erin and Frank were in the backyard putting the finishing touches on their new chicken coop.  A neighbor up the street was needing to relocate six young chickens and had offered them to Frank and Erin and Kelly.

Frank and the beautiful new chicken coop.

Erin had looked up chicken coop designs on the interned and, after getting all the materials, the coop has been built.  It is a beautiful thing to see.  There is excellent ventilation, good access for food and water, and an easy way to gather eggs.  The coop even has a skylight to provide daylight inside.

I think they are in the process of being named.

Later in the afternoon the chickens arrived and, as far as you can see, both Frank and the chickens are happy.  There are four yellow ones and two red ones. They chickens are about six months old and we wait to hear the egg laying reports!

Hiking Day!

While we were in the mountains, Trish and I decided to take advantage of a beautiful day to get out in the world of nature and do some hiking.

From Asheville we got on the Blue Ridge Parkway and headed south toward Mount Pisgah.  We had a lovely drive passing through the ten tunnels that season the scenic drive.  When we got to the parking lot near the top of the mountain, we stopped there and headed up the trail to the top of the mountain.

When I was growing up in Waynesville we could see Mount Pisgah and, when WLOS TV in Asheville built their transmitting tower there, all of Western North could get our first television coverage.  We got our first television when I was about twelve years old.

Taking a rest along the rocky trail.

The trail was beautiful but, frankly, quite steep and rocky.  We did get in our exercise on this trail.
This time of year is a great fungus season, and the variety of mushrooms along this walk was amazing and beautiful.

Beautiful mushrooms, ferns, and mosses along the way.

Once back down from the top of the mountain, we drove on toward Cherokee and stopped at the Devil’s Courthouse parking lot.  The walk up to the overlook is very steep but not too very long and the view from the top is really worth it.

You can see forever from the top of Devil’s Courthouse.

After that walk, we were done with exercise and we took a route back to Asheville that took us past Camp Daniel Boone, the Boy Scout camp where I was a kitchen steward the summer of 1959.  The camp was empty due to COVID, but I got to show Trish a lot of places that have not changed at all in nearly sixty years.

We had a wonderful day and ended with a sunset dinner on the terrace of Grove Park Inn.

Special Celebration

This past weekend Trish and I made a little trip to Asheville for a special celebration and also a little personal break.

The real occasion was to mark the fiftieth wedding anniversary of one of my best college era friends, Ellis Finger.

We were all masked for socializing and then widely separated for dinner.

Ellis and I met where we were both working at Lake Junaluska, NC the summer before we entered Davidson College.  His father was at that time President of Millsaps Colege in Jackson, Mississippi.  At the end of the summer his parents returned to Jackson and he stayed on at Junaluska to be taken off to college with me by my parents.

We were good friends all through our college years and even returned to Junaluska each summer.  In 1964, Skipper ( as he was known then) and I made a summer-end trip together to Nashville, Tennessee.  That summer his father, Ellis, Senior, had been elected a Bishop in the United Methodist Church and the family moved from Jackson to Nashville.  I took Skipper home to their new city and we went to the Grand Ole Opry at the old Ryman Auditorium and explored Nashville in general.

Phyllis and Ellis, looking better and better after fifty years.

After graduating from Davidson, Skipper (who was becoming Ellis by now) and I both went to graduate school at Duke.  We rented the upstairs of an old house in Durham and shared living there for our first year at Duke.  After that year I got married and he went to study in Germany.

In 1970 it was my privilege to be asked to be in his wedding when he was married to Phyllis, again at Lake Junaluska in the Memorial Chapel there.  That was really our last time together for fifty years as he went on to a career teaching German at LaFayette College and later becoming Director of the Williams Art Center.

Five of ur from the wedding were here to propose a toast the Phyllis and Ellis for fifty successful years.

It was a delight to be back with a dozen friends from a half century ago to celebrate, with care, this anniversary.  I don’t think we will remain out of touch for another fifty years.

Weekend Project.

Since the new walkway is being finished between the house and the garage, there appeared a wonderful sunny place to create a new flowerbed.  Armando, our wonderful carpenter, took some recycled 2 x 12 boards and framed up the space. This weekend Trish and I finished it off.

Up at the Garden Center there is a place where the tree service people leave all of their wood chips and you can take them for free.  We headed up there with the little truck and got four big trash cans of chips plus nine bags of topsoil and some additional hardwood mulch.

Ready to go.

In the bottom of the bed we had already put several layers of cardboard (courtesy of Amazon!) to keep down the weeds and grass.  The wood chips went on top of the cardboard to make a good drainage base for the bed.  Then the basic topsoil came next.  On the very top came the bags of organic topsoil to finish things off.

Ready for planting.

We have irises that came from Trish’s mom and some other scattered irises.  They will all find new homes in this bed.

At the end of the day we celebrated rest from our labor (in 87 degree humid weather) by putting the top down and going to see the sunset as the evening cooled down pleasantly.  It was a wonderful weekend!

Painting At Last!

The very last step in getting all of the recovery work done in our house is having the outside completely painted.  We have been waiting our turn in line with Rigsee, the island painter, and at last our time is here.  Worry about Hurricane Isaias held things up for a few days, but all the caulking and taping started two days ago and today paint is starting to go on the house.

Our turn for the paint crew.

Of course, every bit of progress leads to another issue; when the caulking started it was discovered that more of the siding on the south side of the house needed to be replaced.  We decided to go ahead and replace that whole side of the house with a composite material that looks just like wood but will never rot and never need to be replaced again. (It’s just money!)

This whole side has to be torn off and replaced.

Now we delight in watching the transformative progress that really makes things look finished.  We will be overjoyed when everything is at last complete!

The painters are trying to figure out how to get up to what they are calling “the tower.”

It’s Over!

No one out here but us.

Going to the beach this morning.

Isaias in finished for us.

We had a maximum of 45 mph winds about 2:00 am and it has decreased since then.

There was very little rainfall and now the streets are dry.

There was no damage of any kind at our house, not even the gourds, sunflowers, or bananas.

We went out to the beach at 8:00 am and it is beautiful with a remainder of strong waves running.


Our store has reopened.  We are relieved and happy and hope you are safe wherever you are!

Ready!

We have gone to bed having done all that can be done to ready for Hurricane Isaias.

Everything that can blow is either in the garage or secure outside.

Convertible, bikes, plants, and tools are up in the garage. It’s about four feet above ground level.

The cars are as high up as we can get them.

Mini-truck and GLS up on the garage ramp. Too much inside to put them in.

The Airstream is on its own!  Can’t do anything about that.

Hanging ferns are out of the trees and the generator is ready.

So, now we wait and hope the directional forecasts hold.

Once the storm passes, we need to continue to wait until the danger of a return surge is passed. We will know how we did by Tuesday afternoon.

Hurricane Watch

Trish an I are here in the island waiting for Hurricane Isaias to move north and watching the predicted path projections with care.  After the terrible record setting flooding from Hurricane Dorian last September, people seem to be more nervous than usual as we watch this storm’s progress.  We will all be glad when it passes.

The island is very empty, it seems.  Last evening when we rode down to the sunset we saw only three other parties there and they were all local friends.  Normally there would have been a large gathering of tourists.  Everything along the way was closed down and there were neither cars nor walkers to be seen.

It was a beautiful evening.  The sun was hanging just above the horizon as a moving line of clouds kept alternately covering then revealing it.  It was like seeing multiple sunsets over and over again.

Sunset before the storm.

As we turned to leave, the full moon was at the same time coming up out of the ocean.  We had to go out and walk on the beach a bit to soak in its beauty.  The ocean is already pushing a bit higher because of the full moon which makes the potential storm surge somewhat stronger.

Full moon over the growing tides.

It looks like tomorrow will be clear of the storm for most of the day and then it will arrive in North Carolina throughout Tuesday night.  We wait and watch and hope for everyone that winds and water stay on the lower side.

Neighbors watching the full moon from the boardwalk.

Going Bananas!

This year we are doing something we have never done before: we are growing banana “trees.”

Trish and I ordered and set out four varieties of bananas from those listed as most hardy.  These are listed as having hardiness for Zone 8 and since we are in Zone 9, one notch south, we decided to give it a try.

We have: Lady Finger, Ice Cream, Misi Luki, and Raja Puri plants.  We put them out in the early spring and they just sat there for a very long time.  In fact, the Raja Puri looked for all the world like it was dead, but when I called the nursery to ask about it, they told me to scratch the stem and if I got any green, it was still alive.  We left it alone and sure enough it began to grow.  Right now it is outgrowing all the rest and has huge leaves.

Now that they have taken hold, they are adding about one new leaf each week.

The trees are putting out about one new leaf each week.  The leaves are each one bigger than the one before and are now more than three feet long.  Whatever happens in the long run, it is a joy just to have these plants and see them grow so rapidly.

The Raja Puri is supposed to get up to twenty feet tall!

Last winter we had no frost here and if that happens again we may get bananas...but...it may also take four or five years.  We shall see.  They are lots of fun.