Island Thanksgiving

 We have had a very quiet Thanksgiving Week here on our island.  Our son, Jonathan, and his wife, Kahran, came down for the week.  Everyone else decided it was safer to stay home than travel but since Jon and Kahran work totally from home and they can drive to the ferry without stopping, they came to be here for the week.

We had a great time together and wonderful food.  Our menu included a Cornish Turkey (our name for a chicken in place of a turkey since there are only four of us...and Jon is vegetarian), sweet potato soufflé, green bean casserole, cornbread dressing, lots of gravy (both chicken and vegetarian), yeast rolls, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie.  Our menu for Friday is leftover everything!

The weather was beautiful and in the seventies by the afternoon.  We ate on the screen porch and enjoyed the yard all afternoon in the sunshine,  Then it was time for a late nap before pie for dinner.

Even in this strange year our hearts are filled with thankfulness for family, health, home, and the promise of restored direction for our country and our world health.  We live looking forward to what lies ahead and our part in restoration of happiness and sanity.

Weekend in the Yard

 We are having beautiful seventy degree days this time in November and Trish and I are joyfully getting to do a lot of yard work that is still lingering from hurricane damage.

The first sowing of annual rye grass is up and making everything so green that it is time to mow and trim all around the house.  As you can see, the banana trees are still growing and this one is more then ten feet tall.

We worked with two wheelbarrows, one for each of us, to move chips and build a fresh walkway from the garage to the back deck of the house where the hot tub is.  There is weed barrier under the chip layer and when it settles down we will add a neat layer of pine bark mulch to the top.

It is also time for planting bulbs.  Asiatic lilies have been planted and other bulbs are slated to go in the ground this week.

Best thing of all, though, is our working together to care for and make our home the place we want it to be.  When all the COVID distraction is over, you will see a big difference when you come to the island.

Tree Work and Yard Work

 During and following Hurricane Dorian we lost nine trees around the house. They were cut and cleaned up a good while back.

Later on, however, we began to notice another large tree that was beginning to lean more and more toward the back deck and back side of the house.  As we watched it carefully, it was obvious that it was making a slow decision to fall!

Instead of waiting for the inevitable, we went on and had the tree removed.  There were three benefits:  no longer are we afraid that our deck will get squashed or the back of the house damaged, we gained a great deal of sunshine for the back yard and especially the banana trees there, and, we got several loads of good wood chips out of the bargain.

We are using these wonderful cedar smelling chips to fill in low places around the yard and to level uneven areas.  We then seed them with winter rye, which comes up quickly and gives us lovely winter green, and then oversow more grass in the spring.

Trish loads the chips and I push the wheelbarrow and unload them.  We come out about even that way.  We both love working in and on the yard it it is getting more beautiful all the time.  At the end of the day we are both worn out, but, I got to take the picture,

A Quick Trip!

 Today we are driving toward home at the end of a quick trip to Indianapolis.

Last year I was scheduled for a performance for Story Arts of Indiana at the Indiana History Center Theatre in Indianapolis.  With the advent of COVID, that performance was cancelled.

As the year progressed, Ellen Munds, director of Story Arts, began to look at ways to redeem the season. We rescheduled the event for November 14 hoping things would reopen by now...they did not.

So, the plan was to either do a totally virtual event or a hybrid event in which I would go to Indianapolis, perform for a small audience, and have the event streamed via Zoom to the entire audience.  This was the option I choose.  So, last evening, in the 300 seat theatre, I has a very well spaced out audience of about thirty people while all the other ticket holders watched from home.

 It was a great joy to be on a real stage with real people out there, even if the number was safely limited.  Right now we are learning to do whatever works to keep storytelling alive and well and to do so feels very appreciated and embraced.

The History Center was filled with more than a dozen beautiful trees for the coming holiday season.  Trish and I could not resist having our picture taken in such a festive setting.  Besides indoors, there were lighted trees all around the center.  With the drop in temperature between Ocracoke and Indianapolis, we really did feel like Christmas is in its way.

Now we go home and insert Thanksgiving on the island before we get back in touch with Christmas.

Back in Business!

 In September,  Google Blogpost totally changed the way you create a post.  At that moment I was thrown for a loop and could not figure out how to get in to it and make it work.  Also at that time things were very busy with virtual festival recording and I just let the blog slip.

Now you have been reminding me that I need to bring it back to life, so, I am trying to learn the new system and do that.

I  am enter text with no problem, but the photos are giving me a hard time.  Sometimes I can upload a picture,  but cannot put a caption on it.  So, I shall just keep trying.

To show you what I have been doing, I have finished another model ship.  This is a Drakkar Viking Longship from about the year 1,200.  This ship would have been 71 feet long with a crew of about 40.  They went all over Europe and even to Greenland and down to New England.  

The other thing we have been doing is harvesting our gourds.  They went high up in our trees and are now all coming down. No, we don’t know what we are going to do with them.  It was just fun to see then grow.

So, the election is past and our lives go forward.  We live with care and hope for the 2021.