Haircut Day!

I got my hair cut in February, and, even though it grows slowly, there is no way it could reasonably go for four months without turning into a mess.

It was not just that Trish finally decided that I looked like a hairy man, it was feeling hot, greasy, frizzy, and just miserable.

What a mess to begin with.

So, yesterday was the day!

We set up shop beside the hot tub on the back deck and she went to work.  She was so very careful and took plenty of time, and, when it was over, there was a huge pile of hair on the deck and I was ready to shower and wash my hair to see how things had turned out.

It looks great!  What a good job, and, it feels to light, cool, and good.

All trimmed and ready to grow again.

Maybe I won’t even look for a place to have haircuts anymore once this time is all over since I have experienced the best of all worlds at home.

The Yard is Coming Back

Hurricane Dorian brought about five feet of water over this part of the yard and up onto the wall of and inside the garage pictured here. The salty water was filled with refuse of every sort as well as being polluted with sewage, gasoline, and diesel fuel.  Everything died and there was stench and stink for quite a long time after the best possible cleanup work.

It is so dear now to see that the back yard is back, clean, with grass growing and welcoming us to once again enjoy time there.

This week our son, Doug, and his wife, Jill, have been with us.  The garage apartment has been their home for the week, but, one night we built our first fire in the fire pit since the Hurricane and had beer and hot dogs in the yard.

Doug and I burn our hot dogs while Jill and Trish watch.

It is amazing how such a simple thing can be such a reason for joy and thankfulness.  We give thanks for fire, grass, beer, and hot dogs!

Birthday!

Yesterday was my 76th birthday!

We were awakened early by the roofers arrival at 7:07 am to take advantage of a clear and dry day to try to finish the steel roof work that had been interrupted by a week of rain.  That they had arrived signaled that it was indeed to be a beautiful day: clear skies of blue and a slightly breezy temperature in the edge of the seventies.

Trish checks out a finished portion of our new steel roof. The new skylights make windows from my upstairs office.

Our son, Doug, and his wife, Jill, had arrived the night before to spend a week on the island.  After a very lazy start to the day, I was informed that I could do whatever I wanted for the entire day.  I spent most of the day reading on the screen porch (I am in the midst of a well-plotted novel, The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan, a change of pace after just finishing Erik Larson’s The Splendid and the Vile the day before).

It was such a lovely day: I got to watch the roofers work, I received emails and Facebook wishes, there were phone calls from friends and family members, including all the boys and grandson Frank, whose own sixth birthday he is still celebrating two weeks after the fact!

We all picked up our lunch orders at Eduardo’s Taco Truck and picnicked on the back deck in the sunshine.

The best part of the day was perhaps dinner.  We had steak on the Big Green Egg, roasted Brussels sprouts, baked sweet potatoes...and then...the biggest treat of all.  When Trish asked a couple of days ago, “What do you want for your birthday cake?” I had to think.  I’m not really much of a cake person.  I also don’t eat chocolate since I don’t do caffeine.  Then I remembered how much I loved my mother’s butterscotch pie when I was a small boy.

Beautiful!

“A butterscotch meringue pie,” I announced followed by her declaration that she had never in her life made such a thing.  But...it was done, and, a splendid thing it is.  In fact, this morning I plan to have butterscotch pie for breakfast on the screen porch.

It was the best birthday...so far!!

Everything’s Growing

Trish and I just had our Sunday morning walk around the yard and are amazed that, after all the rain of the week, everything is growing like mad.

We scattered grass seed in the part of the yard where the old trees were recently cut, and, just four days later, baby grass is springing up everywhere!

Our huge red cedar tree tree is filled with wind chimes, bird feeders, and hanging ferns.  It is our visual and sound focus as we sit in the screen porch each morning with coffee, hot chocolate, and English muffins.  The ferns seem to have doubled in size this week.

We love our biggest cedar tree.

As we walk around the house, the climbing roses that screen our outdoor shower are beginning to burst into pink abundance.  They will really be climbing and blooming in the coming days.

With no freeze or frost this past winter, many annual plants lived and are having a glorious new season for free.  The nasturtiums kept blooming all winter, but now they are really showing us what they are meant to do in more tropical climates.

Nasturtiums bring free blooms for the second year.

The Asiatic Lily plants are partying off the back deck.  Their surprising colors and patterns joyfully last for weeks this time of year.

The Asiatic Lily colors are brilliant.

And...after looking like they were dead for sure, the banana trees are beginning to pop up the first of their fast-growing  leaves.  They will be eight to ten feet tall by the end of the summer.

We have four varieties if bananas.  If we have a frost free winter, we may even get bananas.

This week Ocracoke was selected as the number two beach in the United States (we can’t be number one again for ten years since being selected last time, but we have been number two for the second year in a row).  So many people come here just for the beach, but, our walk around our own yard shows us again that there is more than the beach to live for here.

Beach Visit

With all the rain in the past week, Trish and I had  hardly left the house for several days.  Yesterday morning, when there was a very brief break in falling weather, we decided to ride out to the beach to see if the stormy weather had brought up any good shells.

We drove out to the Lifeguard Beach parking lot, but there were two cars there, so, we decided not to go there.  We drove on up to the Pony Pen lot, but there was one car there and we decided that would make the beach too crowded!   So, we drove on to one of our own favorite access points and parked there with no one  in sight.

When we crossed the dunes to the beach, the ocean was roaring and the tide was very high.  It was clear that it had been all the way up to the dunes in the night.  There were no shells to be found as the high tide was almost totally covering the beach.  We had a lovely walk watching and listening to the big  breakers and being again amazed at their ability to so totally wash clean the world of the beach.

Yesterday’s Stormy Ocean and Freshly Washed Beach...High Tide. 

On the dune crossing we looked at the wild Galardia blooming everywhere.  This is their beginning time of year.

Wild Galardia, locally called ‘Joe Bells’ after a long-ago frequent visitor, Joe Bell, whom legend describes as scattering there seeds all over the island.

As we drove back to our house, it started raining once again promising that the rest of this day would be spent once again indoors.

Back in the Kitchen

One of the things Trish and I missed most about being out of our house was our kitchen.  It had just been totally remodeled when the flood came and all of the new work, including new appliances, had to be torn out and started all over again.

The kitchen is all back in working order again.

Though we did have a little kitchen in the apartment where we were living during rebuilding, it was not the full scale kitchen.  Now...we are back in business.

I love Moroccan cooking and here is a beef and vegetable Tagine with apricots and preserved lemon.

I had not made bread (my usual regular habit) the entire time we were out.  Now bread is back on the cooking rotation and in our menu.  This week it has been French with Kalamata olives and then French with parmigiana.

We got breakfast in bed with coffee and Trish’s Orange-Apricot Scones.

Yesterday I got a whole beef tenderloin and made up the brine to cure it into corned beef.  It will take about ten days, but the corned beef made from this great cut of meat will be far better than anything we could buy anywhere.

Sunday night is our regular pizza night...our favorite with black and green olives and lots of mozzarella.

So, each day we are now eating well.  When we are on our normal travel schedule we have to eat out far too much.  It is so good to be home where we can properly feed ourselves.  Our stomachs love it too!

Last night Angel Hair Pasta with a fresh Puttsnesca sauce.

Springtime in Ocracoke

Why do we live where we live?  After all, we have no Walmart and no CVS, no McDonald‘s and no Home Depot.  We also have to ride a ferry nearly three hours just to get off the island and after that we are three more hours to a major city.  And, it is six hours from home to get to the airport.

We realized once again part of the answer when we saw people in California crowding the beach.  California, which many of the residents consider their paradise of a living space, with beaches so crowded it was hard to get six feet away from everyone else.

So, Trish and I went to the beach on Ocracoke yesterday.  Here is what we found there,  but maybe a picture shows it best.  I must warn you in the beginning that it was just after lunch time and the temperature was seventy-four degrees under a clear blue sky.

We looked long and hard to try to find a spot that was not already occupied by others.

We finally chose our spot and set up our chairs for a quiet time with our books.