Day 14, 31 May

5 visitors

New Hampshire visitor helping his wife onto the Guppy

Another busy day here on the island. We had two visitors in the morning – a cute couple from New Hampshire who came over on Ethan’s ferry. Ethan’s brother Anthony was also on board.  We gave the couple a nice tour and they made my first visitor sale! While Anthony was rowing the dingy to put Ethan on his boat, the weakened-previously damaged oar broke with a load snap. Ethan then brought his boat, the Guppy, up onto the sand to retrieve the couple. The chivalrous gentleman visitor carried his dear wife to the ferry so she wouldn’t get her feet wet.  After a breakfast of bacon, egg and cheese on English muffin Fred installed the new kitchen faucet with a little assistance from me. How nice to have a non-leaking, high spigot faucet with a pullout hand rinser! Fred then sprayed some young poison ivy

New faucet!

areas and started to work on clearing my garden area, that had weeds, chives and mint growing in it while I cleaned the upper part of the great lens. The chives will be transplanted somewhere else. I have been eating them fresh in salads and cooking with them. The clearing of the garden is back breaking work and I am thankful that he is doing that for me. I used the new plastic, two-step-stool to reach the upper prisms of the lens. I was very careful, each “step” of the way, to carefully clean with some new micro fiber cloths that worked great on the hand reachable prisms. Then I used a Swiffer on the upper ones, reaching them all, except for the last row on the top. I’m a little too short for the highest prisms. If there was bird poop on the Swiffer areas, I would spray a bit of vinegar/water mixture on the Swiffer and wipe it on the spot

Cynthia very carefully cleaning the 157 year old lens

otherwise would use the Swiffer dry. The poop areas would clean up but be kind of smeared till I could wipe it more when the Swiffer dried off a bit. So I did the painstaking cleaning all afternoon carefully moving the stepstool and cleaning supplies around the big lens. It was quite warm in the lantern room with the lens since the day was sunny and the wind was still. I was in shorts and tank top. I must say she looks even prettier now that her top is clean!  We were both tired as usual from our chores and relaxed a bit with some wine and watched the glow of sunset. We had just returned to the house at about 8:20 PM when we saw some people on the grass! We ran out to greet three Dutch gentlemen from a sailboat that was moored in the cove for the evening. We gave them a gorgeous late sunset tour of the lighthouse and they looked about

Garden about half tilled and cleaned up

the museum before leaving to get back to their boat before it got too dark. So back to relaxing with knitting and Fred on the computer. I made us salads and took a shower before cooking some scallops that I got at Gilmore’s. I used a recipe in one of the cookbooks and just poached them in a wine, water, butter, chives and spices mixture. They turned out pretty good and Sac got one for a treat. Fred used the mixture to cook a salmon fillet, which tasted yummy. I got more knitting done before being too tired to continue. The stars the past few nights have been very nice especially with the beautiful sparkling lens shining in the night and the great dark spokes from the “umbrella” effect of the lantern room. Ah the evening respite with a lighthouse, what could be better.