Day 82, 7 Aug

42 Visitors

Another sunny, beautiful morning dawned on us again. I raised the flag and attended to Sacatar. She wanted to go back inside after her morning walk, so I brought her back into the living room where she went back to her dozing. Fred went down to the cove and radioed that there was a 3-person family coming ashore. I was ready to host them but then Fred arrived back to retrieve a key and he said he would give them a tour while I took a shower.

Another Flower Down by the Cove

The family took awhile to get up to the house and in the meantime a few others appeared for tours. I eventually joined Fred to meet the visitors and start the day. I gave a tour and sold a few things in the gift store. I went to get some breakfast and popped a bagel in the toaster. I managed to get some milk started when Ethan arrived with the ferry with his group of visitors. Others had arrived at the house and onto the tours I began forsaking my lonely bagel to be abandoned in its toasty house. I did manage a few sips of my milk but that too went back in the fridge for later. We had a full boatload of visitors and the afternoon went by fast as usual. There was the threat of afternoon thundershowers and Ethan asked if that happened could we store the visitors in the boathouse if need be. Fortunately the storms didn’t materialize and everyone was off the island by 2 pm.

Fred Enjoying the Fantastic Sunset

Ah, so nice to have our enchanted isle to ourselves again. I fielded a call from a gentleman who was interested in renting the suite next week for 1 night and tentatively set up his Thursday evening reservation pending on other occupancy and weather. Earlier in the week I had email contact with two other parties, one set was to arrive tomorrow and the other on Monday. The skies were darkening to the southeast but I nuked the leftover chicken bundles and sliced some watermelon and grabbed some cherries for lunch. I packed them all up with drinks and hiked back down to the cove to share lunch with Fred at the boathouse dock. He was down there replacing the chain and hardware on the tram. The old chain was very rusted and about to go. We had a very nice lunch on the dock looking out onto our serene little cove with no one blissfully there. The sky continued to evolve into threatening colors but held off. We stuffed ourselves and hiked down to the cove to look for beach glass since it was low tide. After about ½ an hour of looking and getting our feet very cold we stopped. Fred went up before me and I lingered back to retrieve a few more pieces of glass – it is so addicting to look for the treasures. Fred commenced mowing the lawn in the upper areas.  He continued even though it started to rain lightly.  The rain did stop and he finished it.  At 3:30 pm I ventured back to the house and switched to warmer clothes and settled in to work on my painting. I needed to tackle the painting of the keeper’s house with all its little bricks. How would I do that? The afternoon was pleasant with a light breeze but there were a few mosquitos and I slapped one on my ankle, which released my blood all over my sock. Yes the little torpedos from hell drill right through your socks and leggings to hit pay dirt. I sprayed some Deet all over me to ward off the little satanic demons. Onward with my tiny bricks. I applied little tufts of colors of deep rust, browns and those colors mixed with black to the already laid down foundation of medium rust to the canvas of the house outline. It was slow and tedious but the little bricks seemed to emerge gradually. I began to feel them peeking out and in one area with a fine brush put some areas of the mortar between the “bricks”.  A few fatter brush strokes of other color to subtly smooth some of the mortar and suddenly the bricks appeared as they should – so that is how I will do them!  This is usually how I operate, to try some technique and just feel it with color, texture and shapes to achieve what I want. It may not be the right way or the fastest but it seems to work for me, just to intensely see and feel what you are painting and it should evolve. I also touched up or accented other areas that needed it – I also tend to jump around like an ADD savant within my paintings and get distracted with other areas only to come back to what I was originally working on. Again it seems to work out for me.

Another picture of the Outstanding Sunset

After about 2 hours of painting outside I began to get rather cold and decided to pack everything in at 7 pm. I put everything on the dining rom table – where I could work on the windows and door without having to look at the actual items. I started working on them and allowed areas to dry while cooking up some chicken for Sac’s dinner that I add to her cup of kibbles. Another pretty sunset commenced and I was drawn outside to witness it and capture it in photos. I will have to try my hand at some of these sunsets when I get back home and work from these photos. Sunsets are hard to do plein air since they are constantly changing right before your eyes. Back I went to the windows after the sunset and got those pretty much placed in, as I like. By now it’s 9 pm and time for dinner. I gathered my lettuces and herbs and proceeded to make a nice big salad, which I had with Moscato wine. That meal did us in and we were too full for anything else but some popcorn later that Fred nuked. I managed one row of knitting with the start of the decreases in the vine pattern portion of the dress. I fell asleep on the couch in my usual fashion and awoke later to finish writing to days of blogs to catch up. It’s now past 4 am and I really need to get some sleep. It will be a busy day with visitors and overnight guests including two of our own. Tom and Julie are coming from Tennessee and it will be so nice to see them again after too many years. Tom was the chief test pilot at China Lake where we worked and I used to fly backseat with him in the jets. We had some real fun times and it will be nice to catch up with him and Julie. Off to sleep with the picture of that big red moon I saw setting and shining over the water when I stepped outside earlier. Beauty was sparkling wonderfully in the night as she always does in her comforting steady way.