Day 100, 25 Aug

29 Visitors

Beauty

Our 100th day on the island!  Another gorgeous warm sunny morning graced us. Our overnight guests got up to watch a pretty sunrise and then went back to bed. We got a call at 8 am from Ken and he was bringing out Kent, one of the mason guys to do some work. No sleeping in today for us!

I got up and raised the flag and made up chicken salad sandwiches for Ethan and Brooke. I also made sliced turkey and roast beef sandwiches for us for lunch later. I tended to my garden and dug out a nice long carrot for salads and noticed some tiny baby pumpkins starting – they are so cute. Also in my pumpkin plants I noticed a nice fat garter snake. How nice of him to make residence in my garden. I’m so glad I could provide shelter for him. Later when I showed Fred, I saw a smaller one also. I have seen one in my chive garden also. Our overnight guests took a nice hike down to the Cove and Cobblestone trails and around the peninsula. After they got back I had a pleasant morning chatting with our guests and Ken. The guests managed to purchase some goodies from the gift store before all the visitors from the ferry showed up. The father and son from our guests went off fishing with Ethan during the two hour layover the visitors have on the island. Mom and daughter stayed to enjoy more of the island. We had our busy 2 hours of giving tours, manning the gift shop and chatting with visitors. I managed to grab the last muffin, a banana and a glass of milk for a quick breakfast as the visitors appeared. After the ferry visitors trickled back to the cove I was able to give a tour to mom and daughter of our overnight guests. The day before the daughter was unable to go on the private tour that I gave the family. She had a problem with walking on the spiral staircase inside the tower. It is a problem she has had since being a toddler. So today we thought we would try again. I lead the way up the stairs and mom was behind me and the daughter behind her. She kept her eyes straight ahead on her mom and did not look down. We slowly got up all 38 steps to the base of the lens and I gave them a nice tour. I opened the door to the catwalk and she gingerly took a look outside to see the view. We then went back down the same way and she did great!  It was so good to see this young lady persevere and get to go to the top and see Beauty in the morning sun with the rainbows being created from the prisms and projected onto the curved tower walls. It was great to see her confidence grow. When she first got here she was very shy and talked so quietly, so it was nice to chat with her later about Sacatar and have her feel more comfortable on this glorious island. I gave both of them a hug and told the daughter – now you can be a keeper! We said our goodbyes and they scampered off to the cove to take the ferry back to Popham. That very nice family was our last overnight guest group for the season. After the ferry left, we had the whole island back to ourselves and we pulled out the sandwiches along with potato and macaroni salads for lunch on the front porch, enjoying the views of Cobblestone and the ocean. We are going to miss all those fantastic views here.

In the glorious afternoon Fred worked on the battery charger for the tram engine battery and other chores.  The charger was not working so he took it apart and found a short in the wiring, fixed it and now it can charge the tram starter battery.  Tram never runs long enough the charge the battery so a working charger is a necessity to run the tram.

Battery Charger Taken Apart and Being Fixed

I finally had the time to sit down and work on my night time painting of the tower and lavished in 3 whole hours of concentrated painting of Beauty lit up at night with swirling fog around her. It takes me a least an hour to get into my painting zone to work on something so this was grand! I felt a bit guilty that I wasn’t running around the magnificent sunshine but I wanted to complete this painting before I left. I stopped at 7 pm – almost done and very excited that it was almost there.   We were out watching sunset when I made the comment that it was so nice to have had no one show up in the afternoon. Right after I said that we noticed a couple coming back from the North trail and said hello. We gave them a spectacular sunset tour of the tower, which they enjoyed. They were from Azerbaijan near the Caspian Sea and were thinking of staying overnight in the cove. We returned to the house and tonight was salmon night so I chopped up all the ingredients for mango salsa which took about an hour. I used Tom’s spicy chipotle to give it the right amount of zip. We had some of last week’s salsa just on blue corn chips and it was divine! So I have another whole batch to enjoy in our last days here. I also made the perfect Singapore Sling to go along with dinner – cherry and apricot brandy with the gin and fruit juice and leave out the lime vodka, though have a lime slice.

Another Pretty Sunset

I made up a nice salad and we had that prior to Fred grilling the salmon on the stove and nuking some green beans – a few of them came from my garden. I regret that I won’t be here to further enjoy my planting labors. I do hope the FOSILS member who will be out here till Columbus Day will reap my efforts and care for the flowers I planted also. I do hope they can carve some jack-o-lanterns from my precious pumpkins. I managed to get a bit of knitting in on my dress – 23 rows done on the 2^nd phase of the decreased stitch section. I went out to see the night sky and make mental notes of the stars for my painting. Again I got very tired and napped on the couch to awaken at about 3 pm. Finally I crawled into bed at 4 with dreams of fog and stars swirling about a magnificent jewel named Beauty.