Day 18, 4 June

Today was our day to be off the island to get supplies.   Around 10pm the night before I went out to walk Sacatar and saw a beautiful starry night.  Around 11pm Cyn went outside and noted the lighthouse was totally hemmed in by fog.  Came in quickly.  When this happens, the entire area surrounding the lighthouse is bathed in an eerie glow produced by the dome of light emitted by the lighthouse into the fog around us.  She is always watching us.  It is really cool!  At any rate, this was predicted and rain is in the forecast for Wednesday.  We got up a 0600, got all the trash together and what was left of our stuff to take to town and headed down to the cove.  It wasn’t raining (yet).  Around 0720 Ethan showed up in the Guppy to drop off the Wednesday Warriors, 4 of them today, and pick us up.  In about 2 minutes we unload their stuff and load up our stuff and off we go, barely able to say hi.  We did tell them about a tram issue and how to handle Sacatar if she needed to go out.  She has to be helped down the stairs.  Ethan brought Pepper along, his pitbull-lab mix.  She is very sweet and seemed glad to see us.  Once we arrived at Popham Beach, it started to rain.  Rained pretty good most of the day.  On the way to town we stopped at Cyndy’s to empty the trash, get water and return some frozen chicken breasts to her freezer that she left at the Keeper’s house. We were real quiet so we didn’t wake Cyndy or Hinkley up, but we did get one cat to greet us. On the way to the office we stopped at Mae’s Café and shared a yummy eggs Benedict breakfast. We performed our duties at the Lighthouse business office, picked up a few items in town (Pizza cutter, better corkscrew), Cyn got some buttons at the yarn store and we headed over to do laundry.  While she was at the yarn store I mailed a couple of Seguin Island T-shirts to our good friends, Ron and Janice, who live in Tucson and requested them.  While Cyn did the laundry, I went to Ace hardware to pick up some lawnmower air filters, got two gas cans filled and checked on a prescription at Walgreens (they still didn’t have it).  Cynthia called both her mom and oldest brother and had nice long chat with both.  They were wondering if we had made it and how we were doing.  We both went about 6 miles to the nearest Wal-Mart to look for some rain pants.   We really should have some of these, especially for the boat ride.  Couldn’t find any that we liked.  I will order some online tonight and have them delivered to the office.  Next, off to the grocery store and fish market for food.  We finally went to have lunch at Spinney’s, a restaurant right near Popham Beach.  Got there at 2pm.  Turns out our friend Cyndy works there.  She was the one who spent the first week at the lighthouse teaching us all the ins and outs of the operations.  It was great to see her again and chat and catch up on events.  Cyn had a crab sandwich while I had a burger.  Very good.  On to the pier at 3pm for our return trip to the island.  It is now raining hard.  We pulled up and Ethan was waiting for us in his truck, sound asleep.  We quietly loaded up his boat and changed our clothes.  Ethan did wake up but was surprised he hadn’t heard us sooner.  He was nice enough to follow us in his truck to our parking spot and gave us a ride back to the Guppy.  I mentioned we changed clothes.  Nearly every time you get in or out of the boat at the cove on the island you get wet, at least from the knees down.  What seems to work is lightweight quick drying nylon shorts with some sort of water shoes.  So here we are all bundled up on top, shirt, fleece and rain jacket with bare legs sticking out below.  It was only about 50 degrees and raining so our legs got pretty cold.  Off we go to the island, hard rain, some pretty big swells and windy.  We arrive 20 minutes later and the crew is on the rocks waiting for us.  We perform the usually switch-a-roo with gear and bodies and they leave us alone in the hard rain on at the rocky cove.  We carry the stuff up the steps to the base of the tram.  Cyn puts the stuff that is not in waterproof containers in the donkey engine house and she heads to the lighthouse carrying the, all important, ice cream and frozen pizzas to get them in the freezer as fast as possible.  While she does that I fire up the diesel donkey engine and prepare the tram.  When she is at the top of the tram to provide hand signals, so I know when to stop the tram, I engage the tram gearing and up it goes.  She gives me the signal to stop, I turn off the engine and up I go.  Still raining we load everything off the tram to the house.  Put things away and sat down to watch the news.  As I write this, I have the first Kings-Rangers Stanley Cup game on in a small window on the computer.  Game is tied at the end of 2 periods, 2-2.  Puck is really small, but the image is amazingly sharp.  Cyn fell asleep on the couch.  The rain finally stopped but is in the forecast for tomorrow.  Might be an indoor day.  Stay tuned.  Oh yeah, the Kings won!

Day 17, 3 June

0 visitors

Seguin Island flower at cobblestone beach

I got a good early start today and weed whacked the Cobblestone, Lighthouse and South trails today.  I was careful to avoid and quickly get by various seagull nests with 2 to 3 eggs in them.  A couple of seagulls dived very close to my head (2-3 feet) as I approached an area near the tip with lots of nests.  I retrieved a couple of planters from under the porch for Cynthia.  She planted lavender in them later in the day.  Earlier she went down to the cove and hand watered the flower box she planted yesterday with flower seeds. She took a walk down cobblestone trail to the rock cliffs where the flowers were blooming even more. She enjoyed scurrying up and down the rocks and watching the crashing waves on the distant rocks. Since I got an early start I thought I could enjoy the sun and relax a little this afternoon.  I took my

Cobblestone Beach on east side of island

iPad down to a calm area near the whistle house and lay down in the grass for well over an hour reading old issues of Time.  While I was being lazy, Cynthia worked for over three hours in her little garden planting all kinds of seeds in the, hopefully rich soil.  This is the garden area used by past keepers and the one I spent considerable time on clearing and getting it ready for Cyn.  She planted various types of carrots, spinach, peas, beans, cucumbers, oregano, cilantro, basil, arugula, lettuce, beets and pumpkins.  She labeled everything she planted in neat little rows in the approximately 8 foot circular garden.  It will be fun to see what grows.  While she was finishing up the garden, I decided to take a bunch of our stuff that goes to town tomorrow down the tram to the cove.  Empty fuel, water, food and cooler containers were

Cynthia planting seeds in her little garden

most of it.  Tomorrow morning we will still have to bring our laundry and trash down to the cove.  Back to the tram.  Another reason for taking the tram down the hill is it will ready to head up with the Wednesday Warrior’s stuff when they arrive as we leave in the morning.  Unfortunately, I had a slight problem.  About 1/8 the way down the down spool (the one the pulls the tram down the tracks) stopped wrapping and got very loose. I stopped the tram immediately.  Walking up the tram, just above tower 46, a board had come loose and was jammed against the front axel.  I went down to the cove and moved the tram up about 20 feet to unbind everything.  I took the slack out of the cables before moving it.  I got a bunch of wood screws and the power drill and fastened the plank down.  I inspected the tram top to bottom and secured

Fred in shorts inspecting and repairing the tram

about 8-10 other boards that were loose.  I then took a hammer and pounded down all nails that needed it.  I am sure over the winter; some of the nails work themselves out.  At any rate, it works fine now and I got the tram to the bottom.  Unfortunately, the downhill axel makes an awful lot of noise.  Ethan and I tried to get grease in the axel but apparently were unsuccessful.  Hopefully, one of the Wednesday Warriors can look at this and try something else.  Cynthia made a nice salad and we ate outside sitting on “sunset” bench and watched, you guessed it, the sunset.  You could see clouds in the distance. Tomorrow and Thursday it is supposed to be rainy.  This will be good for the garden.  For dinner we had the leftover chicken/asparagus casserole with the salad. Cynthia just went up in the lighthouse to say

Seguin Island fresnel Lens, note prism effects

good night to the other woman that has entered our lives.  The other woman being, the now polished and glimmering, Fresnel lens.  Cynthia decided the lens’s gender was female.  With all the colors it radiates and sparkles, I tend to agree.

Day 16, 2 June

0 visitors

Another sunny gorgeous morning to greet us today in shorts. Fred went down to the cove area to mow the lawns while I opted to finish the hand shearing of the step edges to get rid of the high grass the mower missed. Two days of hand shearing was getting very tiring to my fragile hands and I was glad I got that done and it looks very nice.

Cyn cleaning the lens, look hard, she is inside the lens!

We took a break around 4 PM and relaxed at the Boathouse deck with a snack over looking the cove and even got some micro naps in in the hazy sunshine with the waves making an occasional crash and shaking the deck. We got back to the house and I made up some guacamole for later. I noticed they didn’t have the spicy powdered guac mix at Shaw’s like they do in CA. Wonder if I can find some jalapeno powder somewhere to spice it up. Late afternoon Fred went down the North trail to spray for poison ivy and I tackled the high inside of the lens. The step stool just fit inside the smaller dimensioned inside with the hot, 1000 watt bulb really heating the interior up. Even though it was past 6 PM and sun very low it was a sauna in there. I carefully and patiently cleaned all the

Kitchen in the keeper quarters

way up to the small panels of prisms on the very top that I could barely reach with the Swiffer. I did eventually wrap a micro fiber cloth around the Swiffer and just one small squirt of cleaning mixture to clean way up there. I found it was better not to use much mixture or it would leave lots of droplets on the glass and really take awhile to wipe it down – better to use less. Again needed to wipe down with a more dry cloth after that. I did the lower prisms with my hands that I could reach.  So 2.5 hours later and after the sunset (and a noticeably bit cooler) I was done and exhausted on being on my feet and toes reaching for all that time. I think my ballet training came into good play while on my tippy toes and standing/balancing on the stool. I did gingerly hang on usually with one delicate hand on major metal supports around the lens. When I did that white paint flakes did fall from the old supports, which I brushed up later. Oh, but did she ever look magnificent in all her shiny clean glory!! She absolutely sparkled and I was so pleased so see her so happy.  Down on the ground in daylight or night

Sunset out through the lighthouse windows

the rainbows off the prisms really seemed to stand out – happy lens indeed!  Fred had made a salad while I finished up in the tower. Finally time to relax a little in the living room with knitting and wine. At 8:43 pm we ran out of the house to see the space station go sailing by overhead – they had just mentioned it in the news. We like to do that – watch for the space station when we get reports of it. Finally we decided to have dinner of salad and crab cakes. We watched more news and Fred went to bed. I did more knitting and detangled an abhorrent yarn skein that self-destructed. Finally a shower and bed at 2 am. Good night my sweet lens – glow so prettily in the star encrusted night.

Blog Tips:  Click on the figures for larger versions and when commenting, please sign your first name if you would like a reply.  Otherwise we have no way to tell who left the message.  Thanks!

Day 15, 1 June

4 visitors

Cozy living room and keepers quarters

A glorious warm sunny morning to start the day – in shorts! Ethan brought over 4 visitors and dropped them off while he gave a sight seeing tour around the island to others. We had fun hosting a couple from Quebec and an enthusiastic lighthouse lover and her son from PA.  I sold a winter hat and a book today and used the old fashioned credit card machine for the first time! While Fred mowed the grass again with the riding and hand mower, I worked on chopping the bits of unsightly taller grass tuffs at the sidewalk and step edges using hand shears or just my hands to rip out the grass. An occasional spider, bug or earthworm would surface and scurry away. An earthworm – hadn’t seen those in years. We

Coast late in the day

don’t have them in the sandy desert soils. I safely put him in another area where he sank back into the grass and earth. We worked on the lawn till about 3 pm and had a break for lunch – French bread pizzas and the last 2 corn on the cobs and grapefruit. Back to work – Fred finishing clearing my garden circle and transplanting some of the chives that were there. He also went down the south trail spraying for poison ivy. I went down to the Donkey House where I put flower seeds in a wooden planter that Fred dragged out from the Donkey house. So we will see if anything sprouts up. I then decided to hike down the Cobblestone trail with hand shears to snip any wayward obstacles. I was wearing my five finger shoes with socks and insole support. I hadn’t worn these in months and was wearing them all day today. I had to be a bit careful on the cobblestones but climbing on the bigger rocks was no problem. I spied some lovely little purplish flowers that were coming out in abundance that were not out previously. I opted to stay more in the grassy areas off of the cliffs and rocks and passed by a number of seagull nests with their speckled eggs. The waves were crashing offshore and looking and hearing dramatic and I took some pictures. I picked my way around to the Cove trail stopping to admire and enjoy my island paradise. How very lucky I am to be here. I got around to the cove side and admired the beauty of the birds in the water with the low sun silhouetting them in an idyllic scene. The boathouse looked charming with the tram to the left and the great lighthouse tower peeking out to the far upper right. Again – am I really here at this tranquil place? I hope the serenity and beauty of this bucolic isle never leaves me.

Cynthia at sunset with a deserved cocktail 

Well it is getting late and I return to the house via the main trail, smelling the sweet scent of some spring flowers somewhere around me. Fred gets the flag down and we fold it. I admire the totally cleared out garden area and we go sit on the sunset bench to enjoy sunset and view MT. Washington 86 miles in the distance. Back inside to relax and knit a bit and finally I decide to make a chicken and asparagus casserole that I found in a recipe book. I cooked it with our garden chives and a cheese sauce I made. Into the shower while it’s cooking and finally at around 11 pm we have dinner including the salad Fred made. A few more rows of knitting and I am too tired to continue and off to bed.