Do you remember the Bradford pears and how I despaired that they were never going to drop their leaves? Well, they finally did and look what's happening- their cotton white blooms are coming out already.
The wisteria on the arbor is starting to bud and I even see tiny bits of purple.
Look, Rebecca! The fig leaves are unfurling!
The bromeliad I have growing in the stump in the front yard is showing off its alien blossom.
My buckeye is blooming too!
It's that time of year. The camellias have their last blossoms still coming and the azaleas are looking like sweet little old ladies tarted up in their Easter best.
The oak trees have put on their chartreuse petticoats
and the pollen from them covers everything.
Even cats. Although it doesn't show up on Maurice
as she is already in the pollen-color range.
The cardinals and the red-winged blackbirds fight for rights at the feeder. Mick is being kept busy, running back and forth from the hen house.
Spring. Here we are, for sure and for real even though I am wearing one of my Goodwill cashmere sweaters, perhaps for the last time this year. I am basking in the coolness, knowing how soon the heat will overtake us.
And because this is Owen's last day of spring break, we'll be meeting at Japanica! at noon for our lunch.
Yep. Dude is four now.
"Gibson. Will you pose for a birthday picture?"
"Sure! Cheeeese!" Click.
"Thanks!"
"You're welcome!
It surely was a fine party. Gibson only melted down about four or five or six times. Hey man. It is so hard to be four. He's been waiting since Christmas for this party and he's wanted one specific toy that whole time. A Beomax. For a long time I thought he was saying, "Betamax" and figured it was one of those cool retro things.
Haha!
No. It's something that looks like this.
Yeah. That clears it right up.
Anyway, the poor child had to wait until everyone got there and we ate our delicious cook-out foods and then had the cake until he could open his presents and remembering what happened at Christmas when he opened his real, true desire present first and had no interest in opening any others after that, the Beomax was saved until last.
How cruel can life be?
He mostly hung in there though, that boy. He's tough.
But it was just a lot of fun. May and Michael were there, still basking in the glow of being so very recently wed, just back from their honeymoon in the incredibly romantic and charming St. Augustine, Florida. It's one of those places, St. Augustine is, where Floridians love to go and be tourists because it's just too good and too special to allow the alien tourists to have all the enjoyment. It's where I first got to know Lon and Lis because they used to live there and some of the best memories of my life come from visits with them and their community and I've taken my children to visit many times over the years and they, too, have some incredible memories of the oldest city in the United States.
Okay. That was a bit of a segue.
But. Here they are. May and Michael, wedded and happy to be so.
I don't think I've ever seen my May so happy. And you know what that means?
Her mama is mighty happy too.
Babies. It was a baby FEST!
I got to give Magnolia two bottles and change her diaper twice. Once a poopy diaper! Okay, don't you make fun of me. I just love my babies so much that even changing a poopy diaper is a joy to me because it's baby poop and because I can talk and sing just that much longer as I make the little bottom all clean and tidy again. And Maggie loves her changing table and she gave me huge smiles and gurgled along with my made-up songs in my croaky old lady voice. Oh, she is just a joy. Here's a picture of her daddy holding her. I think he believes she hung the moon.
I won't say we all fought over holding her but I will say that she got held by a lot of people. She is just perfectly scrumptious. And in the background there, you can see May holding August. Boppy got to him first and carried him around for a long time.
The two Glindens and Madonna and Child.
Here's Billy and August.
And Billy and Waylon. I think Waylon had a good time today.
See what a beautiful day it was? A little cooler and clear as could be.
Here's Gibson blowing out the candles on his cake. The MAGIC candle.
Which is like the best thing ever invented and if you want to see a video of what they look like, go HERE.
As you can see, Gibson was AMAZED!
And then we ate the cake which was delicious and then the presents were opened.
As you can see, Gibson had a present-opening posse. His daddy, his brother, and good friend Gabe.
FINALLY! THE BEOMAX!
Life is good.
And that was the party. I'd like to post one more picture of Gibson. It's one of my favorites and Hank posted it on FB today. It's from last Halloween, I think, and he was Uncle Grandpa.
As Owen sometimes says, "It just never gets old."
And as my gift to all of you, I give you a song that Lon wrote and recorded a long time ago on his album, Streetlight Serenade, one of my favorite albums in the entire world. It's about St. Augustine and love and it is beautiful and you can hear Lis on it, singing with her true love, as she has been doing for almost forty years now.
Happy Spring, y'all. Gonna get down to 39 here tonight and I am happy about that.
A little bit of a lagniappe of cuddlin' weather.
Grab your sweetheart, your baby, your cranky old cat or your dog. Snuggle in.
And send a sweet thought to Gibson Monroe, sweetest little four-year old cuddly boy you could ever meet.
It was such a beautiful birth with his mama and his daddy and his aunties. Lily did such a great job and Jason was cool as a cucumber and his hands were the ones to catch him, to hand him to his mother. And we were all filled with the love and the joy that babies bring with them, intact and complete, full and perfect.
He has grown so much in four years. Obviously. But what a joy it's been watching this little man cub with his husky old blues man voice, his sturdy body, his snuggly ways, growing from baby to boy. I've never met a child quite as eager to fit his body into yours for a cuddle.
He has been our jolly little man for four years.
And oh, how we love him.
Happy birthday, my darling Gibson! I can't remember a time before you were here.
Not long after I posted that picture in the previous post, the sky cleared and the wind stopped whistling through the dunes and pines like Satan's Ragtime Band and it began to look like that.
And this.
Oh bugger. We had no excuse not to leave.
And so we did and now we're home, laundry going and I need to start supper. I've done a little tidying up and peed in the corners (my metaphor for reclaiming my space, I don't really pee in the corners) and I brought back the blooming wild rosemary I had picked and here it is in Lloyd.
It's good to be home. I swear it is. But it's not like I had to give a huge sigh of relief and release when we got to Lloyd. I truly and really felt as if the island loved me again and now I can't wait to get back there. I had a completely magical time and my husband did too, I think.
Here's the picture he sent me when he was going out on the boat yesterday.
That is a happy man.
And in the space of about two hours, he caught five grouper, one of which was the biggest he's ever caught on that boat.
He wears a size 16 shoe, y'all.
It's not grouper season yet so he had to let them all go. But it sure did make him happy to catch those fish. He's going out in a few weeks with some friends when the season opens. May he have such luck again because Mama wants some grouper to cook.
I am as grateful for the past four days as I can possibly be and I feel fine.
It's a beautiful home and I planted a lot of the trees you can see in the pictures. I did love that pool so much. But I never did feel at home there. I could never sleep well there, ever. But Lord, did we have some good parties.
Ah well. A part of my life. And now here we are in Lloyd with our chickens and cats and garden and centuries-old oak trees.
It rained and blew so hard last night that...I completely slept through it. I did not sleep through Mr. Moon's battle with a mosquito, however.
Sigh.
It's always a little funky on the day we're supposed to cross the bay to come home. We have to do everything in reverse that we did to get here. And we always leave all the sheets and towels clean, beds made up.
We study the radar and point out gaps when we can safely make the trip back to the mainland. We bag up all the trash and carry it with us to the place where we take trash. We eat our breakfast and wash the dishes. We collect our belongings and put them in their bins to carry home.
And somehow, it is all worth it if it's been a good trip.
It's been a great trip.
Love...Ms. Moon
Friday, March 18, 2016
There are certain things which must be done on Dog Island so as to follow ritual. One of these is to take what one swears will be a short walk and which ends up being at least an hour or so in duration. While Mr. Moon took the boat out today to go fish in the Gulf (definitely a must-do for him), I took one of those short walks. It was much shorter than the walks I used to convince Jessie to take with me when she was but a child and we'd end up dragging ass home three or four hours later, exhausted, sun-burned, and sore. But distances are so deceptive at the beach.
"Just up to that point!" We swear, only to realize the the point is approximately five miles away.
Oh well. We've never once collapsed and died on the sand yet.
So yes, I took a short walk down through the pines and blooming Rosemary and over to the Gulf.
Here's a house where I spied someone fishing from the upper porch.
He looked to be having a fine time. That house has already been moved back once in the seventeen years we've been coming down here. Eventually the sea will take it as it has taken others before it. Enjoy it while you can...
I didn't walk on the Gulf beach too long. The bay is infinitely more interesting to me with its sea oats and trees and birds.
When I got to the marsh pond where Mr. Moon sometimes gets bait I disturbed a majestic great blue heron. You can see the pond on the right in the top picture above. Unfortunately I was not able to get a photo of the heron.
My heart soared when I saw him and I was sorry to have interrupted his fishing.
I was very glad though to see beaches which have actually grown since we've been taking these walks. At one place I saw, in front of dunes which at one point had been partially eaten away, such a fine new stretch of white sand that not only were sea oats growing on it but also a beautiful, four foot green and thriving baby pine tree.
The good water giveth and the good water taketh away.
Both.
A few more things on the Dog Island check list:
Sit on the porch and watch the water and sky and birds.
Check.
There are so many Ospreys this year. And ducks! I have never seen so many ducks. And Pelicans.
Eat. A lot.
Check and check.
Drink.
I am quite proud that we have waited until the civilized hour of "after five" until we've cracked our first beers.
Nap.
I do not feel as if I need to expound on that. But yes. Check and check.
Listen to CD's by Compay Segunda, Jimmy Buffet, and also and most especially, The Buena Vista Social Club.
Check, check, check.
Play cards and curse like motherfuckers.
Done and done.
The years of score sheets are some of the most amusing reading to be found here.
Throw out expired foods. The oldest thing I threw out today was a bottle of steak sauce from 2007.
Good riddance!
Read and read and read. Magazines and books and the snake trails under the house and the clouds as they pass over the house and bay.
Wonder about the people who lived here eons and eons ago. Touch the pieces of pottery you've found and be knocked out with their artistry.
Good morning curving shoreline, chirping osprey, seagulls, pine trees, coffee cup, sweetheart, still air, flat bay, jet plane flying overhead, old body, rocking chair, wonders and delights too many to list.
An osprey nest in a crane. As I understand it these nests are protected and this crane will be sitting right there for a long, long time. Sturdiest platform for a bird of prey family home on the island.
Another shot. The parents are busy flying out over the water to find supper for their babies.
Whelk egg case. Each of those little plasticine-like segments is a neat pocket which contains many miniature whelks.
Do you see the scarification on this pine? This came to be during the days when pine trees were tapped for their turpentine. That pattern of cuts was called "cat face." This is one of the trees which the shifting beach patterns has finally killed and I had never noticed it until today. That tree is well over a hundred years old. There are pines on our little piece of property here which bear the same sort of scarring. I wonder, as I always do, what the lives of the people were like who were consigned to do this job. I really can't imagine.
One of the trees on the bay beach which has been overtaken. I will tell you that there are places where the sand has accrued and there are broad curved beaches of clean white sand but the way the roots have risen above the level of the sand in the washed away parts make me feel as if one starlit night the old pines will simply walk their way into the woods, taking their sculptured-by-time-and-wind-and-water-and-sand roots with them.
Love letter in the sand.
It has been a day of a sort of quiet ecstasy. I have felt almost complete release from anxiety and depression. I feel as relaxed and at peace as if I had done hours of yoga or drunk deeply of the kava bowl. It has stormed and rained and I have read and napped and then taken a good, slow walk along the bay with my love- heaven.
I can't remember a more peaceful day. A more loving day. Once again I am reminded of how much I love the times I spend with only my husband. After all of these years to know such pleasure! Can there be anything better?
It is raining again. The sunset is obscured by gray curtains and we are all alone in this paradise. I have not seen another human being aside from Mr. Moon since we left the dock yesterday.
Listen: Healing is possible. I have experienced proof of that today.
