Hi Lola!
You know, it’s great to get a kick in the inspiration from somebody who’s physically too far away to listen to all of my justifications…thanks Lola for taking the time to write!
Let me just get all of my excuses for not writing out of the way first:
1. Memorial Day weekend is a week early this year
2. We’ve enjoyed a wonderfully dry and warm spring…so the gardens are exploding and the grass already needs to be mowed and weed whacked (and most of our help is still teaching school)…not that I mow and weed whack but I sure spend a lot of time fretting about it.
3. There’s been paving on route 1 for two weeks now…they’re doing a great job but any simple trip to Belfast can be a 30 minute opportunity to listen to NPR…always when I’m not in the mood.
4. I was just going to make curtains for the guest cabin…but while I was sewing from the little dinette table, I started day dreaming about faux painted rugs on the floor, freshening the mural, planting a new cottage garden out front…in short my 3 hour project is a new art project…but wait ’til you see it…I think it’s adorable in a way that even a guy can feel comfortable in it…pictures soon.
5. Last weekend the guys started a simple project to re-do three of the shower changing room floors…only to find that the leak proof, hi tech (read expensive) flooring we used two years ago seriously leaked into the men’s bathroom on the other side of the wall…so the men’s bathroom is torn up, drying out and waiting to be re-done…again, not my physical problem but sure adds to my fret list.
6. My father’s back home.
7. We now have two wonderful angora goats…oh my gosh they’re sweet, and smart, and rather time consuming as we’re learning to understand each other.
8. During clean up weekend Barbara, Katie and Chelsea made our gift store look presentable…but all of those purchases I made back in March/April have arrived now…and I’m trying to find places for them, attractive ways to display them and I’m not good at any of that…so I’m going grayer…is that a word? But on the upside, wait ’til you see all of the cool things we have…remember the gourmet biscuit mix we tried last month…the one Steven made for our indulgent weekend? Well, I ordered 24 freshly made bags and now the shelves are stocked with strawberry cheese cake, parmesan cheddar, chocolate cinnammon and southwestern chili…two ladies from North of Bangor have created this wonderful company and I felt it’s been my duty to sample every flavor…so we had strawberry cheese cake with Rock City coffee, parmesan cheddar with homemade chicken soup (all of our herbs are flourishing in this unusual weather), chocolate cinnamon biscuits with earl gray tea with girlfriends on a little beach picnic and chili biscuits with frozen margaritas…only because I wanted to understand the product we are selling 😉
9. The other night instead of working we went to the Colonial Theater and watched Ironman…and drank beers and ate fried appetizers at Rollies…I know, this doesn’t sound like a big night out but it was perfect for me. The movie was funny and visually riveting, the new seats at the Colonial were comfortable and almost all empty (it was Monday night) and the beers/apps were half price…so four of us spent a whopping $40 for all we could eat, local micro brew, a first run movie and snow caps and popcorn…yup, it’s a good life!
OK, I feel better now…back to real life.
As I said before, Clean up weekend May 9-11 was again a huge success. With the help of Jim and Lorrie cooking and sugaring the doughnuts, we made 8 dozen doughnuts that morning and there wasn’t a trace of them left by 10 o’clock. For those who were curious, I used a recipe from a 1950’s Farm Journal cookbook for doughnuts with nutmeg and cinnamon…my mother and grand mother taught me to trust the Farm Journal cookbooks for every possible recipe.
We had a cocoa break with homemade marshmallows (I’ll never make them again without rolling them in toasted coconut and drizzling them with dark chocolate…they were amazing…not too sweet and very pretty). We’re having a bonfire on the beach this weekend with an acoustic guitar sing along…I’m hoping to have hot chocolate and marshmallows for everyone then too.
At lunch we quickly ran out of 80 burgers but luckily for us the Hill’s from upstate New York brought extra farm raised organic beef to share so combined with the hot dogs and 20 pounds of fresh fried French fries, we all finished without feeling too hungry…and the potluck supper set the bar to an all time high…as soon as I have pictures I’ll put them up…
All of the photos in this posting are the generous offering of Jenna from Bangor. She’s a camera enthusiast who happened to stumble into the park at the tail end of clean up weekend. The first is the oak tree that hangs over the boardwalk as we’re looking towards Northport (you can see that the oaks are always the last to show signs of Spring). The second are two of the Brownies who helped during clean up weekend by weeding the gardens, raking the the rec hall courtyard and starting our fairy house colony along the stream to the beach. The last two are a couple of fairy houses that we believe to be inhabited by local fairies…the demand seems high!
Well, I must run out and feed the goats and open the store. Enjoy the day and I’ll write before the weekend.