Friday
July 1, 2016
Early in the morning, the weather was warm with calm winds, a slight haze, and a bit of fog over to our north and west. We ate a breakfast of fresh fruit, yogurt, and granola at the kitchen table and watched a thicker fog roll in out the window by the table. We count today as the first day of the Independence Day holiday weekend and therefore
hung the lighthouse burgee flag beneath the American flag on the pole out front. We’re not sure why but the burgee is to fly on a holiday – we supposed it’s a tradition here on Seguin? Or maybe everywhere? In any event, it’s flying…. Or actually just hanging since there’s not much wind (yet).
We did a few small things around the house after breakfast, the most exciting of which was installing a strip of wood in the kitchen cabinet where we store cutting boards and baking/cooking sheets. A dozen or more things stand up in the cabinet and they’re forever sliding down in a pile whenever we take something out or put something back – the strip Patty screwed down will keep them in place. Exciting, right? It is for us!
We headed down the hill to clean the outhouse (known by its’ brand name Clivus), a fun little chore. The fan that vents odors is not working right now because we’re having an issue with the main power line from the top of the island down to the
Clivus so it’s got a bit of a funk in warm weather but early in the
morning, it’s not bad. Otherwise, it is really clean and we’ve gotten several compliments for F.O.S.I.L.S. regarding how nice and clean it is. I’d have to agree having seen and used many that are pretty bad – I guess the composting toilet outhouse bar isn’t set very high. We’d love to have the funds (hint hint) to get a solar fan for the Clivus to replace the one in there now. Anyway, back to cleaning the Clivus; it’s not as bad as it might sound. The outhouse building is about 8’ or more off
the ground and has a solid waste compartment beneath it that needs to be raked then we add wood shavings and wet them down. Afterwards, we hose down the whole inside of the bathroom area and we’re done. That’s it, about 15 minutes max.
We headed back up the hill and did a little work in the garden and generally puttered around, expecting we might start to have visitors arrive. We had the radio on and heard an ad for a concert in Boothbay featuring Brevard, North Carolina’s Steep Canyon Rangers on September 4. Again, small world! We also heard chatter on the VHF
radio about Minke whales near the mouth of the Sheepscot River which we can see from Seguin but it’s far enough away that we wouldn’t be able to see whales there from here – even though Patty tried with her binoculars!
Ethan didn’t arrive with a group (we thought he might) and we didn’t have any visitors yet so we took a break for lunch. Patty made a big salad of spinach leaves with onion, carrots, celery, etc. and leftover scallops from dinner last night. We also had bread and cheese (for me) as usual.
After lunch, we had our first (and turns out only) guests of the day. It
was a couple on a sailboat towing a dinghy that looked very similar to the one that got swamped yesterday. We saw them coming in to the cove earlier and thought it might be the same couple as yesterday but it wasn’t, just a similar sailboat and dinghy. The man in the couple had been here many times but the woman had not. We chatted with them about their travels and then took them up in the tower and they spent a long time looking at the views before they visited the museum. It’s surprising how many couples arrive where one of them have been here before (often many times) and the other has never been here.
After they headed back down the hill, Patty and I walked the North Trail with clippers to cut back brush overhanging the trail and to check if weed whacking was needed. We were pleasantly surprised that the trail was in pretty good shape. We did cut back
quite a bit of vegetation but only a few places need weed whacking, even where it does, we can wait a week or so to do it. Down in the boggy area, there is a large area of wild orchids that are blooming amongst the cattails and grasses. Beyond the boggy area. The gulls were out in force and not the least bit happy to see us. Tons of young gulls with their angry parents trying to chase us off – of course, our reaction was to stop and take pictures and a video of the scene. Unlike the one crazy gull in the camping area, these flew close to our heads and squawked but never really looking like they were trying to hit us.
When we got back to the house, we planned to grill a london broil (John and Terri left one that we had in the freezer) outside but the wind had picked up quite a bit and we weren’t able to keep the grill lit. Instead, Patty heated up our cast iron pan and we broiled it in the oven while also cooking corn on the cob in a pot on the stove.
After having more than twenty visitors yesterday, we were surprised that for the start of the holiday weekend, we only had two today. The weather is supposed to be good for the rest of the weekend and Monday so we expect we’ll be seeing lots of folks by the 4th. We sure hope so.
Visitors – 2
Favorite Moment(s) – Watching gulls on the North Trail, walking through wild orchids in the bog
Sunrise – 4:49am
Sunset – 8:18pm
