Shoot!!

It looked to be some sort of minimal dredging project, but neither we nor second door neighbor could make out what was going on the several days. Several long lines of floating pipes strung out along what might be the edge of the navigable ship channel, 

two tall pipes from the barge with crane being lowered into the Bay for a time, three tugs charging about busily moving work barges where needed. Perhaps a wall of the channel had caved in and mud needed clearing out. At any event, the task seems finished as I sit here on 7H porch having breakfast and one tug removing the barge with crane away to the west round the curve, and disappearing to the north. 

All done? then well done. I doubt tugs are cheap, so that project must have been costly by the hour for the three days or so we watched so curious.

This, 7H, is a wonderful place to be retired. I don’t know how many of the hundred-something condo units are permanent residents, but here in our south wing we hardly ever see anyone for days on end. I love seeing children playing in the private park below that’s above the garage, but they're only there holiday weekends, always seem to be grandchildren visiting for the moment. Living in a house there were always all sorts of problems to face and deal with. Plumbing, roof, windows, rot, electrical issues, yard, weeds, potato vine, trees threatening the house, raccoons, wasps, possums, bears swimming across the Bay from Tyndall and roaming the night. Gnats, mosquitos (they don’t seem to come this high up). Every two or three years, a major flea infestation in the yard to treat before they get into the house. Short of a meteorite slamming into the Gulf and sending a tsunami through StAndrews, and I don’t spend a lot of time or prayer on that, if there’s any negative to this condo life, or anything to worry about, either I’m too thick to see it or it doesn’t exist. When we moved in, December 2014/January 2015, we thought to be take active interest in management and the governing board and committees of the place, but instantly saw that because humans are involved, there are nasty petty politics, so withdrew from interest and involvement in that, pay the HOA fee, retire and enjoy the outlook on the land and sea neighborhood of my ancestry. 

My house, the old Weller homestead, is still for sale again. Signing the sale contract was a wrench for me but I’ve let it go, I quit driving by like my father did all those growing up years when we lived in The Cove before he and my mother bought The Old Place back into the family in 1962. The only things I miss are the little girls arriving from Tallahassee and running screaming and laughing back and forth through the huge old house, and MLP. I’ve not needed My Laughing Place but a time or two since moving, but when I did need it, it was no longer there for me. So, those two things. Looking east down the Bay shoreline, I can see Mabel’s house and our former neighbor’s dock, which proves to me that all those years of my life were real enough. Older in time, I see Cove School several days a week, yesterday we walked the hall, went out the south door and walked through and all round the Holy Pavilion, marvelous addition to HNES, and Robert shot a couple of baskets. Our years at Cove School, Robert was the class athlete, then varsity basketball star at Bay High.

The new structure is so marvelous it deserves a real name, I’m thinking Sancta Pavilia, after Pavilia, patroness saint of athletes.

Enough. StAndrewsBay is flat and still this Saturday morning that begins local Spring Break, and not one single boat anywhere heading to Shell Island. 

Pax and blessings,
DThos+