bucket of oysters and a free kitten
A withdrawn and therefore happily peaceful Wednesday morning, sitting at the old tin top table looking out the kitchen window at US Highway98. This 1900 window, which I removed, refinished, and added new sash cord back in the late 1980s, was made by the Apalachicola Cypress Company, stenciled on its edge.
Added carelessly, perhaps incompetently, to the 1900 rectory later, the master bedroom is above the kitchen; I can hear Linda walking around up there. Incompetently because in our years here, that bedroom floor had a one or two inch drop from west to east, that a marble rolled quickly down; and the weight of the addition, not competently supported, caused the four kitchen windows looking east toward fence and alley to sag in the middle. Also, in the old “family room” the south wall was torn out years ago to open and enlarge the room enclosing the wrap-round porch, causing that room's ceiling profusely to leak in rainstorms, such that in our years here we had to move furniture and run for buckets and towels. Old flaws have been corrected, and the beloved house is still and always a gem in every way.
This godly working vacation is having its demonic visitations, including family illness, Hurricane Irma, a lightning strike of sciatica, and now Linda may be driving back to PC this morning as last evening an aged mid-90s friend whom she looks after was taken from StAndrews Towers to GC hospital by ambulance. She’s getting a status report before leaving, but if so, I will either walk wherever, this is a small, entirely walkable town for the middle-aged man I was on arriving here in 1984, less walkable for an octogenarian, or drive the parish electric golf cart. Probably best walk.
Dinner (late lunch before supper) yesterday at Boss Oyster, their “oyster roast,” two dozen large oysters hot off the grill, elegantly presented in a large pan, with an oyster knife, a towel, and a bucket for the shells. Delicious and fun, though a rubber glove would have been nice. As would have a sterling silver finger bowl for washing instead of using a pile of paper napkins and a full straw from my glass of ice water.
We were eating outside on the covered porch on Apalachicola River where two birds, residential here for years, attentively minded tables as guests departed. Linda tossed one a saltine cracker, which s/he hopped over to, eyed eagerly, seized, and flew to a nearby roof to consume. Don't feed the birds is the breakable rule.
Still from our years here, Apalachicola remains a quaint fishing village now with chic boutiques and dressy upper class gourmet restaurants, as witness this sign beneath the cash register at one we visited for dinner last Saturday afternoon:
Raining heavily now, Blaise taking her ease on the dining room table.
DThos+ relishing +Time+ in Florida’s Best Kept Secret
Added carelessly, perhaps incompetently, to the 1900 rectory later, the master bedroom is above the kitchen; I can hear Linda walking around up there. Incompetently because in our years here, that bedroom floor had a one or two inch drop from west to east, that a marble rolled quickly down; and the weight of the addition, not competently supported, caused the four kitchen windows looking east toward fence and alley to sag in the middle. Also, in the old “family room” the south wall was torn out years ago to open and enlarge the room enclosing the wrap-round porch, causing that room's ceiling profusely to leak in rainstorms, such that in our years here we had to move furniture and run for buckets and towels. Old flaws have been corrected, and the beloved house is still and always a gem in every way.
This godly working vacation is having its demonic visitations, including family illness, Hurricane Irma, a lightning strike of sciatica, and now Linda may be driving back to PC this morning as last evening an aged mid-90s friend whom she looks after was taken from StAndrews Towers to GC hospital by ambulance. She’s getting a status report before leaving, but if so, I will either walk wherever, this is a small, entirely walkable town for the middle-aged man I was on arriving here in 1984, less walkable for an octogenarian, or drive the parish electric golf cart. Probably best walk.
Dinner (late lunch before supper) yesterday at Boss Oyster, their “oyster roast,” two dozen large oysters hot off the grill, elegantly presented in a large pan, with an oyster knife, a towel, and a bucket for the shells. Delicious and fun, though a rubber glove would have been nice. As would have a sterling silver finger bowl for washing instead of using a pile of paper napkins and a full straw from my glass of ice water.
We were eating outside on the covered porch on Apalachicola River where two birds, residential here for years, attentively minded tables as guests departed. Linda tossed one a saltine cracker, which s/he hopped over to, eyed eagerly, seized, and flew to a nearby roof to consume. Don't feed the birds is the breakable rule.
Still from our years here, Apalachicola remains a quaint fishing village now with chic boutiques and dressy upper class gourmet restaurants, as witness this sign beneath the cash register at one we visited for dinner last Saturday afternoon:
Raining heavily now, Blaise taking her ease on the dining room table.
DThos+ relishing +Time+ in Florida’s Best Kept Secret