Peace and Harmony are growing

"Harmony" is 2 weeks old today, and "Peace" 12 days. 

Beautiful weekend in Valdosta

We try to take advantage of the times when Jimmy feels good, so this past weekend fell into the "active" category, for us. We stayed busy and it was wonderful.

We went to Grandparents' Day at Valwood

Jake made 11 goals at his soccer game Saturday

We were wowed by the Valdosta Symphony orchestra.

Jimmy visits with his buddy Tyson McLane  at the golf tournament at Kinderlou

Jimmy enjoyed the golf, but I felt like I was watching grass grow.

The fish were biting at Ocean Pond

Caroline never wants to be outdone by her big brothers

Rosey won't eat fish, but she sure can catch 'em.  She caught more than anybody.

The old Lake Park cemetery adjoins the Ocean Pond property, and I showed William  and Caroline the graves of their great-great-great-grandparents.  William seemed pretty impressed  by the concept.

Patrick and Papa spent the whole time baiting hooks

Two of a kind

The theme for last night's Cabaret dance was 'Dynamic Duos." I've heard that the costumes were hilarious, and that participants outdid themselves in the creativity department. Famous duos are often more recognizable by their pairing, such as Rogers and Hammerstein, Amos and Andy, peas and rice, Batman and Robin, Proctor and Gamble, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, and so on.

 My favorite duo has always been Jimmy and Kenny. Jimmy Dewar and Kenny Scruggs became a dynamic duo in the third grade, and stayed that way for over 62 years, until Kenny died last December.  The two were inseparable, and their escapades legendary.  They hunted, fished, traveled, boated, partied, everything together, without ever a cross word.

When they became teenagers and got interested in girls, Kenny took a shine right away to Suenelle Girardin. Suenelle's strict mother wouldn't allow her to date the same boy both nights on a weekend.  To remedy this, on the nights Kenny couldn't have a date with Suenelle, Jimmy'd pretend to, and would go pick her up, take her to Kenny, then go get his own date. This went on throughout high school. True friends to the end.

First day of lobster season, Marsh Harbour, Bahamas

Classmates: Red Dawson, Jimmy, Buddy Coleman, Kenny Scruggs

Jimmy, Suenelle, and Kenny

A pink April moon

The almost-full moon began rising over the trees last night, soon after the sun had set.  According to the Farmer's Almanac, native Americans called April's full moon "The Full Pink Moon," named after the early-blooming wild pink ground phlox.

Charles-Francois Daubigny (French - Barbizon)  Moon Light On River, 1875

Although it depicts a river in France, this painting is reminiscent of moonlit summer nights in the Abacos.  Percy Bysshe Shelley described the feeling of the night sky so beautifully in this verse from "The Cloud":

"That orbed maiden with white fire laden,

     Whom mortals call the Moon,

Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor

      By the midnight breezes strewn;

And whenever the beat of her unseen feet,

      Which only the angels hear,

May have broken the woof, of my tent's thin roof,

      The stars peep from behind her, and peer;

And I laugh to see them whirl and flee,

       Like a swarm of golden bees...."

On such bright nights, one could wander down the narrow unpaved lane separating our cottage from the Sea of Abaco, lost in the sounds of the ocean sloshing and lapping on the rocky shore, and the wind whispering its secrets through the needles of the casuarina pines.

 On such nights, one should be forgiven for dancing and twirling in the moonlight, all the while humming Cat Steven's "I'm being followed by a moonshadow, moonshadow, moonshadow..."

Raccoon rumble

We've got to do something about these blasted raccoons: call animal control or SOMETHING.  Our back porch is getting to be known as "Dewar's Diner" to every raccoon in a two mile radius.

Last night Andy was causing a commotion at the back door, and I started out to pick up the cat food (I hide it in the grill, which is covered in raccoon paw prints) but Andy darted past me.  Big Daddy Rocky Raccoon was on the porch, and Andy tore out after him, biting Rocky on the butt before he could escape.

Jimmy said between my screaming and Andy's barking, we almost gave him a heart attack, and Andy spent the rest of the evening spitting raccoon fur out of his mouth.

Hail the conquering hero

Battleground

An escape hatch torn in the screen

Screen frayed by claws opening the door

Caroline: five years old today

Oh, dear.  Where has the time gone?  Our baby girl is already five!

Snake-less in South Georgia

We picked a perfect time to come home, weather-wise: cool, sunny, and not much pollen.  Andy and I went for a walk on the golf course today, and it was nice to be able to enjoy the scenery, instead of keeping my eyes glued to the ground, looking out for big rattlesnakes.

Mac forwarded me a e-mail with a picture of the snake I posted recently, and the photograph was taken in Texas. I fell for one more Urban Legend. Oh,well. I did think all along that it looked like a Texas snake.

The VCC golf course looked beautiful today

Andy found something aromatic to roll in

All we need is a few thousand azaleas, and we'd look like Augusta  National

A perfect wedding

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some of the escapades Claudia and I had with our four children.  I neglected to mention St. Simons.  There used to be a wonderful old two-story clapboard house called Shasta Cottage that we rented several summers, for a glorious week or so at a time.  It was a good three-wood golf shot from where I sat today.

Today Marcus got married. The wedding was so absolutely Marcus, so joyous, so perfect.  And overwhelmingly nostalgic.

Sitting there, I watched Marcus and Geri exchange their vows, under the same tree he and Ellen Frances and Jackie and Max had romped twenty-five or so years before.  I could picture them all, throwing rocks in the water, and eating ice cream cones as they sat on the park benches. Within sight was the pier they loved, the picnic tables on which they ate, and the lighthouse they climbed.

                           

Back then, as we watched our children play, Claudia and I could never have imagined that today we'd be sitting there again, watching Marcus get married.

Celebrity in the 'hood

Best-selling author John Grisham likes Fernandina so much he's building a house here.

When Jimmy and I were passing by it yesterday, I told him to pull over so I could take a picture.  He did, but had a bit of a steroid moment, worrying that we were about to get hit by a truck.

I'm not going to leave this post up long. It feels sort of...intrusive.

Peace and Harmony

Both of the eagle eggs have hatched, and the camera moderators have named them "Peace and Harmony."  Unfortunately, a winter storm is underway, with heavy snow and 25 mph north winds.  Mom and Dad eagles  are diligently protecting their babies from the elements, but you can't help but worry. 

Those little white things on their beaks are "egg teeth," which will fall off in a few days.  They're used to break through the egg's surface while hatching.  When the eaglet becomes too large to get enough oxygen through the pores of the shell, the egg tooth breaks the air sac located at the flat end of the egg, giving it a few extra hours of air so that it can break through to the outside.

Jellyfish

It's the little things

These days, Jimmy and I find so much joy in life's little gifts, such as the ordinary but wonderful things we see on our morning walks:

Fern-laden oaks

Moss growing on a palm

A sea of ferns

A purple flower

*********

Snippets of information, casually mentioned by a friend, an acquaintance, or a complete stranger, can bring unexpected delight:

Thank you, Wendell Godbee, for Whirly Words, now a favorite iphone app.

Thank you, Cathy Bright, for Arnold Palmers (iced tea and lemonade), now our favorite drink

Thank you, Billy Dobbs, for mentioning how you love to sit on the balcony at night and watch the satellites fly over

Thank you, Claudia Strom, for tagging "I Require Art" on Facebook, thus
enabling me to find a great site for art lovers

And on and on and on......

The eaglet has landed!

Thanks to our friend Barbara Holder of LaGrange, I've become an eagle addict, watching in fascination a pair of nesting bald eagles in Minnesota, via a live solar-powered camera trained on their nest.  On March 9, the first egg was laid, and a second followed soon after.

It's become a habit to check on them a couple of times a day, although usually all you see is Mom or Dad taking turns sitting on the nest, hunkered down in the cold, sometimes covered in snow.  Dad likes sitting in the warm spot, and occasionally resorts to bribery to entice Mom to get up: he brings her a fish to eat, or a duck. Dad also has an Obsessive Stick Disorder, and is constantly bringing in sticks and twigs to fortify the nest, and spends all day fiddling with them until they fit just so.

Late yesterday, about 7:30, I tuned in just in time to see Mom ease off the eggs, to reveal a tiny naked eaglet, struggling to free itself from the broken shell, and the whole time, Ray Charles singing "What a Wonderful World"  played in my head.

The first eaglet emerging from its shell

Jimmy was late getting his supper last night, but that's okay.

To watch this little miracle, go to this link:
http://youtu.be/9wD_gfSyfpI 
Eaglet's first feeding this morning:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gT0G0Fariuo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia2lhE_LqW0

A drippy dreary Fernandina day

With all my nattering on about snakes and sagging sinks and other inanities, I have neglected my #1 subject: Jimmy.  He's finishing up his second round of oral chemo, and Tuesday will start a much-needed "rest week" before he begins the third round.

We're in uncharted waters, for us, and are trying to find our sea legs.  His main issues are chemo-related weakness and fatigue, and roller-coastering moods and energy levels, brought on by those blasted steroids.  The salt air and warm weather and stress-free days have greatly improved his respiratory problems.

Unless you've experienced chemotherapy, it's hard to understand just how bad it can be, so the fact that I've "been there and done that" makes me more empathetic of his problems.  It also makes it easier not to get too upset by the inevitable steroid irritability.

Jimmy enjoys a rainy afternoon watching the Masters - he's pulling for Brandt Snedeker

Nice snake

This 10 foot 135 pound beauty was run over by a tractor at the Valdosta Country Club recently.  When asked if that size rattlesnake was a record, a local game warden said no, the record was 13 feet and over 165 pounds.

Not having running water in the kitchen seemed a reasonable excuse to go out to lunch today, so we opted for Horizons, a little restaurant in a pretty cluster of shops called Palmetto Walk.  The Plantation Shop is nearby, and Bar Zin, another restaurant.

"Papa's Toy," as the grandchildren call Jimmy's elderly Jag, sits in front of Horizons

As we dawdled over salads on the front porch, enjoying the fine spring weather, I studied a small stand of palmettos across the way.  I have a painting of those exact same palmettos hanging on the wall in Highlands.

About twenty-five years ago, Claudia was a designer for architect Rusty McCall.  She had some business to attend to in Fernandina, and asked me to go along for the ride. (I think she was working on the Plageman home.)

I had some paint with me, and while Claudia worked, I sat outside on the grass and painted the palmettos, which then had banks of soft pink impatiens blooming in front of them.

The palmettos are still there, but the impatiens long gone

I am not making this up

Last night I pulled up one of the blogs I read regularly on myeloma research, and it said that "a Phase 2 study is underway to evaluate the efficacy of tadalafil [Cialis] in combination with Lenalydomide/dexamethasone [this is what Jimmy is taking] in multiple myeloma."

I'm sure a slew of good jokes can be made about this, but for now, I'm speechless...

http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT01374217

http://multiplemyelomablog.com/2013/04/stranger-than-fiction-cialis-an-anti-myeloma-drug.html

Don't throw me in the brier patch

One day last week, the kitchen sink mysteriously detached itself from the granite counter top, and only  Patrick's propping it up with a luggage rack kept it from dropping into the cabinet below. We've been waiting for two sets of contractors - the granite people don't plumb and the plumbers don't do granite - to come make our kitchen operational again.

The plumber came this afternoon  to dismantle the pipes, and now the granite people are here re-attaching the sink to the counter.  But the plumber can't come back until Friday to hook the pipes back up.

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Well, darn. I guess that means I won't get to do much cooking this week.  :)