Postcards From the Lake: Cottage Life

I'm sitting on the love seat on the porch, a book in hand, legs wrapped in a soft, aqua throw to keep the evening chill from setting in and sending me inside too soon. The sun is a brilliant orange and as round as that on the Japanese flag, and it is beginning to dip behind the tree line. Why is it that it takes hours and hours to go from one side of the house to the other, but when it hits that tree line across the lake, it seems to dip in lightning speed, as though some unseen being was playing with the fast-forward button on a recording.

Lizzie is hunkered down in the chair beside me, the last of the day's sun on her face as she grooms herself, keeping her bib as white as snow. 

 

And in the distance, but coming closer, I hear music. No. Not music. It is the sound of "Turkey in the Straw," played on a glockenspiel and amplified through a speaker on an ice cream truck. At least, I think it is. It gets louder and louder, until it peaks and eventually fades out. And who else but an ice cream truck would be playing "Turkey in the Straw" -- over and over and over.

It is a perfect lake night. One that began with a perfect lake dinner -- toasted basil and tomato sandwiches (the bacon had gone a bit south and I chose to give it a pass); corn on the cob; a cucumber and for dessert a bowl of fresh blueberries and cherries. Earlier in the week, dinner was similar, only pulled pork was the protein and potato salad and tomatoes with basil served as the veg and side. Summer food.

 

My home-alone week has been a good one and when this posts, I will no longer be alone but enjoying the cottage with Rick following my birthday celebration. (More on that to come!) I have read a good deal but painted even more, doing about ten online workshops. 

 

Some have been very complicated, others less so, but all enjoyable. And best of all, they are helping to get me back into painting regularly.  

 

I've been swimming too. You can't lap-swim in a lake but I mark my path by the placement of a neighbor's buoys and am finally back to my regular distance of where I was last summer. Sometimes I'll stay out and float a bit, especially after my back's tired from other tasks. And on one day I saw this.

 

Yes, that's five damselflies -- at least I think that is what they are (please correct me if I'm wrong!). All sitting on a piece of seaweed that seemed to be attached to the pole of the dock. Did I have my camera with me? Of course not!

 

Did I carefully get out of the lake, not wanting to scare them, and hustle to the house to fetch it? You bet! 

 

They stayed and they posed.  

 

And here's a question that someone asked me when seeing the photo below. Is that a mother and a baby -- or is it just a trick of the light? If you know, enlighten me!

 

At least twice a day, I "clap" the geese away that have come to the beach. I'll walk out the porch, clapping and they begin to scatter (usually to go to the house next door with the big beach and the big lawn.) I've become rather fond of watching one family that comes regularly, often without the flock of some 95 others. This little family -- two adults, three juveniles, have become so used to the clapping that I don't even need to come out of the house. They simply begin to move on -- either swimming off or walking over to the bigger beach. I love watching how they interact with each other.

The other ugly task I've taken on during home-alone time is deconstructing a mattress and box springs. When we changed out our mattress here a few years ago, we didn't know what to do with the old one. Habitat didn't want it; the trash people wouldn't take it and we didn't have a good way to transport it to the dump. So, it went into the garage where it was covering up a boat and who knows what else that we hadn't seen since it went there. So, we decided to take it apart and get rid of it that way.

 

Let me tell you -- those things are constructed well. And there are layers and layers! The thick, quilted layer you see when you change the sheets; then a layer batting and one of foam, followed by a bunch of what I can only describe as thick fluff, and then two layers of what looks like the kind of rug you find people putting on a garage floor to prevent oil drips from going into the cement.

 

It took hours, along with a terrible pair of scissors and an exacto knife. Hours sells it short. It took days. But now we're down to the springs (I'm putting my money on the saws-all) and the "box," which should be doable.  

And now, it's time to settle back in, pick up my book and carry on. 

 

Cottage life is good. And I'm so very, very lucky to be able to live it.

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