Tuesday, For Now

Hi everyone!!

Sorry I've not posted in a bit. It was a great weekend, and I have many pictures and a few words to share with you on the subject. It was also kind of a tiring weekend, though, and when my internet access crapped out on me last evening, I took the chance to enjoy a little quiet down time, when I suppose I ought to have been cropping and developing photos and doing some rough draft writing so I'd be ready to blog when the opportunity presented itself.

You'll forgive me, I hope, that I've not regaled you with stories and song about the great times we had this holiday weekend. I will soon. I promise. I hope you all had terrific weekends, too!

Meanwhile, I thought you might enjoy these two shots from this evening. The one above was taking from the Stop N Shop parking lot, the one below, as the full Hunter's Moon rose over Town Cove in Orleans. I wish the optical illusion was photograph-able...since the moon appeared about three times this size when I stopped for the picture.

Sunday at the Beach with Kyle

HURRICANE KYLE LOCAL STATEMENT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE TAUNTON MA
1103 AM EDT SUN SEP 28 2008






...HURRICANE KYLE WILL PASS EAST OF NANTUCKET EARLY THIS AFTERNOON...

.AT 1100 AM AST...THE CENTER OF HURRICANE KYLE WAS LOCATED NEAR
LATITUDE 40.4 NORTH...LONGITUDE 67.7 WEST OR ABOUT 140 MILES EAST-
SOUTHEAST OF NANTUCKET MASSACHUSETTS AND ABOUT 355 MILES...575
KM...SOUTHWEST OF HALIFAX NOVA SCOTIA.

KYLE IS MOVING TOWARD THE NORTH-NORTHEAST NEAR 24 MPH. THIS GENERAL
MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE FOR THE NEXT DAY OR SO WITH SOME
DECREASE IN FORWARD SPEED. ON THE FORECAST TRACK...THE CENTER OF KYLE
SHOULD PASS EAST OF NANTUCKET AND CAPE COD EARLY THIS AFTERNOON AND THE
COAST OF MAINE TONIGHT. THE STORM WILL MOVE NEAR OR OVER NOVA SCOTIA
AND NEW BRUNSWICK TONIGHT AND EARLY MONDAY.

MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS ARE NEAR 80 MPH...WITH HIGHER GUSTS. KYLE IS
A CATEGORY ONE HURRICANE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON SCALE. KYLE IS MOVING
OVER COLDER WATERS AND WEAKENING IS LIKELY DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.
THE SYSTEM SHOULD LOSE TROPICAL CHARACTERISTICS ON MONDAY.

HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 70 MILES...FROM THE
CENTER...AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 205
MILES.

At Summer's End, A Friend

Look at this lovely morning glory Patience has climbing a string down in the backyard. I just love the delicate purple markings.

Yes, it's been a few days since I've blogged last, and surely you are all wondering just what the Gardener's been up to, how the Nest is coming along and was anything of note done to celebrate the final days of Summer 2008.


Actually, I had just planned on a quiet weekend of painting and time in nature, but it turned out to be a much more interesting and exciting weekend than that, as Badum and I ended up hosting our first weekend guest!

In commiserating with a fellow blogger about our recent respective malaises (is that the plural?), I had touted the creative process as a helpful means to distraction...and painting as the sort of process you could do while spending time sorting through your thoughts...and I extended a sort of Tom Sawyer-like invitation to come help paint the apartment this weekend.

But I must admit, it was still a delightful surprise when Patrick called to say he was interested in coming to help paint if I'd been quite serious (perhaps he's realizing that I am rarely all-the-way serious about many things...there's little fun in seriousness, after all) about the invite. Which is how we ended up finally meeting at the bus station in Hyannis late Friday night!

The whole blogging experience (or at least ours) has put us in touch with such a great circle of people, where at least the frameworks for real friendships have been somewhat intensively forged online, and of course, that whole cyber world creates this sense of "imaginary" friends, and you never truly know how you'll respond to someone when you meet them for real.

I'm happy to say Patrick and I seemed to step across the gap between worlds with a hug and a smile...and we quickly moved on to proving that old John Lennon saw about how what people really want to do is sit in rooms and talk...although we proved they also want to do it (the talking, People; heads out of the gutter, please...you cheapen us all with your tawdry little imaginings...) in cars, during inauspicious late-night dinners in Wendy's parking lots...and while walking through marshes...or standing in the cool waters of Cape Cod Bay...or sitting in the sun on the deck with coffee and Cheerios...and yes, even while painting...we did get around to a little bit of that, too.

But we did speak of each one of you. Some more than others, naturally, and almost entirely good things. But I wouldn't be surprised to hear that any one of you spent at least some little piece of the weekend going, "hey, what's that I feel in the Universe...something's going on...why are my ears ringing...?" Yah, that was us. We talked about the Secret Wisdom of Bachelor's Buttons, too.

Look at the color of the dining room: it's called Amsonia Peach, which I chose as my orange component of the rainbow painting scheme for the Nest. It's amazing in the way it changes so totally as the light does. One moment, it's pumpkin pie orange, another moment cinnamon brown or here, with a blush of gold and pink, just like the skin of a peach.


The light changes a lot in this room during the course of a day, so it should be fun to watch as this color transforms right along with it. And also, some of the late day light comes in bounced off the now-pink, but soon to be brick red walls of the kitchen...so it will be interesting to see just how that changes things, too.

It really was a fun weekend. It was nice to have a kindred spirit to talk with about so many things on each of our minds. While neither of us saw this as one of those transformative, "How Someone Got Their Groove Back" weekends, in the process we may have at least realized that we each should actually have grooves, anyway...being fabulous gay guys and all.

And hosting a guest on Cape Cod always carries the additional pleasure of making one slow down and appreciate the incredible beauty around us.


With the recent frenzy of life, I've done little more than drive to local beach parking lots lately, to hurry up and soak in the sunset and snap a few photos before dashing home to rearrange some furniture or paint something.

What a joy it was to slow down and walk through the marsh with someone, laughing out loud (but not LOLing, for gosh sakes...) and talking about it or just soaking it in...and then actually walking out into the bay as the tide began to lap in around us, blue herons and hundreds of other birds flying about overhead, foraging in the shallow waters for their dinner as we snapped photos.

I should say we weren't totally chatterboxes. An evening like this would be pointless if you didn't know when to be silent and let the amazing world be around you.

The late season songs of the crickets sounding a little sad, but sweetly so, from the marsh grass. complemented by the plaintive and ungraceful blat of the great blue heron as it soars across the bay waters, the honk of a fast-moving duck overhead, the lapping of the water around our ankles. The mystery of what the small unseen creatures were who occasionally dimpled the calm surface of the water from below and the way the color of the sky changes so gracefully as the sunlight vanishes and the stars appear overhead....it was all quite soothing and wonderful.

It was good to have the birds' foraging as a reminder for us, as we are neither of us apparently clock-watchers, especially not with all the nature and talking and quiet to enjoy...but it wasn't too long after that we discovered that the Gardener's Nest is indeed within delivery range for a Papa Gino's pizza.

Not watching the clock while chatting is also how we missed the earlier opportunity to get Patrick on a bus back to NY Sunday...and it was as we dashed for the car and the bus station a little while later that we remembered we'd not done a proper snapshot to prove we'd met...and so here's that.

If you get the opportunity to meet Patrick, I highly recommend it. He's fun and smart and thoughtful and all that you imagine he might be...and a little more, too. P, thanks for your company this weekend, it was really great fun. I hope we'll do it again sometime soon (there's more painting to do, after all).

Now on a technical note, I'm excited about having met Patrick for another reason: as a blogger, I can now be validated, at least to a small circle of other bloggers Patrick has met (and more distantly, through all the bloggers they have met), and am proven to be a real person more or less as represented in Blogland (perhaps a touch more neurotic...).

Pinnochio voice: So, look at me, everybody, I'm a real boy!


I stopped into work on the way home from the bus station, which is how I learned that Danny and Sara were still in town at the end of their week's vacation and they invited me to join them for the summer's last sunset...which you can see above.

Though I expressed to Dan the interest his internet fan base had in a further photo shoot in the outdoor shower, I'm afraid we never got around to that this time. ; )

We were really too busy just chilling out as the last gorgeous moments of summer slid down behind the horizon.

And it was really no surprise to me at all that the sun turned a lovely shade of violet as it vanished.

Outer Cape Afternoon

Twelve years ago this week, I traveled from the Adirondacks to Provincetown, where I spent ten fantastic days exploring the wilds of the Outer Cape, both in the narrow streets and the dunes.

When the days turn a little cool, I always remember that trip and what fun it was. That trip marked the first real vacation for me as a so-called grown-up, and I remember what a joy it was to spend the week in a place where being gay was the norm, not the exception...and by the end of the week, I recall my face actually hurt a little from all the grinning I was doing.

Also, by this time in September, frost has usually put the gardens of the Adirondacks to bed for the winter...but arriving in PTown, I discovered gardens still blooming their little heads off, if looking a little bedraggled for the recent passing of Hurricane Eduardo.

It was this week that made me fall in love with Cape Cod as a place to make a life and by the end of the week, not only was I a grinning fool, but I realized after leaving for home that I was homesick for the place and I began to lay my plans to move out here. The rest, as they say, is history.

Yesterday was one of those pretty fall days. It started that way, anyway. We were still enjoying the warmer temperatures that Wednesday had featured...but while I was doing laundry in the morning, we had some dark skies and the temperature managed to drop ten degrees...a Canadian cold front, someone who was watching the TV told me.

I was back at the eye Doc, to check up on things, as my eye is taking just a little longer to heal than anticipated, but we were able to see improvement since Tuesday, so I will resume being patient with myself, since it was probably hurrying that caused the injury in the first place.

Meanwhile, it was a late September day and I had a hair appointment in Provincetown, so after the laundry, I spent some time in the office and then hit the road for the Outer Cape.


This bit of wild phlox caught my good eye, growing as well as it was in a tiny little bit of earth between two sections of macadam outside the salon. I moved some of this stuff to Harwich last fall, but it never managed to bloom for me during the summer. I wonder if its doing so now...

I've always been impressed with the gardens and plants of Provincetown. The quality of the light is amazing there and so that must encourage plants to do their best, as it also does for painters and other artists. Some of the gardens are narrow little patches in narrow little back or side or front yards...and the results never fail to amaze me.

It's always fun to ramble around town a bit, enjoying the seaside views and the scent of the sea air and such.





Of course, there's always a few interesting people and or dogs to be seen in Provincetown.

With cooler temperatures coming to bear, there weren't any scantily clad beautiful people to enjoy (they have probably headed south for Key West now...as flannel becomes a more popular seasonal choice...), but I enjoyed this dog, who was sharing a bench with its people out on MacMillan Pier.

There wasn't much in the way of boating activity this time of year, but it was still kind of cool to walk out along the dock and enjoy the sky and the seabirds who were filling it.


Plus, from out at the end of the wharf, you get the most enjoyable views of the town itself.

One of the things I had hoped to do while I was in town was to replace a bit of stained glass I had purchased on that long ago trip, which had recently broken. It was a very simple stained glass rainbow flag, but it always made my heart sing a little as it caught the sun.

I was sad to discover that they no longer make this particular bit of stained glass, though after twelve years (and with PTown becoming a little more exclusive as resorts go, the whole rainbow flag culture has faded a little...as you may recall from my hunt for the sight of one of the flags back in June...)...but as I walked away, I was a little surprised at just how sad I felt about it...

...which is when I remember that this was actually my second day without a nicotine patch (62 days altogether since the last cigarette...), and so as I go through this final stage of withdrawal, I suppose its not unreasonable that I should be an emotional mess. This, too, shall pass. Of course, the Nicodemon isn't entirely to blame: it was on that long-ago vacation that I also first met Owen, too.




I enjoyed this large frog outside one of the stores on Commercial Street. He's actually a large vase for the flowers held in his left hand. Pretty cool, huh?

I wandered through some of the shops at the Whalers Wharf complex...just one more representation of the way in which the town has changed in ten years.

Of course, WW used to be a big open area indoors, with a sort of disorganized array of vendors and their relatively inexpensive wares. It was that sort of set-up, I imagine, that allowed the fire that destroyed the place the winter I moved here to take hold and spread so crazily.

While the floors in this new place appear wood-like, they are actually some kind of composite flooring cast to look like wood. I did enjoy the way the hanging gardens looked from the second story, though.

And these steel flowers added a nice counterpart to the cosmos I found blooming a little further down Commercial Street, as I made my way back to the car.

A few weeks back, I made a big deal out of all the things I'd done in the Harwich garden which probably encouraged my sunflowers to "be all they could be", but I couldn't live Provincetown without showing you these guys. In just a few scant inches of earth between the street curb and the foundation of this house, these tenacious little fellows are putting on a nice show all their own.





Cape Cod Light, aka, Highland Light, has always been one of my favorite things about the outer Cape and I used to enjoy the way its beam would sweep across the Provincetown night sky.

It was actually a story about the moving of the lighthouse away from the crumbling cliffs above the ocean in Truro that gave me the idea to come to Provincetown on vacation that year long ago...and I've always considered this lighthouse a sort of beacon for me.






A nice sunset capped the day.

With forecasts predicting a low of forty degrees possible overnight, I was happy to head home and close some windows in the apartment, and to spend a little time snuggling with my buddy, Badum, who is pretty good at throwing the heat on a cool evening.

My God, It's Full of Stars

So, Tuesday was a big day here. We got a bed.

I had managed to speak with Bethy and get our plan in place: she would be heading east after dropping the children at school, probably arriving here in Orleans about the time my early afternoon appointments were to conclude. In fact, that's exactly how it worked out.

Now, there was one minor wrinkle to the day, which actually occurred late the night before, when I awoke in the wee hours and, trying to put my glasses on, somehow managed to poke myself in the eye - pretty hard - with them, instead.

The only thing worse than actually hurting yourself is doing so in a way that makes you feel pretty stupid, as well as hurt. You'd think after putting on...and taking off...glasses for nearly forty years, I'd have it down to a science...and honestly, I thought so before the other night, too. But somehow, jab.

I went to my eye Doc first thing Tuesday morning, with one blurry eye. He took a look and advised me there was a definite dimple on my eyeball, but fortunately, no tearing or ripping, so at least I didn't harm myself too seriously. He suggests this will actually take care of it itself in a few days time.

So, with one blurry eye and one good eye, I went through the day and really, with all the good going on, a little blurry vision was hardly a huge concern. Beth arrived more or less right on schedule and there was a great jumping about, squealing and so on when we saw one another...which you'd have thought we hadn't done in YEARS...but still, that's what friends are all about.

We began our visit with a nice long lunch at the restaurant and then took the party home to get the business of sliding the mattress and box spring upstairs to the deck.

That went surprisingly well, and then we got back to the silly business of laughing and giggling about things past, and chortling and chuckling about recent adventures...and then just roaring with laughter about new things...well, surely you all have friends like this, so you must know how it goes.

After we thought we'd exhausted all that, we drove across town, since I was insistant that Bethy be sure to see the Atlantic after driving all the way from Connecticut, and she had no real problem with that plan.

That we forgot to take the string and bungees off the roof rack from the boxspring only gave us a good reason to stop at the Rock Harbor boat launch first, where we got to see Cape Cod Gray in its natural environment.

And then it was off across town, where we found the Atlantic tide on the rise and the water temperature reasonable enough to take off our shoes and get our feet and jeans a little wet. And we found, as good friends do, plenty more to talk about.





When we'd had our fill of shoreline cavorting and just sitting watching the amazing sky, we headed back to town and found a homemade ice cream shop, where we each enjoyed overly-large Cake Butter ice cream cones, in chocolate and colored-sprinkle-dipped sugar cones in their outdoor garden.

Ah, what fun it was to spend some time together, and how we look forward to doing it again soon...all too soon, Bethy was heading back to CT and the briars of the working day world.

But the cat and I are both grateful for the addition of an actual bed to our environment. We have slept especially well the last two evenings...and in his case, lots of the rest of the time, as well.

You can also see what I've been doing to the bedroom walls here...adding an assortment of different sized stars, just as I did in my last bedroom. I found it to be a real fun and relaxing look at the last place, so I'm happy to have adapted that scheme to this location, with some different background colors. This room's just about finished, which will be the key to getting more progress in the rest of the apartment.