The waterways around here are a virtual obstacle course of crab traps and gill nets.  Local professional watermen know there is bounty in these waters and they actively exploit it.  One professional crabber can put out hundreds of crab traps and make a decent seasonal living from what he (they’re all “he’s” down here) catches.  But “professional” is the operative word.  There is no acknowledgement whatsoever of the sports fisherman in these parts.  From Edenton in the the south to Elizabeth City 30 miles north, there is any number of marinas that will sell you water craft and everything to do with them from cleats to charts, but there is not a single bait and tackle shop.  You can’t buy a crab trap anywhere, and the only sellers of menhaden, the bony, oily fish caught in the millions off the Delmarva Peninsula and known as ambrosia to crabs, are those who cater to the pros and sell only in 50-lb. lots.  If you’d like to try catching a fish for dinner and need a pole and some hooks, Wal-Mart is your only choice.  Need bait?  Dig your own.

When you come here for the first time, you are struck by the preponderance of water.  (It is, of course, what brought us here in the first place.)  Five huge rivers that dwarf the Mississippi, in width if not length, run north-to-south along a stretch of about 70 miles of northeastern North Carolina, all feeding Albemarle Sound.  The recreational and touristic possibilities would seem to be endless, but there is virtually no nod by the state or any of the local governments in that direction.  I’ve spoken often of the various wonderful surprises we’ve had down here; this is one of the few disappointing ones.  We were so accustomed to hopping in our boat in Delaware and running up to Lewes or down to Oak Orchard for lunch, or setting our crab traps out for one or two days in Herring Creek and getting enough “keepers” to make a few crab cakes.  Here, the water distances from point to point are enormous, and if you should actually navigate to a town on the water, and should it even have thought to put up a public dock, there’s not much to do once you tie up there.  And the crabs?  I buy my “bait” at the local grocery store–farm raised croaker meant for human consumption but which I wouldn’t put near my mouth, and as cheap as the menhaden were in Delaware.  With them I have caught many, many crabs, none of which have been legal keeping size.  (We’re using the traps we brought with us from Delaware.)  Guess all the pros are beating me to them.

A Friday the 13th story:  today we decided to try one more time to catch a few crabs.  A storm is brewing someplace in the vicinity, causing clouds, a stiff breeze and choppy water.  It was to be a quick trip, just long enough to drop our two traps and come back.

The first trap went in just fine.  The second one seemed to have got caught on something–turned out it was the engine’s propeller. The wind and choppy water sent us right over the trap’s rope, which tangled itself into the works of the engine, which in turn ceased running.  (First thought:  Oh great.  A storm is coming and here we sit on the water with a dead engine.)  The motor is old–the hydraulic mechanism that tilts the prop up out of the water stopped working a couple of months ago and we decided not to get it fixed, since a new engine is probably in our future next year.  Nothing to do, then, but climb into the water to untangle the rope, which Steve, bless him, did.  He had to cut the rope. I pulled the trap back into the boat, only to discover that the bait had fallen out of it.  We turned around and came back home, then, with one empty, baitless crab trap–luckily it was just the tangled rope that was keeping the motor from running.  Steve was able to dry off almost completely in the breeze.  We now have one crab trap out there in the Little River, luring crabs with Food Lion croaker.  We probably won’t catch anything.

Not that some major adjustments didn’t become necessary as the hours leading to the event wore on.  Early in the morning there was a true disaster:  one of the cakes I had made a week or so before and frozen–the chocolate one–slipped out of my hand as I picked it up off the counter and landed, splat, face down, on the floor.  Unfortunately, it had thawed out, in all its moist, oil-and-buttermilk richness. Not only did I have a hideous brown-black mess to clean up, but I had to whip up a duplicate and fast–it had been promised as a surprise to mark the birthday of one of the guests.  Thank God the day was still young.

The purpose of the party was to show off the new deck, so we were all set up for outside.  Zero hour was 4 PM.  At 3:30, the heavens opened and a downpour ensued that lasted most of the rest of the evening.  As the first drops fell, we switched gears and set up inside, moving the dining room table up against a wall to create buffet space, clearing coffee and end tables of their knick-knacks to make room for plates and cups, and moving chairs to unaccustomed places so lots of people could sit more-or-less convivially.

We learned several useful lessons.  One: we will never, ever, plan another outdoor party here for the middle of summer.  It’s too hot and the weather is too iffy.  It’s enough like the tropics to expect a thunderstorm in the afternoon, as if it were a “rainy season,” but it’s still temperate enough not to guarantee such a storm, so you’re never really sure what it’s going to do before it’s done.  Two: the house has room for 30+ people to mill about and feel comfortable.  As hosts we sometimes had to break up groups who gathered in crucial spots next to the oven, say, or who blocked a thoroughfare, but that was the worst of it.  Any more than the number we had would be a bit on the sardine side, but we’ll probably never encounter that problem.  (And besides, we want to graduate from these cattle-call get-togethers to smaller, more intimate dinners.  I take it that isn’t done here very much, but I think it’s because people have been intimidated by one guy in particular who fancies himself a “gourmet” and apparently has dinner gatherings that include all the starch of a nun’s habit.  Not fun.  I cook good food–sometimes even fancy–but I’m more in the Julia Child tradition.  If the soufflé falls I’ll serve it, call it a savory pudding, and pass the wine.)

And three, not least:  we have some pretty great neighbors.  I don’t know the religious or political beliefs of a single one of them and I hope it stays that way.  Though none of these people are native to the area, they seem to have been infected with the wonderful local habit of smiling and waving first, inviting friendship rather than argument.  You quickly grow accustomed to greeting a group of strangers in a waiting room, say, as they look up and smile as you enter.  That really is the biggest and most pleasant surprise we’ve had here–how everyone is just plain nice.  It’s a quality that makes for a really fun party.

Oh. And the food, especially the pork, was a hit.  And that chocolate cake? To quote one guest: “The best chocolate cake I’ve ever had!”  I saw no reason to mention that I’d had extra practice.

Today is July 14.  Yes, Bastille Day.  And Steve’s and my anniversary.

We met on a weekend getaway to the Maryland mountains hosted by a mutual friend whose parents opened their doors to us.  Of the crowd of people there, we each knew about two, and that did not include each other.  I was in one of my starving artist periods, singing all over everybody.  Steve liked what he saw.  We were both in deep nesting phases.  We started dating.  A short time later, Steve put it this way:  “My lease is about to run out. I have to move and I want you to move with me. If you don’t want to, OK.  It’s been nice.”  How’s that for romantic?

The adventure continues 31 years later.  The gifts I have received from Steve are immeasurable and innumerable; I pinch myself at least once a week.  Oh, nothing in this world is perfect, least of all human beings.  Our relationship has taught us both important lessons in the meaning of true adulthood.  If you ask me the secret to a long relationship, that’s what I’ll tell you: you must be grownups. The relationship itself takes on a life of its own, it’s a living creature you both make, and as adults, you both choose to give it paramount importance.  Your own childish interests never go away; the trick is in acknowledging that  inner baby and even humoring him when you can, but never at the expense of the relationship, the precious thing you have created together.

Is this marriage thing for everybody?  Apparently not.  But for us it’s worked beyond our wildest dreams.

Here’s to 31 more.

One year ago today we were in the midst of clearing the property. We’d get here in the cool of the early morning and suit up against chiggers: long pants tucked into our socks, long sleeved shirts, a do-rag for me to keep the sweat pouring off my head out of my eyes, and clouds of Deep Woods Off. It was sheer, unadulterated drudgery, but it didn’t last long–we could only work until about noon every day before it got too hot, and our progress in those few hours a day was dramatically visible.

Now, the land is still cleared and my job is to water it. We finally had what we now call our mud flats–the 2 acres or so of land that was cleared to make the septic field in the front, as well as the two side yards and the back–seeded for grass. It’s Bermuda grass, the kind that wants to grow here because it loves the heat (the soil temperature must be at least 80F–26C–before Bermuda seed will germinate) and it needs to be wet. So my job these days, while Steve makes sense of his sanctum sanctorum, the garage, is to water.

When the house was built, Gary, the builder, made sure the plumber put standpipe hydrants at various strategic locations around the yard. Now we know why. I water area by area from 6 in the morning until 4 in the afternoon, an hour at a time, using three 100-foot hoses stretched to various spots in the yard. The seed really needs to be saturated, and, in case you haven’t heard, we’re in the midst of a prolonged heat wave. It’s a dry heat, which means the water that lands on places unprotected by any shade, including the vast expanse of septic field where there can be no trees, evaporates quickly. We had a couple of days last week of heavy rain, and that gave everything a jump start. So far, I’ve been able to keep the ground moist enough to actually look wet, and the work is beginning to pay off. Our yard looks like the beard of a 13-year-old boy. That is to say, spotty. Here is what the back looks like as of today:

It’s actually a little better than the front, which has long, narrow stripes of green surrounded by dirt containing various amounts of moisture. This is the three-week point. There are times when we despair of ever getting rid of the dirt and mud, but I strive for faith that these doubts, too, will pass, just as all the others have. A few months ago, when we first moved in and a lawn was still imaginary, a neighbor told us we should just get some sod. They had put down seed, and they’d never do it again.  “It’s so much work!” she said, and I simply couldn’t understand what she was talking about. How much work can there be to turning on a hose and letting it run for an hour? Now I get it. You become obsessed with maintaining an even level of moisture all around. You’re governed by the clock, going out to re-position sprinklers every hour. Sometimes the sprinklers get clogged with mud, and a simple operation that should take a few minutes stretches to half an hour or more, as you turn on the hydrant, maybe 100 feet away from the sprinkler, and discover that the sprinkler has become clogged. You turn off the water, walk the hundred feet to the sprinkler, unscrew it from the hose, walk with it back to the hydrant, turn the water on to clean off the sprinkler and force the clog out, screw the sprinkler back on the hose, put it back in the place you want it 100 feet distant, walk back to the hydrant, turn it on, and hope for the best. You’ve spent at least a good 20 minutes at this. And then there are the times the only way to move the sprinkler to the next area is to walk over the dirt you’ve just watered, which has become shoe-sucking mud. Perhaps reading all that is as monotonous as actually doing the work? Good, I’ve shown you what it feels like! But the results you see  in the photo above make it all worthwhile. Pretty soon we’ll have a lawn.

There are those who would probably love to point out that all this effort to create a “lawn,” an artificial meadow, is unnatural, a colossal waste of a precious natural resource–water–and that we are polluting the very creek whose vista we so enjoy with the fertilizer needed to make this artificial meadow green. Carry the argument far enough and you’ll have stopped us even from building the house: we should never have had those trees cut down, nor removed that natural thicket of green just to create a view.  All I can say in response is, “I know, I know, your arguments are unassailable, and I don’t care.” I invite the environmentally sensitive among you to pitch a tent in the woods somewhere and be one with nature. Me, I’ll take my greensward, my lovely, flat, green meadow, shimmering in the Carolina sun.

On June 19, 2009, after nearly two years of preparation and seemingly unending months of anxiety brought on by an unfriendly national economy, Steve and I closed on the sale of our signature house in hyper-urban Arlington, Va., the one we’d spent 27 years re-creating into something that was ours alone. We picked up the cats, the fish, and the plants, and drove six hours straight south into a completely new life in deeply rural North Carolina. All we knew was that we were headed for a rental house and that our landlord would be the builder in whose hands we’d decided to trust the plans for our dream home by the water. Would we feel dislocated? Would we be accepted? Would the Klan burn a cross on our lawn? All of those questions crossed our minds. But we had each other, and we had the knowledge that up to then we’d been able to fit in anywhere. Heck, I’d spent two years of my life in Ghana, West Africa, the equivalent of another planet. If that dislocation didn’t do me in, a move to the sticks would be more like re-locating to another house in the same neighborhood. Never did we feel we were making an unwise move. And a year later, we are all the more confident in the wisdom of our decision, and happy about it.

Oh, there have been changes in attitude. In my urban life you wouldn’t have caught me dead or alive in a Wal-Mart, unless there was some bargain that simply couldn’t go unheeded. Here, the Wal-Mart is the only big-box store for 60 miles in any direction. (There is a Lowe’s nearby, thank goodness!) It stands in lonely grandeur on the outskirts of Elizabeth City, awaiting the mixed-use housing planned for its surrounds. It stands shining in the distance along with the strip mall that came with it, which includes a good pet store. Since this is the only such store for miles around, it must be many things to many types of people. It succeeds more than it fails.

Also in my previous life, I used to shop for food à l’européenne, making a daily trip to my beloved Harris-Teeter to be inspired by its gorgeous produce and wonderful meat selection for the day’s dinner. Here, you can’t go around any corner without running into a Food Lion–truly the Starbucks of the rural North Carolina, making up in utter ubiquity for it’s complete lack of corporate style. I admit to an irrational prejudice against the chain, probably because of its name, which I find just stupid, thinking of it as an overgrown country store. (Capers are in the foreign food section, when you can get them. Fresh thyme was an unknown in the produce aisle until I asked for it.) But I shop there because the prices of this most base of basic selection can’t be beat. There’s a very nice store, a Harris-Teeter ripoff, called Farm Fresh in E. City. I go there for things like copper polish, Swiss chard or fennel bulbs, great cheeses, and my beloved Batampte pickles. I can even pick up kimchee there when my tastebuds so dictate. (And when it comes to produce, in the summer we are abundantly blessed with several farm stands to choose from.)

We do sorely miss a few things about the big city. Bed, Bath and Beyond is a marvelous place that seems downright miraculous upon entering one after a long absence. The occasional foray into Target. A Thai restaurant. (Mexican and Chinese are well represented, and there’s even a Caribbean chop bar in Elizabeth City.) A selection of first-run movie theaters–we have to go all the way to the Outer Banks for a multiplex. Netflix has never been so welcome or necessary.

And we miss the proximity of our friends in Washington, but we don’t miss the city itself. (Our best friends tend to be scattered all over the country, anyway, so being here doesn’t make such big difference.) We miss the funky diversity of our Arlington neighborhood, but little by little we are learning where the weird people are down here–which is most certainly not among our lovely, well-meaning but totally homogeneous neighbors–we are the diversity in this little enclave, and they actually seem grateful for our presence. We are on a search for fellow-travelers and know they are out there. Meanwhile, our pink flamingos and the rainbow flag speak for themselves. What they may say to the literal-minded, camp-challenged locals is another story entirely–(”all those flamingos…you guys really like the tropics, huh?”) but we are making our statement.

We love looking at “our” creek every day, through the forest of cattails and bog flowers whose lives we made possible through the sweat of our backs. We love the starry nights, where the spilled-milk inspiration for the name of our galaxy is still visible. We love that through the good offices of a couple of very modest but pivotal people in our life here–our real estate agent and our builder–we have access to a network of first-rate craftspeople whose word is so good they don’t even require contracts. When they say they will do something, they do it. It’s a very high moral standard to live up to, and one reason the recent troubles with the home equity loan (finally resolved) were so distressing–it’s not fair to make these good people wait so long for their due, since they have shown you such good faith. Where else could we be honored with such a tender obligation?

Most of all, even though we have not said it in so many words, Steve and I love that we have each other. Each of us made this life-changing adventure possible for the other. Without me, Steve would still be sitting in Arlington, stressing impotently over lost property values. Without Steve, his genius for design and his hands-on skills, my life would be far poorer and less filled with beauty. When it comes right down to it, that might be the best thing of all about this new life. With each other, we’ve seen without any doubt that we can do just about anything we set our minds to. We’re coming up to 31 years next month. May the next 31 be half as good.

The rain that seemed to go on endlessly just a few days ago has indeed ended and given way to bright sunshine, cool morning breezes and a clear blue sky.  And that cozy feeling you get when you can sit inside and do not very much because weather won’t allow it gives way, in my present circumstances, to feelings of jealousy that Steve can be outside, carrying lumber around as he prepares to make railings for the deck, while I’m still inside relatively immobile.  But I can marvel at what Steve has shown me from the outside, and told me about.  And yesterday afternoon after the sun had gone behind the house I actually maneuvered myself out to the deck and enjoyed the fragrant air and the evening views up the creek.

We are in the middle of a natural wonderland.  Henry the blue heron makes daily, swooping forays up and down he creek, often landing right at the end of our dock to stalk some delicacy he sees in the water.  If Henry happens not to show up for a couple of days running, we ask each other where he is.  “Where’s Henry?” has become one of those comfortable private catch phrases that mean more than they actually say.  (We had a “Henry” in Delaware, too.  We imagine that he found out where we went and followed us here.) 

Yesterday Steve saw two enormous turtles on the wetland fringes of the back yard. One of them left some scratch marks behind–is this egg-laying season for these turtles?  What kind are they?  We need to find out.  A hummingbird hovered over us as we sat on the deck, attracted to the extravagant salmon pink of the kalanchoe I bought to brighten Steve’s office over a year ago.  The plant has thrived here, as if celebrating Steve’s freedom, and the hummingbird’s reaction to it suggested the sort of company we may have if we were to plant something with actual nectar, like a trumpet vine.  A trumpet vine requires strict, brutal discipline or it will become invasive, but the potential for crowds of hummingbirds may convince us it would be worth the trouble…..

Busy little Carolina chickadees and bluebirds flit and fuss incessantly from tree to tree along the water, and a tiny Carolina wren perches on the railing of our front porch at 4 o’clock every afternoon, like clockwork.  He “serenades” us with a teasing, single-note call that is way too big to emit from that afterthought of a body.  (The tiniest creatures seem to have been given voices that compensate for their lack of physical stature.)  On the other end of the size scale, there are at least a dozen osprey pairs nesting in the tallest of the cypress trees that grace the banks of the Little River, just beyond our creek. At least one of them does graceful reconnaisance over us every afternoon.  And then there are the crows, their raucous conversation announcing their arrival like so many ladies who have over-enjoyed a liquid lunch.

There are more wildflowers growing in the wetland than we ever dared hope.  In addition to an unexpected wild iris (the original fleur-de-lis of France–who knew??), there are spiky little water hyacinths and a buttercup yellow ground cover whose name we don’t yet know.  A wetland rose of sharon is growing almost within reach of the dock–we hope it is the scion of a plant whose seeds we collected along the river last fall.  It’s still sprouting leaves and growing towards its full-season height, too early for blossoms, but the leaves and growth habit are unmistakable.

When I am once again ambulatory I promise to take some pictures of all these wonders and show them to you.  Until then, daydream a little….

I also read the online version of the Washington Post, something I try to do fairly regularly, if I can stand yet more reports of the ever deepening chasm between viewpoints in this country, and the lunatics who really do threaten to take over the asylum.  I saw that the IMF has prescribed a remedy for our current international economic ills:  somehow getting the “developed world” to scale back its consumption and, concomitantly, its relatively luxe way of life.  The dollar must lower in value or the Chinese must raise the value of their currency.  Either way, it would mean that Steve and I may no longer be able to go to Ollie’s overstock outlet and pay cents on the dollar for a dining room rug, say, or buy cheap nuts and bolts for our new deck.  Such prospects bring home for me one more time how incredibly lucky we have been in so many ways, for so many years.  When I say “we” I speak specifically of Steve and me, but the good luck has applied to countless of our contemporaries who happened to find themselves making their lives in Washington, DC, and other big cities, during the past few decades, riding the gravy train of good salaries that higher education could command, and not really too long ago.  In Steve’s and my immediate case, we decided what had to come next, got out while the getting was good, and had the means to build, literally, our future.  Yes, we were smart enough to make plans.  But we were just plain lucky to be able to realize them.

There is one gift from my time on the planet that just keeps on giving, and that is my time spent in a poor country with the Peace Corps.  It continues to remind me to take none of the good life I have for granted.  I know that there are people elsewhere who are exactly like me except for the opportunities that are my birthright, and from that difference flow so many others.  “There but for fortune go I” is an old saying I became familiar with when Phil Ochs worked it into a song in the 1960s.  Never a day goes by that I don’t remember it, especially now, during such personal good times.  Steve and I may have been smart.  But we had a huge, undeserved and completely accidental leg up along the way.

The hell that broke loose yesterday concerns a home equity line of credit we are applying for. We want to take advantage of our excellent credit ratings and of the fact that we own house free and clear. The application process, however, has taken on the potential to turn into a nightmare because a very sizable lien was found on the property–a lien that supposedly has existed since 2005 but did not show up in the title search when we made our purchase in March, 2009. Some title company, either the one that did the original search for our purchase or the one working for our lending bank, has made a big mistake. There are myriad things to ponder and worry about in such a situation–my initial inquiries following yesterday’s phone call from the bank led me to inexplicable dealings in the next county. All we can do is wait for the thing to play itself out, and that’s frustrating for a born “fixer” like me. We should have more details, and maybe a resolution (for good or ill) next week. At least one thing has come out of this: now we know what title insurance is for!

The house may be looking lovely on the inside (today’s photo is of my favorite vista) but outside we’re still all dust or mud, depending on the weather. Dwayne, the landscaper, doesn’t want to do anything until Joe, the the bulkhead guy, puts in a retaining wall next to the wetlands on the side of the house. Joe can’t start on our project until he’s done with the job he’s on now, and of course last night’s soaking rain didn’t help matters anywhere heavy machinery is needed. Landscaping will be an ongoing saga, given the continuing rains and our distance from commercial centers. I did plant a couple of trees yesterday where no machines will have to go.

The pollen you have either been reading about or contending with personally over the past few days hit us like a yellow nor’easter. It’s record-breaking in these parts (we seem to have arrived here during a time when records were scheduled to be broken)–the air itself was a greenish-yellow fog as we drove on US 17 yesterday. We left the cars outside the garage last night for the express purpose of allowing the rain to relieve them of their dusty burdens. According to local authorities, most of the pollen we’re seeing here is from loblolly pines, which the wooded part of our property is full of. We thought the oak and maple pollen in Arlington were bad, but we’ve never seen anything like this.

We got the boat running yesterday for the first time this season. Took about a half-hour of repeated attempts, but the old bucket of bolts finally kicked into life and purred like a kitten. We saw on our short boat ride that here in early April the Little River is already an obstacle course of crab pots. I bought some crab bait yesterday. Can’t wait to start hauling in a few of my own!

More later….

It may not look like much, but that trench with the pipe in it is important. A guy was finally able to drive his heavy tractor over that rain-drenched fill yesterday and not sink to his axles as he dug a place for a drain pipe to run from the house to the septic tank. At last, if we bring water into the house, there’s a place for it to go when it leaves. The last structural hurdle has been passed. We are celebrating our ability to dispose of our sewage. Who knew????

Detail work on the inside is becoming finer and finer. The wood floors are all in; carpets are now being laid. Trim details are being looked after, as are a couple of small projects that had to wait for this stage in construction. A “preliminary final inspection” will be made this week; after that the electricity will be turned on and the house will be heated. Protective covering from the finished floors will be removed, so we can enjoy that golden bamboo in all its glory. The process begun nearly 18 months ago with the removal of the first strip of paper from a wall in Arlington, this obsession with real estate and houses, builders and yes, sewage pipes, will soon be over. We will occupy our new house within three weeks!

I have no idea what this new life, so long anticipated, will really be like, but I can barely wait to start living it in what I know will be gorgeous surroundings. It’s not time to write a valedictory to our current limbo existence, not just yet. Rest assured, though, ideas are percolating. We have been given much. We’ve experienced abysmal lows that have made subsequent highs seem stratospheric; we have made the happy acquaintance of people in places and walks of life we’d never have imagined, and we have learned.

As long as we are transitioning, that’s what I’ll continue to report on. Soon, though, it will be time for reflection and just plain enjoyment.

Onward.

What you see above is a fish tank, but it’s not just any fish tank. It’s actually an old apothecary jar for which Steve’s mother macraméed that hanger more than 30 years ago, back when macramé was all the rage, and which has been hosting a fish ever since. If you look closely, you can see Tiny, our bumblebee cichlid, swimming at the top.

In the house in Arlington, Tiny and his cool house were seldom seen because they hung upstairs in the “private” part of the house–few guests ever went up there. In the new house down here, however, he’ll be on regular display, hung dramatically in the great room on a 30-foot chain from the vaulted ceiling. He’ll be right next to the fireplace, the first thing you see as you look straight ahead upon entering the front door.

One of the many wonderful people we’ve met through our home-building adventure here is a guy named Richard, who works as a handyman for Gary, our builder. He came here to the rental last summer to do some work on the floors, and the first thing he noticed was the fish tank. Turns out he loves pet fish, has had a sideline for years building unique wood stands for standard aquariums, and happens to have a larger apothecary jar (the one above is 5 gallons; his is 10) that he’s been wondering what to do with. At the time, he said he’d give the jar to us when we got settled into the new place, and there the matter lay.

Now Richard is the one putting the stain on all the oak woodwork in the new place, and we’ve caught up with him as we’re there painting while he does his staining work. Yesterday he mentioned our fish tank again, and was excited when we told him where it would hang in the great room. He told us he’d bring his 10-gallon jar to us whenever we were ready for it–and he also wants to give us some cichlids! (We discovered that Tiny doesn’t appreciate company in his 5-gallon quarters: he ate the roommate with whom he came to us within a day of their arrival. Maybe he’ll do better in larger accommodations.) These jars are not inexpensive and they are hard to find. This is a true gift, one of the many that have come to us unbidden in this new place.

So now Steve has another project on his list: replace the macramé hanger, which is starting to dry-rot and won’t hold a larger jar anyway. I tried macramé–it didn’t work for me. Steve enjoys doing it just because he likes it, and it’s also a way of honoring his mother. It’s wonderful to be able to surround yourself with things that are not only beautiful but have such great backstories. You don’t just admire them; you love them.