All things fade into dark green water down by the lake

[sovay]

Yesterday was what spatch is accustomed to refer to as A Day, by which I mean that I spent it in the greater hinterlands of Rhode Island and Massachusetts with selkie on the occasion of her beloved grandfather's ninetieth birthday. We had dinner at S.S. Dion on the waterfront of Bristol Harbor, where I was introduced to about thirty relatives of assorted degrees and generations and had the best conversations with the one who went as Belle for Halloween because his five-year-old daughter asked him to. (He showed me the pictures. He looked great.) There were fried oysters for dinner and two cakes made by one of the cousins our age. The grandfather and his second wife hugged me when the party broke up, which I had not expected. We got yelled at by a seagull on the slipway. Otherwise the purpose of my presence was emotional support against damage radiating like black light and event horizons and I believe I discharged my duty faithfully; also I got some pictures in the process. Most of them are ancestral homestead, but there is also the sea.



Vintage rust. It belonged originally to Selkie's grandfather and was not the only one of its kind on the property.



What I began to refer to as the murder corn.



GRANT WOOD, EAT YER HEART OUT.



It was remarkably photogenic murder corn. We were both just pretty sure that if you live in the house, it talks to you.



A seal in her natural habitat.



Her natural habitat.



Selkie, windblown.



Me, also windblown.

I regret nothing about having been there for one of my dearest friends and the mother of my godchild, even if at one point way too close to our scheduled departure time we were seriously discussing stealing a car from the middle of cabin-bearing woods. We got home all right to our respective states. We slept late. Today I am doing nothing except reading Ross Macdonald and being visited by rushthatspeaks. But Monday could be boring and that would be just fine with me.

Comments

[kore]

LOTTERY IN JUNE, CORN BE HEAVY SOON

[selkie]

Luckily they’d have had to do the deed with frostbitten tomatoes.
Man, I know how crop rotation works, but it was a blank shock to see corn instead of squash.
I wish I’d had time to take Sovay to the Peck family burying ground (circa 1630, on our land when I was a kid and we still have walk-through rights to it) because it would have been LESS coreepy. Samuel Peck never ran me out over the drystone fence.

[sovay]

Man, I know how crop rotation works, but it was a blank shock to see corn instead of squash.

With squash, we'd have had a skyline!

I wish I’d had time to take Sovay to the Peck family burying ground (circa 1630, on our land when I was a kid and we still have walk-through rights to it)

I was sorry about that. I'd have enjoyed meeting those people.

[selkie]

Apparently the earliest graves have been taken by the river, but Samuel 2d’s is still there (d. 1736). There’s a sign and everything now, and Rachel, Perez, Patience, and Experience are still there. Someone rebuilt the drystone, too; fourteen years ago I would not have needed help over.

https://www.findagrave.com/cemetery/2199834/peck-burial-yard

(Rachel, Perez, Patience, and Experience are still there, I mentioned. I had some deep childhood side-eye for a girl named Perez Peck. Experience I guess I withheld opinion. I never had a problem talking to people older than me.)

[kore]

Luckily they’d have had to do the deed with frostbitten tomatoes.

//is now picturing Mrs Hudson getting pelted with semi-rotted vegetables