Clear Lake Shores

It's time to renew my land blog, though perhaps it should be renamed "Coasting on Dry Land." Traversing the island in our newly-purchased (though not new) golf cart feels a lot like coasting downhill on a bicycle, quiet and effortless and out in the open air. Driving the cart I feel like a kid again, playing at being a grown-up.

If this is what land life is going to be like this winter, bring it on!

More CLS Scenes/Moments

Inside the House

We have put some of Tom's turkey prints up the wall along the stairway since this picture was taken.

After spending the night out on the town about ten days ago, Annie slunk into the house beat up and bedraggled, minus her collar and her usual swagger. A few days later we realized that the scrape we had seen was not the only injury under her chin; she had a large puncture wound there as well. A vet visit entailed being gassed, stitched, and shot up with antibiotics, resulting in a renewed if slightly less delinquent cat.




In the Garage

Anyone familiar with our garage/dump in Baytown would be amazed and impressed, or maybe just relieved, by the organizational impulse Tom brought to the garage here.

He has artfully hung mementos, . . .

constructed and filled shelves,

and devised ways to simplify his work there.

Tom has had well-appreciated help from Tommy and Art (who, amazingly, picked up and hung the Mercury 25 outboard by himself) and also from our young neighbor Cody, but he has also constructed wenches and levers and other devices to lift and install items such as this heavy hose reel. I've always admired the way he approaches a problem, taking his time, thinking it through, and gathering tools before finally tackling and solving it, and this hasn't changed.

Credit also needs to go to Ronnie R., who rebuilt the garage, adding high, sturdy shelves, after Hurricane Ike brought several feet of water into the structure. Tom is placing the more valuable items up high, in hopes that Ike will be neither repeated nor surpassed in the near future. If it is, we still feel fairly secure, in that our living space is probably eighteen or twenty feet above the water.  

Around the House

We found a place in the flowerbed for St. Francis.

So this is why they call these flowers "birds of paradise." I can't believe we have these in our flowerbed!

I love this tree down in Sundial Park, in the area (about a half mile from our house) where golf carts gather to watch the sunset each evening. I will probably do a long-term photographic study of it at some point.

Sunset after a Storm