Hi, everyone!
The first two weeks of September have really been busy! The very first day of September, Grandma and I drove to my traveling buddy Averil-san’s house to pick up a very special cake! Grandma and Grandpa have been married for fifty years, and another couple in their church got married on the very same day! They all asked Averil-san to make a cake they could share at church on the weekend they actually got married. Averil-san was going to be away that weekend, so she made the cake early and Grandma stored it in the freezer! Averil-san told me how to fix the frosting if it got messed up and she gave me a repair kit to use.
The first of September was the Friday of Labor Day weekend, so Grandma and Grandpa took me out to the bay. We had a very pretty sunset on Friday night! On Saturday night, we had something else to watch in the sky. Sodus Point was flooded during June and July, so the Fourth of July fireworks were postponed until Labor Day Saturday. We usually take chairs out on our dock to watch, but we never put our dock in the water this year because the water was so high. Grandma discovered we could see the fireworks from the edge of the deck, so we watched from shore. The fireworks were very quiet this year! Grandpa thinks that was because of the wind direction or because we were tucked in behind the boathouse. The display was just as nice as other years!
After the fireworks, the rest of the weekend was very quiet. I enjoyed sitting on the porch, watching the water. The high water speed restrictions have been lifted from the bay, but there hasn’t been a lot of boat traffic on our end.
When we came back to Fairport after the weekend, Grandma was baking ambitious. The last batch of goat cheese biscuits she made were yummy, but very flat. So she made another batch with fresh baking powder and adjusted the recipe a little bit. These came out just right! While she was at it, she made another sour cream peach pie. Grandpa was happy to have two peach pies in a row!
On Tuesday, Grandma wanted to take me on a sunflower adventure. Some of her friends had been at a sunflower festival over the weekend, so we went to see if we could find some sunflower friends for me. It turned out that the sunflowers were busy and we couldn’t meet them. Grandma decided to take me to Powers Farm Market, instead. Powers is just starting to get ready for pumpkin season! I could see the first load of cornstalks to start thatching the tepee frames and there were a few small pumpkins already on the lawn. I made friends with some sunflowers that were sitting in a bucket, then I helped Grandma pick ears of corn to eat for dinner.
Last Saturday was the actual 50th anniversary of when Grandma and Grandpa got married! Grandma and I went to the Fairport Farmers Market in the morning. I made friends with some wooden statues carved with chainsaws, then I helped Grandma choose red peppers and squash to buy. I made some leafy kale friends, too! The butternut squash we bought is way bigger than me!
After that, Grandma got dressed in the same dress she wore for her wedding and Grandpa put on his special occasion suit. They and the other church couple married the same day, the Watkins, decided to bring “then and now” photos as well as a celebration cake to church on Sunday. Everybody’s outfits still fit!
Then Grandma and Grandpa changed back into working clothes. Everything needed to be moved out of the garage because the concrete floor is about to be repaired! I helped Grandpa put up tarps to protect the walls from the dust when the workers grind the top layer off the current cement!
Church on Sunday was held in Mendon Ponds Park with a picnic afterwards, so Grandma said I could go. The celebrating couples cut their cake and everybody had a yummy dessert! I saw some of my church buddies and there was a special surprise! Remember the big oak branch that fell off our backyard tree in Fairport? The person who turns distressed wood into art had made a bowl out of the broken end of the branch. He brought it to the picnic as a present for Grandma and Grandpa! It’s just the right size for me, so I’m hoping Grandma will let me use it as a Lion-san stand!
After church, Grandma and Grandpa took me back out to Sodus. That night was our last chance to see even part of the sun set over Lake Ontario from the lighthouse pier. From now until next spring, it will set further south, over land, instead. On Monday, Grandpa made a new cover for the sailboat, because the old one ripped to pieces and fell off. I helped Grandpa put grommets in the right places to hold the tie-down ropes. Then we all worked together to wrap the sailboat up in the new cover. I hope next year we’ll be able to sail again! The water level in the boathouse is low enough that Grandma was able to retrieve a green tarp the floated in from someplace else and folded itself up behind the powerboat. It’s been in the water so long it even has a few zebra mussels on it! While it was drying out, Grandma took a photo of me sitting at the highest point the water reached this year. Then I helped Grandma cultivate the herb bed and harvest more basil. We have to keep reminding the mint plants to stay on their side of the divider!
On Tuesday we were back in Fairport and Grandma and I made pesto with the basil we’d cut at Sodus. I helped wash the basil leaves and spin them dry. We had just enough for a single recipe of pesto! I helped add the other ingredients and blend them up. Joe-san and Moose-san and Tilly made 70 ounces of pesto this year! We didn’t make that much, but it will be nice to have what we did make in the freezer to use this winter. Grandpa loves penne with pesto!
On Tuesday, the garage floor project started. I had to stay inside to watch while the workers from Rhino Concrete ground the top surface of the garage floor and patched all the low spots and holes. Once the dust settled, I could go outside to take a closer look.
On Wednesday, my Rhino Concrete friend ground down the patches and used a great big vacuum cleaner to pick up the dust. Then, when the surface was clean, he spread epoxy all over the floor and covered it with flakes of stone. Grandma picked out a color of stone flakes that looks nice with the color of the house. I got to help a little bit! My Rhino concrete friend has special shoes with spikes he uses to walk in the epoxy without leaving footprints. He says he never tries to clean them except for the spikes! After the flakes were spread, the whole area had to be blocked off while the epoxy got hard.
Today, the Rhino Concrete workers scraped off the coating flakes that weren’t stuck in the epoxy layer and put a sealer coat over everything. In another day or so, we’ll be able to put everything back in the garage on the nice, new floor! We were lucky there weren’t any rain or windstorms during the time the layers were setting!
Next Saturday, my apple-picking friends from church are coming out to Sodus! I helped Grandma make a big pot of chili to serve. When it was done, we used the chilling paddle full of ice to cool it down right away!
Once, early in the summer, some animal ate the buds and blossoms off the impatiens plants in the front planter. I guess they didn’t like the taste, because that never happened again. Looking at them now, you’d never know the impatiens suffered such a fate!
Love,
Lion-san
It is nice you have a new garage floor and all that pesto. Moose-san is recovering from all he did while we were home! He is resting up here. Our new big adventure is getting a new refrigerator. It came in the rain the only really rainy day we had. The water level in our lake is going down and there are still no weeds for Moose-san to eat. Today we are at the library watching all the cars and trailers go by. Today is the last day of the Camden International Film Festival so there are a lot of international visitors here.
Well you have been a busy lion! Please tell me what is a chilling paddle? Is it something you and Grandma made or is it something you and she bought? You can ask Grandma to email me the answers, Lion-san. Great Aunt Betsy