2022 Life Logs, Day 303: Sails and Pumpkins
Date: Sunday, October 30, 2022
Weather: Another Beautiful Sunny Day; High 65, Low 29 degrees
Location: At Home in the Cottage, East Falmouth, MA
It is noon on Monday, and I am just now writing yesterday’s log. Yesterday was a beautiful fall day, but such a busy one that I just didn’t have the energy to write last night. The day started with sail cleaning. Eider is coming out of the water this Thursday morning, so Saturday when Heather and gang motored her to Mattapoisett where she will be hauled, they took down the sails and brought them home. They needed to be washed down and dried before storing, so that was the first job on Sunday. Heather and Ollie came over early with the sails and we used Shirley’s huge side yard to spread them out and spray them off. When Jed, Sam, and Jonah arrived, they helped wash down Shirley’s back deck where we would hang two sails, erect a temporary line for drying the head sail, and then move the sails to the drying area.
There was no time for lunch. Lunch was going to be eaten on the road as Jonah needed to be in Brockton for an afternoon soccer game and Heather and Sam had to drive back to Eider in Mattapoisett to do the final prep for getting her ready to haul (booms down, turnbuckles lubricated, etc.). 
So once the sails were hung, we all headed to Tony Andrew’s to the pumpkin patch.
We usually do that earlier in October, but this whole month as been jam-packed with weekend activities. We grabbed a couple of little red wagons and walked down the road to the pumpkins patch. Well, some of us walked and some decided they needed to be pulled in the wagons. Why should pumpkins be the only ones to ride in wagons?
Each of us picked our pumpkin of choice, took out annual pumpkin patch pictures, and headed off in our different directions.
Ollie and I took the pumpkins to my house to spray them off and then we had lunch. We had hoped to start the etching process on Ollie’s pumpkin and clean out the inside of Jonah’s pumpkin for him, but by this time it was mid-afternoon and time to start folding the sails and haul them to my basement for a day or so before stuffing them in the storage bags. Ollie was unbelievably helpful and strong.
Sails are not light, but by folding them and putting them on tarp, we were able to drag them from Shirley’s front yard down by the water to the back of the cottage and down in the basement.
Now it was time to get dinner ready. So, we packed up and took everything to Heather and Jed’s. Ollie and I arrived first. I set him up to work with his pumpkin on the dining room table. He was not going to make a jack-o-lantern. He wanted to leave the pumpkin whole and etch a World Wild Life Fund animal pattern on the pumpkin.
This involved printing the stencils before we left my house, making a choice (an elephant won), taking the stencil to the pumpkin, using a little pumpkin poker to punch little dots all along the borders of the outline, and then etch out the area between the dots.
While he did that, I started getting dinner ready.
Heather and Sam came home next. While Heather worked on making a vest for Jonah for his costume, Sam decided to use power tools to make his jack-o-lantern.
No one was sure this was going to work, but he was determined to try and was very proud of the final result—Power Tool Man 2022.
Jonah and Jed returned after dark. Jonah had played a soccer game in Brockton and was so happy that his team won the game. He didn’t score, but he got off one really good shot that was stopped by the goalie and he assisted with another. He was happy. Then after the game, he and Jed had to go pick up boat stands in Marshfield and take them to the location where the boat will be stored in North Falmouth. He didn’t get to start on his pumpkin until after dinner, so I did not get to see the results. Since it was so late, Jed was going to help him.
Hopefully I will see a penguin pumpkin this evening.
