Day 239, Year 7: Happy Fourth of July
Date: Wednesday, July 4, 2012
Weather: Rain Overnight and Early Morning, Clearing to a Beautiful Day
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts

Here’s hoping all of you had a happy Fourth of July. We had a busy, but
good day, filled with parades, garden work, a little birthday celebration,
and getting ready for our trip to Maine. I went into Falmouth to meet
Heather, Jed, and boys for the bicycle parade through downtown. It had
rained in the very early morning and was still overcast with a few
sprinkles, but that certainly didn’t put a damper on the parade. When I
arrived a few minutes before 10 am, there were hordes of little ones on
decorated bicycles all lining up to parade through the downtown. Mark
stayed in Woods Hole and watched the parade around the pond. This parade is
mostly graduate and summer students, but Mark was surprised at the size.
The participants wound halfway around the pond. Mark stayed in Woods Hole
as he needed to do some boat maintenance and was not going to leave Windbird
until the marina moved the power boat next to us that has managed to put
some nasty little gashes Windbird’s side. The move was made and Mark came
into town on the trolley in the early afternoon. After the downtown parade,
I did a little shopping. I was mostly trying to decide what kind of kayak I
was going to buy for Mark for his birthday. He keeps saying he needs to do
some sort of upper body workout, and I think paddling around Eel Pond is the
answer. West Marine was a zoo with so many people making holiday purchases.
It has been that way the past two days when I have either stopped in or
called to inquire about a kayak. But I was able to make a decision and
purchase one today. I had to go back two times, but I got it done. There
was a holiday special, a two-person inflatable kayak that is being
discontinued, and the price was more than right. We presented it to Mark
at the end of the day and he was elated. So that made it a Happy Fourth and
a Happy Birthday.

I had all sorts of ambitions that did not get fulfilled today, but there is
always next week. I wanted to weed the garden, do a lot of mulching, plant
some seeds and seedlings that are long overdue, and on and on. What I
actually did was a little bit of weeding and a lot of picking. The Russian
kale desperately needed to be picked as well as an armload of summer squash.
So instead of weeding, I picked and processed the kale for freezing.
Heather has been picking and freezing peas for the past few days as well.
When the food is ready to be picked, that has to come first. I’ll hope to
get the weeding, mulching, and additional planting done next week.

I also did a huge amount of laundry this afternoon. We brought all of our
summer clothes back from storage yesterday and everything needed to be
washed. Hopefully when we get to packing in the morning, we will now have
something to pack! Mark’s energy level has returned and hopefully it will
stay this way through the weekend. Tomorrow morning we will do some packing
here and then head into Heather’s to complete the job as I left some of the
clothes there. I’m hoping to eek out an hour or so of time to work in the
garden before we leave, but we’ll see how things go. We plan to leave no
later than 1 pm so we will be in Kennebunk by 4 pm. We don’t want to be
late for Happy Hour with my sister-in-law Sue and her husband Brad.
Maine-here we come.

120704 Day 239 Cape Cod, USA–July 4th Parade