It must really be summer because the screen door is up and the dock is in. Both of those items have to be put up for the winter. The dock comes apart into 6 pieces: 3 frames made of treated wood and 3 tops made of cedar; they connect with dock hardware which you can buy in almost any hardware store in Maine. Now we can have a glass of wine there and watch the sunset. If we didn't take the dock up, the ice would splinter it in the winter. Here's how it looks in the winter, stacked up on the shore.
We went to the Troy Elementary School last Friday to see the annual play because we knew a few of the kids in it. It was a sophisticated political satire about ethnic cleansing. The "animals" grew increasingly suspicious of the weasels whom they viewed as usurpers and under the leadership of an arrogant and belligerent toad, they drove the weasels from the castle. While appearing to disapprove of the toad's megalomania, they used him subconsciously to further their agenda of bigotry. It was inexplicably titled The Wind in the Willows.
	More photos from our trip South. Here is super gardener Nancy Beben of Abita Springs with her amazing tomato plants. Nancy taught math at Slidell High before getting kicked upstairs to the State Dept. of Ed. She gave me a bag of sugar snap peas which I ate raw with a light dressing of olive oil, lemon, and soy sauce. I found fresh okra in farmer's markets in Foley and Slidell. Did I mention grits at Judice's Restaurant in Covington?
Our friend Jinx bought this huge camp just outside of Covington and has been renovating it for a year, a monumental task. This building, called the pavillion, is a meeting and party space; it has a huge fireplace. It's also my idea of a perfect house, with as little as possible between you and the outdoors. I'd put glass panels up in the winter and be happy in the light all year. The Heron has been very busy lately with graduations and other occasions. Twice a family has taken the whole house; this is to be avoided. For Unity College graduation, a student's mother and sister came from Montana and her dad came from Hawaii. They hadn't seen each other since the divorce several years ago, and all stayed in the house. In Maine if you die in the winter, you get two funerals because they can't bury people in frozen ground. So there is a service following the death, then in the spring the relatives gather again for a memorial thing and commit the ashes to the ground. Last weekend such a family took the whole house and within a day we knew the whole history of their family tensions. Business travelers are much simpler to deal with; we have a growing group of regulars (Hi Roger!) who visit Unity to consult with the phone company, the railroad, the college, Thorndike Press, etc. They are our main clientele during the week.