Hot Monday

Another hot day today. This was one of those rare Mondays I didn't have to work at the hotel. First thing I did this morning was clean out the three sparrow nests in my Purple Martin house. I've been doing this for the past week, daily. Purple Martins are occupying the top three apartment of the six apartment birdhouse but the English Sparrow insists on building nests in the lower three apartments. That's not going to happen. First thing in the morning I tear out the nests. I don't want to have to wait until they lay eggs then tear out their nests but if that is what is necessary, I'll have to do that. The man who put up my Purple Martin house last year did just that. He threw the nest, eggs and all, in the adjoining corn field. The pesky sparrows didn't come back. They got the message....go somewhere else.

I have three blue bird houses. Two have sparrow nests in them which I haven't bothered. They apparently aren't bothering with them either, preferring the Purple Martin house. The third blue bird house is occupied by blue birds as it was last year. There are five perfect blue eggs in their neat nest as I type this blog. Earlier, there was one egg (they lay one a day) but it was taken out by someone and tossed to the ground, punctured. I suspect it was one of the aggressive house sparrows. Fortunately, the blue birds have fought off the sparrows and have been able to lay their five eggs. This same blue bird house last year saw two batches of bluebirds raised. We're off to a good start this year already. I will keep the readers of this blog posted on the progress of the blue birds.

This morning I made my first plant trip to Peppers, a nearby local nursery. This is my favorite time of year, deciding what plants to buy and planting them. At one time when I was much younger I thought I would like to have a house with an in ground swimming pool. How foolish I was. I enjoy nothing better in my doddering old age than fussing around with my raised flowerbeds. It is my favorite past time, maybe even exceeding blogging.

This morning I purchased Roma tomato plants, impatients, sweet alyssum, sage, basil, and lavender plants. This is just the start of my planting season. Most of my perennials have come back from last year. I'm especially pleased with my Knock Out Rose bushes. I'm not sure about my Pampas grass. They're not looking "too pure" (as my Mother always used to say of plants that didn't look like they were going to come back.) I may have to replace them this year. I love the gracefulness of a full Pampas plant but they are a pain to cut back in the spring.

I received more comments on my blogs about my Census address canvasser job. Apparently I'm not the only one who had problems with the lack of training and high pressure of the job. Maybe I'm not the "lazy whiner" after all as one person called me after he/she posted a comment on my blog. Address canvassing for the census is a very hard job and I have all the respect in the world for those who are doing the job but it just wasn't for me. Not enough training, unreliable equipment, too many threats from the area manager, and I just didn't like tramping around strange people's front yards.

This evening was very pleasant. I met two friends in Rehoboth Beach for Mumbo Jumbo night at the Purple Parrot restaurant. Gone was the "Thundering Herd" as my friend Wayne calls them. The "Thundering Herd" are the weekend tourists of descend on Rehoboth Beach and the surrounding beach environs for a weekend of fun in the sun and a posing on the boardwalk. I shouldn't complain about them, they are the bread and butter of we the permanent year round residents. Unless you're into raising chickens in Sussex County, tourism is the only industry east of Route 1 in good old Lower Slower (aka Sussex County, Delaware.) We appreciate them and the money they leave behind but it is nice to travel roads not clogged with belching SUV's loaded down with bicycles, dashboards providing support for flip flopped feet, and dodging their aggressive driving. There is one sign as you enter Rehoboth Beach that says "Slow down, you are at the beach now" (or something like that.) These people need to relax. The ocean isn't going anywhere. They will get a parking spot. They're cool and they know it and they can't wait to show everyone else how cool they are, sauntering down Rehoboth Avenue with their oh so world weary attitudes.

Mumbo Jumbo Night at the Purple Parrot is a pound of char-grilled hamburger for $6.75 with all the fixins. The Purple Parrot is only one of two places that I know of in the Rehoboth Beach/Lewes area that cooks hamburger that tastes like hamburger. All of the other restaurants I've eaten in serve up the frozen, tasteless, overpriced, greasy beef patty delivered by the constant stream of Sysco trucks headed south on Route 1. If you want a good hamburger the only two places I know of are either the Purple Parrot in Rehoboth Beach or Gilligan's Restaurant in Lewes. Don't waste your money or time ordering a hamburger at any of the other restaurants unless you like grease burgers with no taste.

Yes, it was a good day today. Starting with my plants and ending with an enjoyable evening with friends. Nobody telling me what to do, nobody trying to save my soul, nobody putting guilt trips on me. That's one of the reasons why I moved to Delaware, to get away from all those toxic relationships. And I'm doing just fine.

Happy New Year

Last night several of my friends agreed to join me for Mumbo Jumbo Burger night at the Purple Parrot restaurant in Rehoboth Beach. This was our New Year's Eve celebration. We're too old to stay up for tomorrow night's standard New Year's Eve celebration. We'll all be in bed by 10 o'clock tomorrow night except me, and I'll be working at the Inn until 11 PM. I will get home in time to watch the countdown but it will be in the comfort and quiet of my own bedroom. I prefer that alternative than to paying some outrageously high cover charge to bring in the New Year's at some eatery and then take my chances getting hit by a drunk driver on the way home.

We discussed New Year's Eve celebrations of the past and we all agreed that New Year's Eve is perhaps the most overrated holiday of the year. Big whoop. The best times I had on New Year's was back in the 70's during my peak bar hopping and socializing days. I'm long past those days both mentally and physically. I have no regrets. I've had my share of good times. (This is beginning to sound like a Frank Sinatra song.) Now it is the turn of much younger folk. I hope they are lucky enough to experience the adventures that I did in my youth. They should only be so lucky.

Normally, I'm not off on Monday nights. My work schedule is Monday and Thursday nights. However, this year my co-worker Bob, who works Tuesdays and Wednesdays, asked me to trade with him on New Year's Eve so he could attend a family function. Sure, why not? I have nothing planned for New Year's Eve. I would be glad to trade time slots with him.

Usually, my friends and I gather on Sunday nights at the Purple Parrot (or as we call it "The Feathered One") for a festive time. The Purple Parrot runs specials. Sunday nights are Prime Rib night. Mondays, are "Mumbo Jumbo Night." That's a pound of char grilled hamburger boys and girls with your own fixins. One pound. That's a lot of meat to eat at one sitting. But, the burger is so good that most of us dispatched that one pound hamburger down our pie holes. All except Wayne and myself. I can be a pig, but one pound of hamburger is a bit much for me. Wayne also had a some left on his plate too before the waiter took out plates away.

The video shows a little gentle joking about my rhinestone embedded Basic Back Shirt . I like dark solid colors but I also like color. A few weeks ago I was in the cloth section at the Dover Wal-Mart and a package of sparkling rhinestones caught my eye. Years ago I had sewed some flowers and bluebirds on my Dad's western shirt. I liked it so much, I sewed some of that same embroidery on one of my "going out to the bar" western shirts. It was always a hit. I got lots of attention. So, I thought, why not? I'm all about getting attention and spicing up life for myself and friends around me. I wasted no time in purchasing the most glittery packet of rhinestones that I could find. Yesterday, while trying to decide what to wear, the influence of the Philadelphia Mummer's Parade came out in me. All those years in the 70's when I trudged into center city Philadelphia to shiver in the cold and watch the Mummer's Parade and dart in and out of the Westbury and Allegro bars to keep warm, was coming to the fore now. Ah, to relive those memories of the past. So it was that last night, with my glittery applications, I relieved those days of yore when I was young, pretty and full of energy. If only for an hour or so. Today it is back to reality. Wrinkes, gray hairs, and an aching back.

Last night it was good to get together again with friends. To gently poke fun at one another and have a good laugh. We can never bring back yesterday but we can make today special. We did that last night. Happy New Year to one and all.

The Day After

First thing I checked when I was up this morning was to look out my bedroom window to see the Purple Martin house. One of the doors to one of the PM apartments was off. Uh oh. Was it an Attack of the Furious Determined Sparrow? That PM apartment held baby PMs yesterday. I quickly dressed and walked through the wet grass to lower the PM birdhouse. No birds were in that apartment. I checked the other apartments. There were no birds in any of the other apartments. One of the apartments, that had baby PMs yesterday, only had some wet black feather remnants of its previous occupants. Then I discovered sparrow nesting in a different apartment. Ah ha. The Determined Sparrows finally got the message not to build their nest in the bottom front. Contrary to what some readers of this blog have told me, I think the message finally sunk in to their little pea brain not to build a nest in that apartment. However, they built it in another apartment. I tore it out. I put the nesting, along with one brown speckled sparrow egg, at the base of the PM birdhouse along with the previous nesting I tore out yesterday. There were no Purple Martins to be seen this morning. However, once I tore the sparrow nesting out, several Purple Martins returned. A short video is included which shows the sparrow couple perched on the roof of my house,chirping in my direction as if to question me as to why I keep tearing out their nesting. By the time this whole process is done, I may have enough straw to make a bale of hay. I'll save that and use it for my Halloween decorations.

Sunday Night At The Purple Parrot

If this is Sunday it must be the Purple Parrot. Last summer a friend of mine and I decided to meet for dinner at the Purple Parrot in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. The Purple Parrot is a Key West styled restaurant in the heart of Rehoboth Beach. The clientele is a mixture of local gay residents and adventuresome tourists looking to soak up a little local flavor. My friend and I decided to meet because I like to eat out at informal restaurants and he was overcoming a recent breakup of a long term relationship. My partner doesn’t like to go out to restaurants and my friend didn’t like to eat alone. It was a perfect match up. Since then we have developed something of a tradition of meeting every Sunday night with a couple of other friends. We met through tourist jammed Rehoboth Avenue in the summer, and the cold rainy days of winter when the only patrons of the restaurant were we locals. Now we’re approaching another summer season and the onslaught of a new wave of summer tourists. We will continue to meet, indulge in the Sunday night prime rib special, have a drink or two and enjoy each other’s camaraderie. Life is good.