February 23rd, 2011

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Wednesday Feb 23. Visit to North Carolina

Wednesday, February 23rd, 2011

It was Norm Riviere’s 71st birthday, yesterday. Friday is Evelyn’s 71st and it would also be Larry Burcar’s 71st. Three of my best friends born in the same year, same week. On the 28th my twin brother has his 74th birthday and Arthur Wijnans a friend for the last 40 years and Ken House, sailing crew and good friend since 1982  also have their birthdays the 28th of February. Hurrah for all the good the Pisces….

Norm and I used to work together for Weyerhauser in Brussels and met in 1965. We have stayed friends through the years. He and Betsy moved to Wilmington N.C. about 15 years ago. We met yesterday, about halfway, in Washington, N.C. A beautiful old colonial river port on the Pamlico River. It is hard to come up with  a birthday present for a man who has everything. The wood business obviously treated him much kinder than it did me, judging by the cars he can afford. It was a long lunch but still too short to spend with a good friend.

Next I moved down the Pamlico, a few miles, to visit John and Maureen Lavake. We met in Monnickendam on June 17, please, go to the following link to see the post for that day:  https://cometosea.us/?p=1339   I had a delightful visit with them and was their guest till this morning when I took another scenic route back to the Chesapeake.  They live in a sailor’s dream world.  A condo community on the Pamlico River/Sound all with their private slips. He has a complete woodworking shop on the ground floor. Beautiful location with covered swimming pool, club house. Most of the members are sailors and from the North East, like themselves. I am showing two pictures, of the many I took, of the birds in the park around them. Finches, Blackbirds, Chickadees, Orioles, etc. I took these pictures through their deck windows. Otherwise the birds would not come close enough.

John has sold his share in the powerboat they kept in Europe and is waiting for his next sailboat to arrive and put in his slip. They are planning to do a trip next year, with at least two other boats from their community, up to New England and into the Saint Lawrence and back from the Great Lakes through the Hudson-Erie Canal.

For the return trip I had clear sunny skies. I took the roads less travelled. Highway 32, 45 and 17. Pine forests, peanut, cotton, corn, soybean fields. Old farm houses with white propane gas tanks, mobile homes, Turkey Vultures soaring overhead. Rivers, Cypress swamps, tidal sloughs. Baptist churches. Why are they so often named “Bethel Church”?

Spring is on it’s way. The Sweet Gum trees are starting to bloom and all along the Cypress Swamps I saw these purple red branches. Apparently they are the new seed pods/cones of the Sweet Gum. The picture I took of the purple field is, I am reasonable certain, of Ground Ivy (Dutch= Hondsdraf) it looks like it is an unintentional weed on the peanut fields before spring planting. I saw it everywhere.