Low Country Oyster Fest 2011

  Yesterday, we joined the masses at the World's Biggest Oyster Roast on 350-year-old Boone Hall Plantation near Charleston.  The oysters were steamed then passes out in 5 lb buckets to over 13,000 people.  At three persons per bucket and 25 oysters per bucket, that averages 8 oysters per person bringing the total to 108,000 oysters.  Each oyster was shucked into two pieces, so when the event ended, the grounds were littered with 216,000 oyster shell shards.  I hope they grind them up to make park benches. 

After shucking our fill of oysters, Chris and I took advantage of the opportunity to explore the grounds of the plantation.  We walked the gardens of the Greek Revival-style mansion that stands imperially at the end of the famous oak-lined entrance; we looked inside the rows of slave quarters that now serve as a museum about slave life; and we wandered down to the old dock on the grassy waterway from which the planter would transport his goods to the Charleston market.  Then we went home with bellies too full for a whole dinner.

The beach by the lighthouse

I'm standing in the sand between Charleston Harbor and miles of yellow grass growing in shallow water that sparkles in the afternoon sun. The sea is calm at its edge, but 50 yards out between my island and the peninsula, it fights, swirls and sputters dangerously.

Nearby stands a long dead forest, sun-bleached and half-buried in the sand. The sand blown trees are now smooth enough to shine and incapable of giving a splinter. When I walk among them, I feel like I have stepped into a Salvador Dali painting.

On my drive to Folly Beach, I passed a dock covered in pelicans! I have never seen so many pelicans at once before.

Chris, I think we took the long way from Indiana to Charleston

I woke Tues morning with no inclination that I would wake the next morning halfway through a road trip to Charleston, South Carolina. Only two mornings previous, I woke in a small Indiana town: Thurs/Fri- 13 hrs from NYC to IN + Sun- 13 hrs IN to NYC + Tues/Wed- 12 hrs NYC to SC= 38 hrs of driving in 1 week. Whew! We thought the drive would be a cinch, since we drove from Maine to Florida last year for military reasons. Nope. 12 hrs is not as bad as 20 hrs, but we are exhausted.
As for Charleston, it's enchanting!!

I collected 20 brochures of historic homes, plantations, museums, beaches, and markets to visit in all the free time I'll have while Chris is in class.

Yesterday I was scraping snow off my car and today I walked through downtown Charleston with my jean legs rolled up.

A field and a beach

I will miss the field of unadulterated snow, not yet pierced by size 7 1/2 compressions. Three days from now, as if the first compressions were detectable landmines to be avoided, compressions will freckle the now perfect slope. People are like me- they want to feel the snow crunch beneath their boots. I just want to be the first one to do it. I take one more savoring stare at it then sense a pedestrian behind me. I have to be first. Here I go. Crunch crunch. In some places the snow is deeper than my boots are tall. I feel a little childish for smiling like this.
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All around me sound is muffled. I lift an ear flap to see if the silence is just in my hat, but it isn't. Across the sea, the Brooklyn shore looks like it has been wiped with gray water color paint- my vision too is muffled by the swirling snow. Crystals hit the water near my boots and float for a moment before they become water too. The waves have stolen much of the white from the beach, but between here and the boardwalk, only a trail of size 7 1/2 holes uncover the sand.

My new meal planning/ pantry stock tracking/ coupon organizing binder:

Good Morning

Either this robe is warmer than I thought it was or my interest in watching snow trumps my cold sensors. I am sitting in our front porch chair with two of my favorite things: my journal and coffee. Watching through the densely falling clumps is like watching a movie through a fuzzy television screen. Dozens of red berries still hang on a stout sprawling tree in our front yard. Snow stacks on branches and berries alike making it into a lovely post-Christmas decoration. Across the street from our little house is a wooded ravine. In the summer time, the green is too thick to see the houses on the other side, but today the white is too thick to see much more than a window.

Wedding Vows

I have moved. View the new post on the new website at http://www.heatherpaiges.com/wedding-vows/ 

Chris and I hand-wrote our wedding vows to hang over our nightstands (I love his manly script). It is so good to have these promises posted as a daily reminder to love one another well.

We chose Ruth 1:16 to be read at our wedding, "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay." because we knew Chris' service in the Coast Guard would send us bouncing from one coastal town to another. So he and I would be one another's only constant relationship through the years. In each new home, we would hang our vows. I loved them in our first Mainer colonial rental and I love them in our new little NYC/NJ apartment. With no further ado, the vows:

Vows written by Pastor Butch of Living Hope Church in College Station, TX.





Chris and I wrote up our wedding vows then I framed them with these collages. We are going to hang his vows to me over my night stand and mine to him over his night stand. :)