May 26th, 2026

Happy Memorial Day Weekend! At least I hope yours was a good one!

As you can see, Tim celebrated by getting us a new flag!  It started out being in the front of the house. There was this very clever flag pole that went down pretty deeply into the ground to hold it in place.  It looked like this:

It didn't look bad there either but there's always the concern that with an unexpected strong wind/rain storm during the night, the ground would get super saturated the sand would loosen up and we would wake up to find the flag in a soggy puddle on the ground come morning.  Very disrespectful!  This way, on the post in the courtyard, feels far more secure.  AND is uplighted too.  Awesome.

You might notice underneath the flag, on the courtyard wall is a 'No Solicting" sign.  That's also new. And somewhat overdue.

It's a new issue.  We do not live in an HOA community and 99.9%  of the time we are happy about that. It was intentional. BUT part of the price you pay for not paying HOA dues is the occasional door to door salesperson.  A once in a long while dingdong from a nice person who can take no for an answer pleasantly, is not a problem.  But lately it's been more of an infestation of solicitors. I swear, sometimes it's multiple times a day!  And while some of them are kind and thoughtful and no issue with rejection, others are absolutely horrible.  Pushy, aggressive, refuses to accept "no", making demands (seriously, demands??) and in general pissing me off.

I am a nice person, or at least I really try very hard to always be but with pushy sales people who come, uninvited, to my door, usually at the worst possible time of the day, I will answer the bell, stand on the inside of the screen door, I will listen politely and then I will say, "No thank you" with a smile no matter what they are attempting to sell to me. The ones who push, who keep getting closer to the door, which means also closer to me, the ones whose voices either raise or get "gritty" with their aggression, the ones who demand that I give them reasons why not, I shut them down pretty quickly with a less polite,  "I already said no" and move to 'you really need to stop talking' followed by one more "no" as I shut the door, quietly. I never shout but I am firm. AND YET they still keep coming to the door. sigh.

Tim put up the sign in the hopes that at least some of them will read it and move on. The ones who persist anyway?  I have no idea.   But at least we are trying.

Over the long holiday weekend, we did some fun things. One of them was taking a walk around a water front park that, even though it's right here, on island, we haven't been to since we first moved here. We've driven by it a zillion or so times, but we haven't stopped and taken the walk in ten years. That's kind of crazy. 

It's pretty park with a goodly number of covered pavilions with picnic tables, all of them filled with celebrating families and friends on this holiday weekend. There are clean public bathrooms, a decent amount of parking, and there is a big old pond in the center with a paved roughly one mile path that goes all the way around it with several overlooks to see the beach and the Gulf of Mexico beyond.  There is one beach access point too that was pretty well  travelled that day.

We saw a lot of different birds though a disproportionate number of ducks,  huge grasshoppers, people walking their dogs, lots of little ones being silly, loads of picnics and picnic-ers, the pier, and of course the beach with loads of canopies, umbrellas, and people. Lots and LOTS of people. There was so much great music playing, lots of laughter and snippets of conversation as we passed by. Everybody was having a great time, including us :)

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Hope Your Memorial Day was a great time and that you honoured everyone, (at least in your hearts) both past and present, who have served to protect us and this great country.