Ah, the joys of flexibility around Carolina Meadows. One of the reasons (and there are many) we chose to move here is the wonderful six-month meal plan. We can “carry over” unused accounts for our meals from month-to-month, settling up in July and January. So when we go to our summer house in Maine in late May, we check to be sure we’ve used our six month allotment in five months (with the sensational new menus, that’s not hard duty!)

When we return in late August, our meal plan account has forgiven and forgotten that we’ve ignored it for two months, as long as we play catch-up for the remaining four. You should see the terrific New Years Day party we’re able to put on with help from Carolina Meadows versatile and creative catering department to use up any of our surplus. 

We enjoy the mutual discovery of our friends’ summer travel plans. Many CM residents go to the Carolina Beaches and mountains, but many maintain their old summer haunts elsewhere, too. Some (but not too many) of the usual weekly CM Calendar of events join us on summer hiatus. 

Our doors up here on the granite bluffs of the tidal estuary of the Sasanoa River, just outside the ship-building city of Bath, are always open to Carolina Meadows residents. This year, we’ll have visits from five or six Carolina Meadows friends, and of course find plenty of occasions to catch up with our fellow CM Mainers, the O’Keefes and the Schmidts, who spend the summer just up Route One on the Maine Mid-Coast, too.  

It was great fun having two Carolina Meadows friends here over the Fourth of July (one of them for her second visit).  We just had a note from them en route further north, on their way to Bar Harbor. At our recommendation they stopped off at the Maine Coastal Botanical Garden outside Boothbay Harbor. They gave it rave reviews, and sent a photo of a spectacular high bush Hydrangea in full bloom. 

There. Have I enticed you, yet?

Good, because I really need to get out to the garden. It’s going to be wicked hot today. Going up to 76 degrees. ‘Course the sea breeze will make it o.k.

I am already planning to dig the dahlia bulbs the last week in August to winter over while we’re back on our Carolina Meadows schedules in September.