Sylvia's Journal

The nights are getting cooler and there is already a whiff of fall in the air which makes me a little wistful for that feeling in May, when the whole summer is spread out before us like a delicious buffet. Tessa and her friend came over on Saturday to hang out on the beach or onto a surfboard floating in Lobster Cove. The board is big enough to hold the two of them plus the two dogs.

I snorkeled and saved an infant lobster from certain death but realized the next day I only delivered it to the crabs. I found one today with the poor little thing half eaten dangling from its mouth. We fought over it a bit and the crab won, aggressive little fellow. When you snorkel you realize how much aggression there is under the water: eat or be eaten.

We are preparing for next week’s vacation to Southport Island in Maine. It is the place where Rachel Carson wrote her nature books. We are tuning in to the beauty of nature but the crabs remind me there is another side to all that beauty. As if to prove that point again, two bumblebees attacked me today. They went after me even more aggressively than the crab. Somehow the bees knew it was me and not Axel who had hung a hammock on a branch right over their nest and then had the gumption to sit in it (the best view of Lobster Cove); they left him alone while dive-bombing me which was more unnerving than the actual sting.

During the first attack I spilled Axel’s G&T, dropped my watermelon on the sand and lost my page in the book I was reading. During the second attack I lost my page again and dropped my drink. Luckily the G&T ice cubes had remained in the cup and served to keep the swelling down.

While I was fighting off crabs and bees Axel inspected the mussels and noticed the colony is still intact but not visibly expanding by creating offspring. To our surprise he did see several bright white baby oysters. We hope the crabs leave them alone so they can grow into a size we can harvest. We don’t mind switching to oysters for a while, but only for a while.