Why do I eat that lime-flavored Tostito chip?

Because it's there! So ends another Week Of Eating Dangerously at Nags Head. Among so many other things, the week at Nags Head means food, unlimited, delicious food, from the dinners (along with desserts mostly including ice cream) served by cooks nothing short of expert, to the ham and cheese biscuits thrown in as a lagniappe by somebody one morning for breakfast, to the Dagwood-style sandwiches we all indulge in every lunchtime (if not some pasta thing leftover from dinner the night before) to another lagniappe, huge oatmeal and chocolate chip cookies tossed out of the oven by somebody else, to cheese dips, humus, flatbreads, and chips of every description, and boiled Virginia peanuts, all just sitting there, meant only to be consumed. I stopped by a farm stand on the trip down and bought at least 10 pounds of beautiful tomatoes, totally oblivious to the fact that Tom and Rick always fly in from Toldeo with offerings from their own yearly bumper crop. We ended up with at least 30 pounds of tomatoes--and we went through them! Folks got creative and every dinner featured tomatoes in some form, and lunch sandwiches weren't considered complete without at least a slice. By the time Thursday rolled around I made some comment to the effect that it will be interesting to feel hungry again, if I ever do, and everyone else chuckled in understanding. This group gives the song "Food, Glorious Food!" a whole new meaning.

Otherwise, we were blessed with the same matchless September weather that we always have, despite the fact that we are at hurricane central and always fearing the worst. Hanna started raining on the Outer Banks literally the moment our tires hit the beach road on Friday at about 1 pm, and we had high winds but only light rain the rest of Friday and about half of Saturday. By 5 pm Saturday we were sitting on the beach as if there had never been any disturbance. Also by that time, we knew that the next hurricane, Ike, had decided to head west, not north. Right from the start, we knew we were home free. (Sorry, Galveston!)

This is the traditional start of the new year for us. The Nags Head trip serves as the cap to summer; the cooling weather turns our attention to concerns and activities of the new season and we start planning for them. For me it means more outdoor work, in the form of staying ahead of the everloving maple leaves out back (the silver maple--the gift that keeps on giving), cutting back the foliage on perennials now that they have nourished their bulbs for as long as the weather will allow and, eventually, bringing in all the plants from the deck. Soon the Thanksgiving cactuses will be setting buds for their yearly spectacle, which I will share with you.

Thanks to you die-hards who checked in faithfully even when there was nothing new to look at. I've got a project ahead of me, trying to retrieve those lost posts from the google archive. With the clarity of hindsight I discovered that the loss was my fault, not blogger's. Life goes on.

If you're curious, here are a few more Nags Head pictures.