It was hot and sticky, as predicted. It wouldn't have been any better the following day, we determined after living through today. The rain stayed away until the very last minute and we were able to chuck some things under the canopy and no damage was done to anything. I'd say about 30 people came, including about 6 of Jocelyn's friends. There was some sailing, but no power boating. It was not a good waterski day, because it was kind of windy. Tubing could have been had, but all my friends are getting to be my age, and all their kids are getting to be grown-ups, and those kids don't come on their own to our parties, so even if they are grandparents, there aren't little kids who would like to be on the boat or go tubing. It's okay; the tank of gas I got on Friday will not go to waste: I'm sure there will be more waterskiing in the remainder of the summer. So the primary activity was chatting, and I'd gotten out a jigsaw puzzle which was a hit with several people. Our parties used to be bigger, but that was in the before times. We are still Covid cautious, so we made it be outdoor only, and require people to wear masks indoors when they went to use the restroom or get food out of the fridge. There was a little pushback from people about this, and I told them they were welcome to stay away if they didn't want to wear a mask. (We did provide them.) So the jigsaw puzzle was in the garage, where all three bay doors were open and a fan was going. I made a ton of vegetarian things for the grill: eightball squashes and eggplants (marinated in commercial salad dressing), Portobello mushrooms (soaked in olive oil and garlic), tempeh (marinated in a soy/ginger/garlic concoction), and I bought a big box of veggie burgers. We also bought a little meat. A bunch of other people brought meat, and a self-proclaimed pyromaniac staffed the meat grill while I staffed the veggie grill (the pyromaniac also helped get the grills going and adding charcoal as required). We had our usual 60 ears of corn that we get from the local farm stand (ordered in advance from their wholesale department). It was a little bit too much; I sent home a fair amount of leftover corn. Sent home a little bit of leftover meat, and we will eat the couple of sausages I kept. I was worried that there would be a ton of vegetarian stuff left over (which wouldn't have been a disaster; we would have just eaten it), but Jocelyn's friends had gotten there somewhat late, and after they had been at the grills much of the veggie stuff was devoured. We finished it off for lunch today. I didn't actually cook all of the Portobello mushrooms that I had prepared, so tonight for dinner we had mushroom and zucchini (of course, actually eightball squash) glop with pasta. With fresh tomatoes and basil from the garden in the glop. It was pretty good if I do say so myself. My tomato plants seem to be recovering from whatever ailed them – we have a few new flowers. My eightball squashes do not seem to be getting fertilized. They make nice female flowers and then a few days later after the blossom opens and shrivels, the little baby squash part also shrivels. Here's a photo of our sailboat that my neighbor took from his boat during our party. comments