Swimming in tomatoes

Yesterday afternoon I walked with Hapi around the town harbour. It is quite tiny, once advertised as the smallest ocean port in the world. But since it has not been dredged in decades, it is far from being an ocean port now. 

The tide was high and the water dead calm. A small flock of sandpipers was playing there. They would fly in amazing patterns close to the surface of the water so that their reflections made it look like there were twice as many. After a few minutes of flying they would all land on rocks or mud at the edge of the water for a few more minutes to rest before rising into the air again. They flew together, sometimes breaking into smaller groups, circling and crisscrossing the harbour. There were two larger birds flying with them but I couldn't make out what kind of bird they were. Not ducks or gulls. It was fascinating to watch.

I've been swimming every day. It's exhausting and gives me a backache and dizziness, but I do it anyway, it feels good at the time. There are about half a dozen of us who swim at more or less the same time. At first I took Hapi with me but now I leave her behind so I don't have to deal with smelly wet dog at night. She's getting weaker and tireder anyway. The last few mornings I've had to coax her a lot to get her to go for a walk with me.

Owen the Bernese Mountain Dog is back at the Reservoir, I hadn't seen him all summer and feared he had passed on, but not so. His owners took him to PEI for a bit and they've been staying away from the Reservoir in the heat of the day. But it's cooler now so they're back. He is one of my favourite Reservoir dogs. Ava is still with us but getting sicker and not eating well. She wagged her tail when Hapi and I came by for a visit but Hapi wasn't so interested. I think she knows what is going on and doesn't want anything to do with it.

I haven't been writing much because I've been busy and tired. Harvesting the garden, processing tomatoes, swimming. Everybody has way too many tomatoes. A friend was giving away buttercup squashes and I said I wanted one; when she came by to drop off the squash she tried to get me to take a pint of tomatoes too. I turned her down. When I go swimming we trade tomato recipes. Today I picked a basket full to overflowing of tomatoes, I ate several while I was picking. I had tabbouleh for supper and tomorrow I'm going to try a recipe another swimmer described, a Caprese pasta dish.

There's maybe one more week of swimming weather, it's getting cooler and I am not such a stalwart swimmer as to go swimming in cold water. Cool yes, cold no.