community – Page 16 – The Hermits' Rest

It started out small and just kept growing. Our pre-pandemic tradition of Sunday dinners with our family and friends who’ve moved here from the Austin area has started up with the benefit of hot tub time!

Enjoying the hot tub’s eerie green light.

We welcomed Mike and Martha with real hugs, and were happy to have Kathleen and her spouse come in from their new in-town digs. Plus, joy of joys, Anita is here now, for her first gathering as a resident of Cameron!

Woo hoo! We are using our porch! And it’s GREEN outside.

Mike brought lots of really good pizza from the local pizza place. Wow, the veggie one rocked.

I wonder who shared pizza with the dogs?

We all enjoyed the new patios and all the chairs. It was so nice to have normal conversations with each other.

The women all enjoyed the hot tub for a long time after dinner. That was my dream, to share the pool and hot tub with friends and family, often!

I sure hope we can have more gatherings with neighbors, friends, and visitors this year. Small groups like this are just perfect for us hermits.

A highlight of the evening for me was that I realized my new phone lets me take photos of the stars! It’s quite cool. You have to hold still, and the phone fixes it up to where it sees more stars than you do!

I need to go into the bottom pasture where there are NO lights and get Milky Way photos when it’s visible. Maybe Jupiter’s moons will show up, too. I can see them with my binoculars. Way to go, iPhone 13!

Last night, Lee and I attended the Spring Festival in Cameron. He’s on the Chamber of Commerce Board, so he had duties. I just went to interact with other humans. This event was really a great sign for the future of the town. I was impressed!

My friend Pamela exhibited her ceramics in one of the renovated buildings downtown.

First of all, the food vendors were amazing. There was wood-fired pizza, crawfish and other southern delicacies, baked goods that were beautiful, and my favorite, charcuterie by my friend Barbara Dominguez, all from local sources.

Beautiful dinner! The pickled okra was surprisingly tasty. And look at all those crawfish!

There were beverages for everyone, too, ranging from our darned good local wineries to some mighty tasty beer from Temple to snow cones and Italian ice for kids and adults alike. The Italian ice looked fantastic, but, well, I had my B52 Bomber beer to enjoy.

I got some sauces for our ice cream from Windy, which made me happy. I keep driving by the Farmer’s Market on my way to horse lessons but finding it closed on my way home. She makes some interesting canned jellies and such.

There were also vendors in some of the buildings the Railfan group is renovating. The buildings look unrecognizable in a good way.

Walls and ceilings in the former Bea’s Kitchen building

The music was great, too. A good variety and not too loud or soft. We were able to talk to old and new friends just fine. We met people from Jones Prairie who we bonded with over our bad roads in our district.

And of course there were old friends who introduced new ones. I had to laugh when I realized how many different ways I “knew” the woman in Master Naturalists who lives down by Pamela. So many connections! And the new people from Dallas must think we are the friendliest town on earth. Well, at least my social group is darned friendly.

There was a fun photo booth thing, too. It did make big reflections on one’s glasses, though.

All in all, this was the kind of event that would bring in people from other places and leave them wanting to return. As it was, we locals had fun. Kudos to Melanie and everyone else at the Chamber of Commerce who helped put this event together.