For at least fifteen years we have held Thursday evening Community Dinners for neighbors, friends, and family. Until two years ago, the Dinners were weekly (with time out for the Christmas holidays). Then we changed to twice-monthly. Feels less frantic that way. Meanwhile, as ever, the number of neighbors, friends, and family who participate in our Thursday at 7 pm “meet, greet and eat” events varies, from as few as six to as many as 25, with an average about where it was this past Thursday, when 17 people were here, including three young children. Some of them showed up late, so these photos don’t capture the full experience.
As always, when its nice out, from sometime in April usually through sometime in October, we meet on the patio out back of the Overhill house
However, this year, 2025, we have been trying for two full months to get out onto the patio again, but the weather kept refusing us. Not that we mind being confined inside either the Overhill house or the second (there are two) DeKist house, but we wanted so bad, all this time, to be outside, so we could hold a talent show on the platform, which, since it has a mandala rug in the middle of it, feels like a stage.
The platform holds the yurt, which we took down for the winter, since winds kept moving it out of kilter. Here’s Marita, way back then, trying to figure out the wind did to the plastic dome on top this time . . .
So we took the yurt down, expecting to put it up this spring, like in April, once we had our talent show on the “stage.”
But then, April and May rolled by, both with rough weather. Glad we didn’t have the yurt up.
Then, finally, the talent show. Four people performed, including myself, who did a Crone Dance, to the beat of People Are Strange, by The Doors. Next, Jeff Lewis read a very evocative and I’d say, somewhat dark, poem; third, Joseph Benefiel did his very graceful dance with two rods; and the finale, a rockin’ electric guitar concert by Elisha’s brother Justin. He’s really good! But now calls himself a “mostly retired musician.”
I’ll post my dances up next. Joseph is on tic toc and I’m sure he has other dances that are equivalent there.
Now it appears that others are willing to contribute their own expressive talents; so we will do it again on the 19th! — along with a Solstice Ceremony — again, assuming it doesn’t rain.
When will the yurt go back up? Hard to say. Weather is very weird this year.
This communty patio yard is truly a magical little space, helped along by the peekaboo step-along mystery of one of the entrances . . .
