Photos around Cape Archives

May 20, 2026

Signs you live in Missouri

I never got a message from a Florida neighbor like the one Rhonda Bolton sent me here on Kingsway Drive:

“You have a dead armadillo in your drive. Lol was not there when I left at 9ish this morning.”

Yep, the prime example of road kill on the half shell was right where she described.

Brother Mark and his buddies would decorate animal carcasses with party hats and ballons.

I had neither, so I reached for my root-cutting shovel. When it barely scratched the concrete-hard clay, I turned to a grubbing hoe. After it met similar results, I loaded Mr. Amadillo onto a snow shovel and carried him down the hill. (I know it was a He because he expired in an obvious happy state.)

The Bolton neighbors

Bill and Rhonda moved into the tiny house across the street on Memorial Day, 1994, long enough ago that we no longer refer to the property as the Tinkers. They are the perfect neighbors. They kept a close eye on Mother, and are the kind of folks you feel comfortable asking to borrow a cup of sugar.

Bill’s a great craftsman

Bill Bolton bench made from Dutchtown lumber

We gave Bill permission to harvest old lumber from one of Dad’s sheds in Dutchtown. He turned many of the old boards and signs into wonderful primative furniture.

Bill Bolton table from Dutchtown lumber 11-02-2016

He gave me this bench, followed by a table mounted on a sewing machine base. He would donate pieces to charity raffles, and I was lucky enough to win another table and bench over the years.

Rhonda and Mother were friends

They enjoyed cutting up in a photo booth at Rhonda’s 50th birthday party.

I’m more comfortable BEHIND the camera

I was persuaded to join Mother in the photo booth. Dad was someone who could wear a hat. The hat gene skipped Brother Mark and me.

December 7, 2025

Debugging my Computer

I have four monitors attached to my computer. The center one is my primary. The left one is secondary, usually with a browser open in it. The right one displays my security cameras, and the fourth, which is somewhat unreliable, stays dark unless I want to display radar data when it’s stormy,

My computer workstation

I was concentrating on the center screen while I was editing a bunch of photos. From time to time, I’d glance at the webcam screen to see what was going on around the house.

When I shifted my gaze to the left screen, I saw that my monitor was infected with a bug. A stink bug, no less.

Despite all of the warnings, I quickly dispatched it with a tissue. I gave him a squeeze, but must not have triggered his stink.

First seen in Pennsylvania

The bugs came from Asia, and were first reported in Pennsylvania in the late 1990s, although I’m sure I remember them from when I was a kid.

They must be hiding from the cold because I spotted three more in various places in the house.

December 5, 2025

Always Check the Rearview Mirror

When I hit Route Z west of Gordonville after visiting in-laws John and Dee Perry, I saw a huge, orange orb getting ready to drop below the horizon. There wasn’t a good place to stop, so I wrote it off.

Instead of turning left onto 25 to go to Cape, though, I went right to see what was happening in Dutchtown. The sun was gone, but I pulled off on a levee road just south of the Diversion Channel when I saw the sky still had some color. (Click on the photos to make them larger.)

The water in the foreground is what I thought Dad would call a Bar Pit. It wasn’t until many years later that I learned that it was a BORROW pit, a hole created when dirt was removed to make fills somewhere else.

Other kids counted cows and out-of-state license tags on road trips. Dad had us boys call out “Cut” or “Fill” to identify where the topography had been altered to reduce the road grades between hills and valleys.

Plowed the same ground in 2014

Interestingly enough, I had pulled off in the same place in 2014 (with far more dramatic results).

Super Moon

When I looked into the rearview mirror to back out of the levee road, this guy popped up.

I had learned years ago that it was a waste of time to chase the moon because it would always move faster than you can. This fits into my motto, “Shoot it when you see it before all the magic leaks out.”

November 14, 2025November 14, 2025

I Used to Rue Roux

The first time I attempted Cajun cooking, Wife Lila said, “Oh, you had to make roux. That’s not always easy.”

Ignorance is bliss. I didn’t know it was hard to make until she told me. That intimidated me after that.

I had a craving the other night and found I had most of the makin’s in the cupboard: sausage, chicken thighs, shrimp, okra, potatoes, carrots, the holy trinity of onions, peppers and celery, plus various spices.

Almost all of the recipes I read started off with “make roux” from butter or oil and flour. They called for whisking the mixture for nearly an hour in some cases.

Easy dry roux

Then, I found one that let you create dry roux mix that could be stored for future use. It called for a pound of sifted flour poured into a 9×13 baking pan and put in the oven for 20 minutes at 400 degrees.

After the 20 minutes were up, you stirred the mixture, resifted it and put it back into the 400-degree oven for another 20 minutes. It was starting to get a rich, brown color.

One more sifting, and baking, and the roux-to-be had a nice caramel color. I put half a cup of this in my instant pot along with half a cup of oil. It turned a beautiful brown.

The process wasn’t much shorter than doing it the normal way, but it meant that I could be prepping the other ingredients without being a slave to whisking the roux.

Blackstone to the rescue

I had already sautéed my onions, peppers, celery, and garlic, and browned the sausage and thighs on my Blackstone griddle. The 36-inch surface gave me lots of real estate to be able to spread the stuff out. I started with the veggies, then moved them over to a cooler zone while I did the meats.

I put that mix in the Instant Pot with the roux, poured in four cups of chicken broth, some spices, a box of Zatarain gumbo mix (mostly for the rice), and some microwaved baby potatoes. After giving that a good stir, I put a layer of shrimp and frozen okra on top.

I switched the IP to pressure cooking for seven minutes, with a 12-minute natural release after that. I had planned to add fresh mushrooms, but my six-quart pot was already above the max fill line, so I left them out.

It tasted good, and I have enough of the dry roux in a jar so I can duplicate the dish with minimal hassle in the future.