Little Island Cottage

Miles and miles of empty beach to explore....The beauty of life is a marvel and children are gifts from God....An enchanting island where butterflies hover and seagulls cry and birds sing and imaginative sand angels dance.....

Oh pretty oil painting on the wall, you capture the true spirit of a lowland Southern island and you captured my heart. This lovely painting hangs in our island cottage and was bought at a Starving Artist sale.

It is early morning and the shutters are thrown open. The tiny cottage is filled with fresh air and warm, peaceful tranquility. I feel the Southern breeze and smell the salt air and breakfast coming from the kitchen. An iron skillet is filled with a breakfast medley of chunks of home style potatos, onions, red, yellow and green peppers and broccoli. Sausage balls and homemade biscuits and fresh perked coffee send a wonderful aroma throughout the house.

You take yourself wherever you go. I made my way to the salty marsh and lowlands of Alabama. Come sit a spell with me and have a glass of muscadine wine.

This oil painting hangs in our island cottage. It has a spirit of its own. It beckons you in...."come away with me to my island paradise", it seems to say. "We'll read, "The Old Man and the Sea", and sip wine by the fire on cool Southern nights when the sea fog settles over the island".

The house has a soul of it's own, believes the Southern woman who loves it. Washed seawater green with sunburned pink, old Bahama shutters and a long sweep of veranda hugging Aloe bay. When you are sitting on the porch, it could be 1950 in any small Southern village.

It is tropical, serenity, dolphins dancing in the Gulf of Mexico, deserted sugar white beaches. We feel our lives renewed here and we know we will always love this tiny fishing-village cottage.

It once was loved by the son of a son of a sailor man. He was lost at sea with his boat during a storm. The silence of the house is broken only by the call of a seagull and a distant fog horn.

We love sunrise on the veranda watching boats slip off before dawn.....coffee, the cry of a seabird and a gentle Southern sunrise over the East end of our island. The look of this place has always been this way, as if time hasn't passed.

It is said that art and beauty rewards the senses and moves the soul. I surely know this is true.

The raw beauty of the Southern lowlands called to me....come....come...I got into my Jaguar and drove South. It was a foggy night. I couldn't see more than five feet in front of me as I drove out of Mobile and through thick woods but always overlooking the bay. The road made it's way South toward the coast.

Winding along the dark road, through the sea fog and rain I drove toward the causeway and crossed the Mississippi Sound and came upon our beloved island. Thru the mist and heavy fog I see a dim and distant lights of island cottages. I turn West and drive along the bay. I take a left turn and pass under the giant oaks weeping with Spanish Moss. Through the trees and sea fog, I see our tiny little cottage looking as if it was washed up on shore.

It was well worth the drive on a rainy foggy Southern night in the spring.

Food For Thought...You need something to put your heart into....