On Saturday, in our new EV—the Chevy Bolt—I drove Clif and Dee to Brunswick to catch the train to Boston, where they will be staying until Wednesday. The big occasion for this trip is an early birthday present to Clif from our daughter Shannon and her husband Mike: a ticket to The Who concert at Fenway Park on Tuesday, August 26.
For a variety of reasons, mostly involving my creaky knees, I decided to stay home. Even at the best of times, I’m not much of a traveler—I’m one who likes sleeping in my own bed—and my creaky knees have clinched the deal for me: home is best.
Time to be honest: Being on my own is a bit of a vacation. I don’t have to plan much for supper. (Poached eggs on English muffins? Yes, please.) I can watch what I want on television. (I’ve settled on Back to the Frontier because, as it turns out, Clif, Dee, and I really do like many of the same shows.) I don’t have anyone’s schedule but my own to worry about.
However, I will admit that at night, the house creaks, and I listen for Dee and Clif, who of course aren’t here. While I’m enjoying the time on my own, I will be happy to see them on Wednesday and hear about the concert and all the other fun things they did in Boston.
This afternoon I went to the cinema to see Freakier Friday(not a Dee or Clif movie), and it was utterly delightful, a movie that is both fun and heartfelt. At times I laughed, and at other times, I had tears in my eyes. When I mentioned this to the woman next to me, she told me this was her second time seeing the movie. I could understand why. Kudos to Jamie Lee Curtis, Lindsay Lohan, and the rest of the wonderful cast.
Note: Unfortunately, the camera on my phone has been acting up, and until I get things sorted, my posts will be picture free. It’s always something, isn’t it?
In Maine in mid-October there is a certain chill in the air, letting us know that we are edging into a time of colder weather and long nights. In mid-October, we can no longer be sure that it will be warm enough to eat outside even when the sun is shining. In mid-October, we start bringing in some of the patio furniture. (The big table stays outside under cover.) In mid-October, the leaves are falling, falling, falling. Hence, the use of fall as another word for autumn.
For those who live in a warmer climate, October in northern New England might sound like a time for alarm—this is just the beginning of the cold and the dark? But we Mainers mostly take it in stride. We have known snow and cold weather from the time we were born, and to us it seems like the natural order of things.
However, I do want to add that when cold weather comes, a fair number of folks hightail it to warmer states. Snowbirds, they are called, and I will never be one of them. To me, winter means snow.
But before the snow comes October.
Here are some photos of what it looks like in our yard at the edge of the woods.
This weekend, Clif and Dee took down the screen house and tucked it down cellar until next spring. The round table and umbrella were also stored down cellar. After which, Clif moved our fire pit onto the patio, which stops the backyard from looking so lonely. But still. I miss the screen house.
In the woods, there is a flash of red, a blaze of glory, red against green.
In our new driveway, leaves aren’t the only things that fall.
And sometimes the leaves fall in a very fetching way.
All those falling leaves mean that the great leaf clean-up will soon begin. In the meantime, we will enjoy nature’s art.
First, a disclaimer. Even though I come from the land of Stephen King (his Maine home is about an hour and half from where I live), I am not a fan of horror. The answer for this is simple: I get too scared. I have what might be called an overactive imagination, and horror taps right into it.
However, from the jump, I was hooked on From, which is billed as a horror/mystery show. Yes, there are strong elements of horror in From as well as some gore. However, the emphasis is on the characters and how they react to the terrible situation they are in.
And what is that situation? There is a town in the middle of the woods somewhere—it could even be Maine—that traps folks. While the exact method is a mystery, it involves a back road with a fallen tree and circling crows. That fallen tree spells trouble. When the series opens, a vacationing family encounters this tree and quite naturally tries to find another route. After Dad (Elon Bailey) turns the vehicle around, the family arrives in a shabby town with a smattering of inhabitants. Dad drives through the town but somehow finds himself circling around to that very same town. Again and again. The family is trapped.
As if that weren’t bad enough, the family is stuck in a town where monsters emerge at night and devour people if they are out and about. Steps have been taken to protect the houses, but I can tell you right now that accidents, bloody ones, still happen. Regularly.
Presiding over the town is Sheriff Boyd Stevens (played by the excellent Harold Perrineau). His job is to protect the town, to provide hope, and to figure out how they all might escape. Let’s just say that uneasy lies the head that wears a crown.
There is a wonderful cast of supporting characters, all flawed but all very human in their frailties. Bit by bit, the episodes provide clues as to what this mysterious place is and how folks might escape.
In season 3, the cherry on the sundae is a reference to Camden, Maine. Clif, Dee, and I have found that in most of the horror or supernatural series we watch, there is some reference to Maine. It always takes us by surprise although by now we should be used to it.
No doubt in honor of Stephen King, that master of horror.
Even if you think you don’t like horror, From is a show to watch.
To borrow from my blogging friend Carol Ann Siciliano of Fashioned for Joy, this weekend was filled with many delights.
On Friday night, we went to Absolem Cider Company, which has become one of my favorite places to go in Winthrop. Along with having a great atmosphere and great drinks, it’s only six miles away from our home. Another bonus: Friday was one of the few sunny days we’ve had in June, which has been cool and rainy, reminding me of the Junes of my youth.
At Absolem, we met our friend Judy, and we spent several beautiful hours at a picnic table on the deck. We drank wine, beer, and cocktails, which we had with hand-cut fries and chips and salsa. I only thought to take pictures at the very end, but they do give a sense of this wonderful place, where the open sky stretches above the cider company, and you can watch the moon rise.
On Saturday night, our friends Dawna and Jim came over for dinner. We had planned to eat on the patio, where Clif could make his legendary grilled bread. Alas, the weather did not cooperate. After one sunny day, the rain came again, and we had to eat inside, having garlic bread, which is good enough but can’t compare with grilled bread. Dawna, who loves being outside as much as I do, kept looking longingly out the dining room window at the backyard and the patio.
“We’ll invite you another time,” I assured her, “when the weather is better.”
As it turned out, the weather was better the next day. As my blogging friend Tootlepedal often points out, the weather gods do like to have their little jokes. Out I went with my wee camera to get photos of my gardens, which are starting show colors other than green.
And what did I spy?
In the front yard, daisies among the ferns and hostas.
Astilbes growing in front of Minerva.
In the backyard, yellow primroses and orange lilies are abloom.
Here’s a closer look at the evening primroses.
I caught a glimpse of one of our resident chipmunks.
And the cat from across the street came for a visit. The cat, whose name we don’t know, has coloring very much like our own dear Little Miss, who died in March. This cat has a very sweet personality, just like Little Miss, and is most welcome in our yard.
So here we are at the end of what has been a rainy June, and the forecast is for rain for the rest of the week. While I’m fine with cool rainy days, there comes a point where enough is enough.
I’ll have to speak to those weather gods. But I have a funny feeling that they are unlikely to listen to my request for at least a few sunny days.
With this post, I am joining Robin of Breezes at Dawn for her annual Walkotober event, where blogging friends are invited to go on a walk in October and then share it with her. This year, because home is so important to me, I decided to feature a short walk down the road toward our house.
As the title indicates, our home is on the edge of the woods, and the trees hide the house until suddenly you come upon it.
Here I am, just up the road, no house in sight.
I walk a little farther, and a school bus goes by. Before the bus disappears down the road, I manage to snap a picture of it.
Finally, a glimpse of our red house.
A clearer, view, but still through the trunks of trees.
Finally, here it is, our home: modest, cozy, in need of repairs (we’re working on it.) One of the places I love best.
Last Monday, the horrible heat broke with the temp dropping from in the 90s to in the 70s. Much, much better but still humid. On Thursday we had a light rain—wish we’d had more—that cleared the air, and now here we are with August weather very much like the August of my memories: clear, not humid, cool at night, and hot, but not too hot during the day. I could take many more months just like this with the grasshoppers buzzing, and the hermit thrush singing in the morning and the crickets’ chorus at night. Even though I have creaky knees, this weather puts a spring in my step.
Here are a few views of my front yard gardens, in the dappled light of morning.
Clearly, the black-eyed Susans are the stars—along with the toad and the mermaid—of my August garden.
Through the hot and the humid, the cool and the delightful, Clif has been hard at work replacing a living-room window, well past the point of needing to be replaced.
Before.
And after.
Once Clif has finished with the window, he will tear off the old cardboard siding—I’m only exaggerating by a little—and replace it with wood siding. We’ll even be getting a new porch light. The old one has been there for at least forty years, and I don’t think we can be accused of getting rid of it too soon.
Still, we do like to keep things as long as they are useful, and we are careful not to get rid of anything willy-nilly.
With all these improvements, how spiffy our entryway will look!
Next summer, onward to another part of the house with more windows and siding to be replace. Never a dull moment at our home by the edge of the woods.
With my upcoming book Of Time and Magic, I am at the very picky, eye-straining stage of editing, of going over every line to catch as many errors as I can.
On this blog, cutting back to one post a week was a good plan, and I will be doing this for the foreseeable future. Eventually, I hope to be back to featuring other bloggers’ posts. This takes more time than you might think, and right now most of my energy is going to Of Time and Magic.
Also, I would like to get back to book, movie, television series, and music recommendations. I really, really enjoy getting recommendations from other folks and adding them to my various lists. These recommendations expand the horizons of this Maine writer who can go for weeks without leaving the house and yard. With your mind, you can travel anywhere, no matter your circumstances.
In Maine, we have had a beautiful fall this year. Lots of sunny days with just enough rain mixed in. As it has been for the past several falls, the weather was warmer than average, which allowed us more days on the patio, right through to the middle of October. I know. The warmer weather is not a good sign, but as a Mainer, I can’t help but appreciate the extension of summer into September and September’s weather into October.
Back in the day, the first frost in Maine came sometime the middle of October, but this year it came the first week of November. The frost nipped the basil and the begonias.
It was hard enough to freeze the water in the bird bath.
And it definitely put an end to the tomato plants.
Time for some clean-up. Following the advice of Jason from the blog Garden in a City, I no longer cut back perennials in the fall. Instead, I do everything in the spring. According to Jason, over the winter uncut perennials provide a home for many beneficial insects.
As it turns out, waiting until spring is a much better fit for my schedule. In the fall, I am either finishing a book or publishing a book, and I can barely focus on anything else.
I know some gardeners are concerned that waiting until spring will make the clean-up harder. I have not found this to be the case. Because I live by the woods, there is always a lot of clearing to do in the spring, and the remains of the previous season’s perennials are easy to scoop up with the bed of leaves that inevitable fall and blow into my gardens.
But I do remove the wilted annuals—herbs, flowers, and vegetables. I also rake the last of the fallen leaves from the patio and bring in most of the garden ornaments, including that bird bath, which is now tucked safely down cellar.
The big patio table has also been brought down cellar, but we have left the chairs and firepit set up in hopes of having a few more fires before there is too much snow.
And, we are still sliding in weekend treats of grilled bread, which we now eat at the dining room table. But those days will soon be coming to an end.
This is a bittersweet time of year as we say farewell to the delights of early fall and move into the colder, shorter but still beautiful days of November.
Above, I mentioned how busy I am in the fall, and this year is no different. I am working hard to finish Book Four in my Great Library Series, and I hope to be done by Christmas. At 50,000 words with 40,000 or so to go, I’m not sure if I’m going to finish by then, but that is my goal.
To make things a little easier, I will temporarily be discontinuing the “Nifty Posts from Lovely Blogs” section that I have often been featuring on Mondays. Also, I won’t be able to participate in any challenges. I plan to continue with both after the book is done, sometime in the new year.
But never fear, I will still be reading your lovely blogs until I take my Christmas break.
Yesterday was a glorious winter day—sunny, bright, and warm with a hint that spring might be on the way. Before making soup for our supper and doing a bit of decluttering down cellar, I headed outside to see what was going on in the backyard. The weather was so warm—at least to this Mainer—that no gloves were needed. Or wanted.
Immediately, I was struck by the shadows on the snow.
The broad sweep of blue grey, in the shade, at the far end of the yard,
the wisp of a tiny evergreen tip that had fallen into the snow,
the solid square of the bird feeder favored by the cardinals,
the hook for our hummingbird feeders, tucked down cellar until late spring,
the bulky outline of trees punctuated by the slim slats of the fence at the edge of the woods,
and finally me, with a wave of my hand, to blogging friends near and far.
The lawns are abloom with tiny spring flowers that are not always easy for the wee camera to photograph. But by gum, yesterday the light must have been just right for the camera to capture this dandelion,
some violets,
and even this tiny flower on a plant I was given and have no idea what it is.
No blooms yet in the back garden, but I did come across this feather.
Even though there are no flowers, everything is growing splendidly, and I love the green of spring.
Yesterday, we put out the hummingbird feeders.
Already, the little will-o’-the-wisps have begun coming to the feeder.
It is not easy for me to get a picture of them, but I’ll keep trying.
This morning Clif said, “My underwear is in the mailbox.”
My first thought: What a place for underwear!
But this is life during the time of the coronavirus: Underwear in the mailbox because we don’t want to go to Target. Instead, we have been ordering online the necessities of life.
In the days before the coronavirus, we ordered online maybe five or six times a year. Now, it’s about five times a fortnight. I wonder how it will be when this is all over. Will we go back to shopping the way we did before?
Or, will this new habit of online ordering become a trend? It’s hard for me to predict. However, after a year or a year and a half of doing something, it could become permanent. We shall see.
In other groundbreaking news…Because Clif is still recovering from his sprained ankle, I hefted the round table up the bulkhead stairs from the cellar and onto the patio. Although my knees did not thank me when I was done, what a sight for sore eyes to see the table on the patio.
Soon it will be warm enough to have a glass of something nice as we sit on the patio.
After cleaning the table and taking pictures to celebrate the arrival of the table on the patio, I poked around a bit and discovered the that the ferns have begun to unfurl.
By the basement, where it’s warm.
But even a little farther away, in the leaves.
Despite having underwear in the mailbox, despite covid-19, despite the isolation and confinement, spring has arrived. The trees are in blossom, the ferns are coming up. As Natalie Merchant so beautifully sings, these are the days.
Notes From the Hinterland 