The time has come to say farewell to A Good Eater. It makes me a little sad to do so as I have enjoyed writing for A Good Eater for 5 years. However, I am no longer doing what I set out to do when I began this blog—write about food in Maine from many different angles, from home cooking to eating in restaurants to visiting stores that feature local food to interviewing farmers. In other words, the Maine food scene.

Initially, I started out doing exactly what I had intended with A Good Eater. Clif and I traveled around the state, we ate, I cooked, I wrote. But then the Great Recession happened and with it came an increase in the cost of both food and fuel. Clif and I were affected in other ways, as many families were, and we had to adjust to living on a tighter budget. This meant staying closer to home—central Maine—and eating out only very occasionally. (I have watched with a kind of fascinated horror as the price of lunch has gone from, say, $6 to well over $10 and sometimes as much as $15. Dinner prices have become lunch prices.)

When it become clear that we could no longer travel around the state and sample food from various places—I must admit I loved doing this—I decided to focus on home cooking. After all, I cook supper nearly every single night. Supper at our house is not fancy, but it is tasty and nutritious, and it is almost always made from scratch. (Full disclosure: I do use Bertolli jarred sauce—tomato and basil.) In addition, I make bread, biscuits, muffins, and other baked goods.

For several years, I wrote about home cooking, coming up with new recipes at least once a week. However, I am more a generalist than a specialist, and as the years went by, I wanted to write about other things, too—community, people, living in place, social concerns, the environment. Slowly, almost stealthily, I began weaving these topics into A Good Eater, and I called them “digressions.”

Then one day not long ago I realized the digressions had pretty much taken over A Good Eater. Around the same time, I read a terrific book of nature essays—Field Notes from a Hidden City—by Esther Woolfson, who lives in Aberdeen, Scotland. Her clear, lovely prose and her keen observations about animals and plants made me realize how much I wanted to write nature essays, too. I have always been interested in the natural world, and for me a happy afternoon is sitting on the patio and observing all the fluttering and buzzing around me. I love watching the seasons change and with it the coming and going of leaves and flowers. Over and over it happens, but it never grows stale or old for me. When it comes to nature, I always have a “beginner’s mind.”

Clearly, it was time to go in a different direction with blog writing, and I knew exactly what I wanted for a new name. It would be Notes from the Hinterland, the title of a column I wrote for Wolf Moon Journal, the magazine Clif and I published for 7 years. Notes from the Hinterland is a broad enough title to allow me to write about whatever I please—nature, community, people, social concerns, and, yes, even food. There is no reason why I can’t still post recipes when inspiration strikes. After all, when you live in Maine, you live in the hinterlands, and anything that happens around you is fair game.

For long-time readers, nothing much will change except the title of this blog. Both http://www.agoodeater.com and http://www.notesfromthehinterland.com will take you to the same place: to Notes from the Hinterland (the blog formerly known as A Good Eater). I expect I will have to change things on Facebook, but I won’t be doing that for at least a week or two. Also, the blog itself might look a little different until everything is worked out.

So I bid a fond and sad farewell to A Good Eater. Not only has it been a good run, but I will always be a good eater. Now, onward to Notes from the Hinterland!

Last weekend, Clif and I dog-sitted Holly while Shannon went to New York to visit Dee, and Mike worked overtime at his job. We got lucky with the weather, which was warm and splendid. Halleluiah, summer and warm weather! This meant we could spend plenty of time outside, and a good thing, too. Holly is only a year and a half, and she has lots—I repeat—lots of energy. Especially first thing in the morning, which for various reasons, is not my best time.

Still, we did all right. There were walks and kick the ball. There was time spent racing madly around the yard—Holly—while I did some gardening. At 9, our Liam is still lively, but he is an older dog. His days of boundless energy—days I remember well—are behind him. But from time to time he would roust himself to play tag with Holly, and it was fun to watch.

On Saturday or Sunday—I don’t remember which day—Clif and the dogs needed a little nap to revive themselves.

While they were napping, I was able to sit on the patio and watch the buzzing life in the backyard. Dozens of small bugs glittered in the sun as they did a flying dance. Someone with a fanciful mind might have noted they looked like flitting fairies. I wondered, what kind of bugs are they?

As I watched, a dragonfly swooped among the dancing bugs, caught one, and landed on the umbrella under which I was sitting. I could see the dragonfly’s silhouette through the pale tan umbrella, and I watched as he—she?—ate the struggling bug. It took a while before all the parts were chewed and swallowed. Unfortunately, the dragonfly flew away before it occurred to me to snap a picture. I guess that’s what comes of observing intently. There are no thoughts of doing, only of looking.

In between observing, I read some of Mary Oliver’s Long Life, a collection of essays and poems about nature and literature and living in place. Oliver, I think, is a kindred spirit. She writes, “People say to me: wouldn’t you like to see Yosemite. The Bay of Fundy?…I smile and answer, ‘Oh yes—sometime,’ and go off to my woods, my ponds, my sun-filled harbor, no more than a blue comma on the map of the world but, to me, the emblem of everything. It is the intimate, never the general, that is teacherly.”

I concur. As for me, I have my backyard—so full of life—the woods, the sparkling Narrows, the rides along broad Lake Marancook, the library. Everything is here within a five-mile range, I thought.

In the meantime my husband slept, with one dog beside him on the couch and the other beside him on the floor.

This is the kind of rainy day I like: The clouds went away to be replaced by blue sky and sun. While I do understand that rain is necessary, in Maine this is not usually a problem. In fact, just the opposite. Once it starts raining, it doesn’t have enough sense to stop. After the third or fourth day of rain, it gets a little old, especially this time of year when there is much to do outside.

I was so encouraged by the blue sky that in a burst of optimism I even put in a load of laundry to be hung on the line. After my morning writing, I’ll be heading outside to work in the gardens. Who knows? I might even get to have lunch on the patio.

Here are some more pictures from the backyard:

Ah, the lovely month of May.