July 20: Beach Glass

I'm not a beach glass collector, although every now and then I will pick up an unusual piece when I'm at a beach. This morning I wandered down to Lobster Cove just to see how it looks this month, like stopping in at a dear friend's house. The marsh there is blooming with wild roses, vetch, morning glories, buttercups, and wild mustard. Scarlet pimpernel pokes up from amid beach stones. Little red desiccated bodies of crabs lie on dark sand between redolent piles of seaweed, smoothed stones, and shells. And the occasional piece of sea glass, although Fish Beach offers up much more by way of variety and quantity (given its proximity to the granite jetty where islanders traditionally break their glass). What caught my eye today was a largish sea-worn piece of white (once, clear) glass with a raised G in the center. It seemed significant, but I couldn't ascribe any meaning to it while I carried it around. I couldn't even think of anyone I know with G as an initial. So instead I thought of G words associated with my day: glass, gentle, golden, green growing, glare, good, grateful, grackle, golden-crowned kinglet, gift.

Beach glass with a G--
what is its significance?
That it has none? Good.

July 19: Dessert

I'm on vacation this week and spending three days of my time off on Monhegan. Besides being a place of great natural beauty and scenic charm, the island is home to The Novelty, makers of some of the best pizza in Maine. So in true holiday mode, I ate a whole 10" pizza (sausage and spinach) myself for dinner. Then, in an impetuous mood--hey, I'm on vacation!--I bought a big whoopie pie and a can of Porkslap beer for dessert. The dessert of champions. The meal was an excellent one and fueled well my post-dinner walk to Fish and Swim Beaches and then up to the lighthouse to watch the village, Manana, and the sea beyond glow under the setting sun.

When it comes to food,
sometimes what brings the most joy
trumps what's healthier.

Don't those pigs look happy?!

July 18: License Plate

I was stopped behind a big Chevy Silverado this morning, black with red trim and designs covering the back window and tailgate that looked like the tattoos on Mike Tyson's face. The trailer hitch was a custom chrome piece that near as I could tell was a bare ass. I'm not sure if it was meant to be suggestive or insulting. Clearly, this was a manly man's truck. Because of the back window decal, I couldn't see the driver, but I quickly formed an image of a burly young guy wearing a Harley-Davidson muscle tee to show off the barbed wire tattoo around his left bicep.

So I had to smile when I noticed that his license plate was one of those new pink ones to support breast cancer awareness. Here's a guy who carefully maintains a tough image via his truck, and yet he cares enough about women's health that he paid extra for that pink license plate, set off nicely by a license plate holder that looks like a heavy-linked chain. There's a story there. And I'm sure it's a touching one that would break some of the stereotypes I'd so quickly formed about the unseen driver ahead of me. (Like the fact that I automatically assumed it was a man... I've certainly known women who would drive a truck like that.)

Even the tough guy
stopped here in the monster truck
cares about his mom.

July 17: Watering the Lawn

Guests visiting from Vermont were the perfect impetus for us to play tourist with them and enjoy this summer day to the utmost. We took in the arts and crafts show in Harbor Park in Camden this morning, drove into the countryside to hit Morse's Sauerkraut for lunch and treats, spent several hours reading, swimming, and canoeing at my sister and brother-in-law's camp on a lake, enjoyed dinner and sunset over the St. George River at The Slipway in Thomaston, then visited the historic lime kilns on Rockport harbor. When we finally got home, everyone settled in to watch the Red Sox game while I watered the flowers. There's something very meditative about standing in the dark, hose in hand, spraying the greenery, nurturing those sun-parched leaves and roots.

Watering at night,
hose on "shower." Thirsty lawn,
here's a heavy dew.

July 16: Hawk Family

Driving down a dirt road through the woods ("15 MPH Dust!") to check out for the first time my sister and brother-in-law's new lakeside camp this afternoon, I was thrilled to see a broad-winged hawk fly across the road in front of me. It was followed by two more, which looked by their plumage to be youngsters. They perched together up in a big pine.

The camp is perfect, the kind you want your kids to spend all their summers in so that they grow up remembering their childhood as a series of sunny weeks of loon calls, the thrum of small motorboats, the slam of screen doors; of padding through pine needles in bare feet or running down the wooden dock to jump off into the cool embrace of the lake; of tipping the canoe, eating hot dogs, playing card games after dark, and seeing stars reflected in the water...

As I went for my first swim of the summer and then read in the sun in an Adirondack chair on the big porch, I visualized all this for my two nieces' future.

Hawk with two fledglings--
I always see signs in things:
my sister, her girls.

July 15: Nesting Dove

One of my co-workers said he had a surprise to show me on our Beech Hill Preserve, and I asked if it was something related to birds. Of course, he said. So today when we were all up at Beech Nut to celebrate the Land Trust's 25th anniversary, I got to see what it was:

Mourning Dove

The stewardship team had been repainting some trim on the restored old stone hut, and this dove on her nest was tucked away under the eaves at the back of the building, nestled into the stones. She's very well camouflaged. Even the nest resembles bits of the hut's sod roof. 

Apparently she flew off when they first started working near the nest (which contains four eggs), but quickly returned and then just hunkered down and endured their presence. They got within a few feet of her--and at one point, her mate--but she didn't budge. She must have realized they meant no harm. Around the corner, up near the roof beams, is a phoebe nest full of nestlings. This hut which was never a home to any human--it was built as a day-use tea hut in 1914--is at least providing a safe place for birds to nest. Which is really what the preserve is all about.

Still as a field stone,

dove makes her nest on the rocks.

Her black eyes watch me.

July 14: Why did the turkeys cross the road?

A friend and I enjoyed a lovely lunch today at Cellardoor Winery. We ate our sandwiches out on the sunny deck overlooking the young vineyards and distant farm fields, sipped our complimentary glass of wine with  pleasure (we passed up doing the full wine tasting in the middle of a work day). It felt so decadent, wine with lunch! We talked and laughed for a couple of hours, savoring the break, imagining we were in Tuscany. I think for a little while we felt like the other patrons there, all clearly visitors on summer holiday.

As I was speeding along Youngtown Road on my way back to the office, trying to get my head back into work mode, I was forced to brake quickly as I crested a hill. Crossing the road in front of me were a mother turkey and one, small poult. In no hurry, they dawdled their way into the underbrush on the other side. Slow down, they were telling me. You move too fast. Got to make the moment last...

Turkeys in the road
force me to slow down, regain
my prandial calm.

July 13: Waxing Moon, Swelling Music

On Monday, I'm driving on Route 52 in that rich, late summer afternoon light, clouds billowing on the horizon, music blasting. This is my home territory, these farmhouses and fields familiar and beautiful. I slow along the shore of Megunticook Lake, Bald Mountain rising blue and hazy beyond. Several people are jumping off a dock on one of the lake's islands, and teenagers in skimpy bathing suits are poised on the roadside ledges in the same spot we used to swim from when we were that age. The road rises up the hill, a steep wall of rock to my left surmounted by verdant pines. I crest the hill, spot the faint gibbous moon in the still bright summer sky. Below me, lush farm fields and forest. I love this song. In a few days the moon will be full. I'm almost home.

Fast car, loud music.
Happy to see the pale moon
and all this bright green.

(Song: "Truly (Wise Buddha Mix)" by Delerium)

July 12: Celebration

I walked home from work exultant this afternoon, having landed a big grant for an important land conservation project on Ragged Mountain. Not only did my grant make the cut in a highly competitive funding round, but we got the full amount we asked for, which doesn't often happen these days. My hard work had paid off in a most satisfying way, giving the project a big boost.

So in an uplifted mood I strolled the short, wildflower-lined stretch of road along the river to my house. And in an uplifted mood I heard the piercing cry of an osprey. I looked up and there it was, soaring in lazy circles way above Mount Battie, chirping loudly. I felt attuned to its mood; I think it was calling out into the hazy summer sky simply for the sheer thrill of being a bird in flight. A big bird with strong wings and a beautiful, fish-filled bay stretching out below.

High as the osprey
wheeling above Mount Battie,
I want to shout too.

July 11: Bamboo

A friend in Lincolnville, whom I visited this afternoon, has a rather eclectic gardening sense. He's built his house in a clearing surrounded by spruces, and various plants are flowering seemingly at random amid the indigenous greenery: ornamental grasses pop up amid mossy stumps, delicate little Japanese maples stand here and there amid daisies and ferns, and bamboo plants with variegated leaves lean over the driveway. Out back a small pool hosts a few lily pads, another features a plastic reptile of the Loch Ness monster type. A stone-paved labyrinth spirals behind the deck, a bit overgrown but still magical.

A series of planks forms a sort of bridge toward a lush patch of boreal wetland. Along the way, one thatch of fancy grass with broad, drooping blades looks, as my friend says, like the hair of a Dr. Seuss character. Or a crazy nest waiting for a dinosaur egg. Wild partridgeberry with tiny twinned blossoms creeps close to the ground alongside more bamboo, a different species. These particular bamboo plants sprouted from clippings from another plant elsewhere in the yard. Walking on the bridge with a bamboo plant on either side of us, my friend points out several baby bamboo plants that have sprung up in a rough line between them, as if they two plants are trying to reconnect through these offshoots. I couldn't help but think of the Chinese folk tale about the Weaver Girl and the Cowherd, lovers who became two stars separated by the Milky Way, only allowed to meet one night each summer in early July.

Cut from the same plant,
bamboo roots send out new shoots,
try to reconnect.

July 10: Remnants of the Past

One of the reasons why I was hurrying down Old County Road this afternoon was to get to Port Clyde to catch a boat. The other reason was because I was passing the Rockland landfill, a strikingly odiferous zone. That strange stretch of road also features several creepy limestone quarries filled with opaque dark water (that more than one car has ended up in), a few houses whose residents hopefully have no sense of smell, some ATV trail crossings, and all that's left of what must once have been several farmhouses: well-spaced clumps of lilac bushes, honeysuckles, purple phlox, and big patches of day lilies that once graced some long-gone dooryards. One patch of lilies so abounded with big orange blooms that if it hadn't been for the smell, I might have even paused to take a photo.

Near the smelly dump,
explosion of day lilies.
This was once a farm.