And then came fall...

Maples in Friendship
It would appear that I've been saving the eyesight of our blog readers over the past few months, by not posting anything. It's true, when we are in Maine we're generally not traveling, and sharing our secrets seems less important. And I make no guarantees as to how many posts will appear in the future. But for now, here's one.

Summer faded from our Maine home several weeks ago. The autumn leaves are in full swing, glorious in their color. We've enjoyed watching them this year, along with a few late guests who stopped by and collected their fair ration of lobster. That's late, as in "late in the season", not formerly living. We expect to further enjoy the foliage season as we venture south soon.

Rose hips

Our garden was a qualified success this year. Snails and horn worms did significant amounts of damage, but we had good crops of yellow squash, basil, broccoli, cabbage and Brussels sprouts. We had some crops of pumpkins, and tomatoes. We had some eggplant, which surprised some folks who said you can't grow eggplant in Maine. But this year was exceptionally warm, and though they started late, they did produce.

Our tomatoes started out well enough, but horn worms arrive while we were away for a week and defoliated many of the plants. We got them under control, but much of the fruit was chewed, though usable. More vigilance next year.

Autumn barberries
We did process about 15 pounds of tomatoes into sauce to take with us when we travel. We also
made some pesto as a way to store basil and spice up our lives.

We put the pontoon on a mooring as I noted in an earlier post. This made it much easier to get out for solo trips to go fishing, but had problems, too. First, the right pontoon is not sealed, and in fact a small amount of water in the boat drains into it. There is no way to pump or drain this while the boat is in the water. It wasn't full, but it did take on a couple hundred pounds of dead weight as the season went on and rains fell. Second, the depthfinder transducer got knocked off its mount early in the season, and we couldn't figure out how to remount it without pulling the boat. So we went without it. Third, when we pulled the boat (ahead of a pending hurricane that didn't materialize), we found the bottom fouled with weeds and barnacles. I spent hours cleaning it as far as I got, and I'll have to do more in the spring. Since the trailer covers most of the bottom of the pontoons, I have to jack the boat up on the trailer to get to the junk to clean it. No fun.

Housetop ornaments

We had lots of company this summer. Kids and grandkids, Minnesota visitors, RV friends and long lot cousins graced us with their presence. John and Deb came by in July and John and I added a deck to the back of the house. We've enjoyed that addition greatly, at least until it got chilly in the past few weeks. We took most visitors to Camden or Rockland.

We had 2 of our grandkids for a week. We found a great free puppet show in Rockland to take them to. And Pepaw took them to a 3D version of Dogs and Cats movie solo, everybody came home singing the theme song and wearing our 3D glasses to surprise Abuela. Add swimming in cool Maine waters on 88 degree days for wet fun.

Friendship Harbor

We volunteered to help with the local association events planning and scheduling. It turned out to be a very minimal amount of work, and we had fun.

The house got some upgrades. We replaced our 40 year old refirgerator, and got an icemaker in the bargain, very nice on hot summer days. I goofed up the installation, and suffered an 80 dollar repair bill to un-kink the water hose. Duh! We also installed a dishwasher in the kitchen (where else would you put it?) and I messed up the plumbing there, too, but finally got it right.

Our barn is aging faster than we are. The sills are rotting into the ground. I've added a couple jacks to try to hold up the worst area for a few more years, but much more serious work is needed to make it last much longer.