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.

The heat of summer

A sign at the harbor

Independence Day has passed. The heat of summer is upon us. Temps up here in Friendship have been in the 80s most every day. For about 10 days, rain was scarce, but we've caught up again. My guess is that this is a 'normal' summer, although we have had more days with the temp above normal than below.

Sticky has been with us, too. The dew points have been in the high 60s, meaning that fog rolls in just about every night, and the humidity stays high all day long. Under these conditions, it's guaranteed that you can work up a sweat just walking across the lawn. Pushing a lawn mower, as I did yesterday, multiplies the effect. The lobster men are out working on their boats in the evening, right around sunset because it's a bit cooler then.


So much for the weather. We've been polishing the house in preparation for company from Florida. The gang of 6+1 from Consuelo's family arrive tonight. Both of Consuelo's sisters are coming. A niece and nephew and their spouses are coming. And the baby. We'll have a houseful for a few days. I applaud the preparation and energy required on their part to get all the way up here. We're just about ready for them. Since they're "company", I'll be baking another cake. And we'll have a lobster dinner, too.

Our 20' pontoon is safely moored in Muscongus Bay. I put together the necessary cahin, a 100 lb anchor, and a float for our own mooring, acauired the proper permit, and placed it in Hatchet Cove. It was reasonably convenient to get to, requiring a 5 minute row in our old beat up dinghy. But the same day we put it in, another member of the Association told Consuelo that she had an unused mooring we could used. She has a dock, it's a 2 minute row, and that much farther out into the Bay. So we moved the boat to that location. So far so good.

Friendship Harbor

My garden is coming along well. The heat and rain have provided perfect growing conditions. If the tomatoes all bear fruit prodigiously, we'll have to rent another barn to hold the crop! Actually, we're planning to harvest and make sauce to can or freeze for the road this winter, along with whatever we get to eat as they ripen. The bugs are getting to the brussel sprouts, despite my efforts to protect them using pepper spray. My hope is that those bugs are going to devour the sprouts and leave the cabbage, broccoli and eggplants alone. That's what seems to be happening so far. We should have a good crop of squash and pumpkin later on, too.

The only downside of the warm, humid weather is that it's also perfect for silversfish, and we have a bumper crop of those pests, too. They're outside the house in huge numbers, hiding in any shady spot (like behind the knobs on our grill) and a bunch have found a way into the house. They won't hurt us, but they can do damage to fabrics.

Almost Summer

Martin Point Sunset

Maine bills itself as "Vacationland" on license plates and signs at the border. While it suggests that there's extraordinary places to go and see in the state, it also suggests that if you don't live here already, you probably would never want to. In other words, it's good for visiting, but not for staying.

So in the summer, when the kids (and teachers) are out of school and the big factories (you remember those, right?) close for 2 week shutdowns, people come to Maine to enjoy the cooler weather, abundant forests, fresh air, wonderful coastline, and great seafood. Southern Maine has long, sandy beaches, fine for attracting presidential families.Western and central Maine offers trails, lakes and rivers for fishing, and some pretty golf courses. The midcoast and Down East have ocean adventures, sailing trips, the remarkable scenery of Acadia National Park, quaint little villages, and world class art.

In the modern world, the visitors come by car and plane, and a few thousand on cruise ships. A hundred years ago, the primary mode of transportation was the sea. Thus the coast was populated with ports and a healthy fishing industry. When the roads were built, and cars became commonplace, little villages like Friendship became geographically distant from the action, too far out of the way for people passing through to the rest of Vacationland.

But we still have visitors here, the ones that are smart enough to come to see us and make our house a destination. And our visitor season starts real soon now. So we've been busy getting ready. Putting finishing touches on our house like moving furniture, painting, and upgrading the kitchen with a new refrigerator and dishwasher. Adding some bookcases to hold our books and treasures. And getting ready to build a deck to enjoy the sun in comfortable surroundings.

Getting the lobster traps out

Then there's the boats. Paul's boat stayed here last year, and needed some attention to get ready for the water. The steering gear needed replacing, some wiring was moldy, and a good cleanup. Our pontoon ("The only one in Friendship") had been covered for 20 months, but still needed to be power washed and readied for the water. This year we're going to put it out on a mooring, as it needs a lot of water to launch, and the only ramp with deep enough water has no place to park. We've filed our mooring permit, acquired the needed parts, and should get it out there soon. Meanwhile, to get to the mooring, we have an old dingy which my brother gave us. It will work just fine, but still needs some repairs and a coat of paint. So there's plenty to do.

Then there's the garden. The few things that we planted there already are doing OK, except for the carrots. That includes cabbage, brussel sprouts, and pumpkins. The seedlings are up and ready to plant, the garden is tilled and covered with weed preventive (or maybe "limiter"). All that's needed now is time and energy, both of which are in short supply.

But the first visitors have been here. Last weekend my brother and his wife stayed a few days with us, playing rough and ready games of Taboo, and munching excellent lobsters. This week Paul and Amelia came up, so that Paul could take his boat home. And we're ready for 'em. More or less.

So, if you're on the visitor's list for this year, Come on Down! If not, well, Why Not!

Late Maine Spring

Lupine in Hatchet Cove

Last year while we were traveling in Alaska, we got reports from our Maine friends as to how bad the summer was here. It was a cold, we summer. Gardens failed to produce much of anything useful. Pumpkins only made it to 6 inches in diameter. Some said that it rained every day in June.

I'm of the opinion that we bring good weather with us where ever we go. Of course, it's never perfect, we've seen some nasty stuff. When we leave somewhere, it often gets really bad where we've been. Like when we left Pincher Creek, Alberta at the end of May last year. They got 8" of snow, while we had wonderful summer weather farther north in Banff and Jasper.

So, since we're the good weather omens, it stands to reason that Maine would have great weather since we're back here now. So far, so good. We've been here for two weeks, and we've had 1 day of rain. It's mostly been sunny, with crystal clear skies. Yesterday Portland recorded a record high temperature of 86 degrees. In Friendship, it was in the mid 70s. And the forecast calls for a "hat trick" Memorial Day weekend of three beautiful days. So, if the weather is a marker of happiness, we should be delighted.

Spring is abundantly obvious everywhere here. The dandelions are very healthy, the lawns are growing impressively fast, and tulips and lilacs are most colorful and fragrant. Of the wild flowers growing here, I like the lupine the most. We have a patch growing next to our house, and they are peaking right now. My photos show other patches down near Hatchet Cove, near the water's edge.

The trees are in bloom, too. Our apple trees in the back yard are blossomed and looking very healthy, as much as old, old apples trees can look. I expect that we'll have another bumper crop of apples to pick up in the yard this fall.

We've been busy trying to capture all this weather by working toward a fairly large vegetable garden this summer. We arranged to have George Simmons stop by with his tractor and till a plot that's about 22' x 35'... not huge, but most likely more than we'll want to tend later. Seeds have been started indoors for broccoli, tomatoes, eggplant, and more. We also tilled flower beds next to the sunroom, and we've been planting hostas, nasturtiums, and will have lettuce and spinach growing there, and a few herbs.

Meanwhile, we've been making repairs where needed, and working to finish the 3rd bedroom upstairs. It was used for storage for our personal junk while we tripped off to Alaska last summer, so we had to empty it out first. Now the junk is scattered all over the house, but most of it is still upstairs. We've patched and started painting, and expect to start moving back into that room in the next few days.

We decided to make the large bedroom into a sewing room for Consuelo. She had considered making the attic more accessible and sewing up there. But I think that would have been a poor choice, since there's no ventilation and it gets pretty hot or cold, depending on the weather. We'll sleep in the now-being-finished 3rd bedroom, which should be fine, as we don't spend a lot of time upstairs otherwise.

We also found a new refrigerator at Lowes and had it delivered. Since it's a bit larger than the old one, it lives in the expanded kitchen area for now. We'll have ice on demand here, something that we've missed. And we'll save some money on electricity, too.

In another money-saving move, we signed up for cable TV and Internet. We get HD now, more channels and really high speed Internet. Most of the savings comes from dropping Starband satellite Internet service. They were really nasty when we called to cancel our service, wanting to charge us a cancellation fee. We had not signed a contract beyond our original 2 year commitment, and we stood our ground, and they relented.

Our Maine vehicles and boat have been registered. We tried to take our Ford Explorer on a 100 mile trip last week, but it had been stored in the barn in our absence, and we lost the power steering about 1/2 way there. We took it into a repair shop and hope to have it back today. No money saving there, I'm afraid.

Major summer projects include building a deck off the back of the house. The small deck that's there is pretty rotten. Consuelo fell of the back of it while hanging laundry and got a pretty bad bruise. We have the plan ready to go to the town office today for a building permit.

Chestnut blossoms

Similarly, the barn is pretty rotten, too. The south side has developed a bulge where the wooden foundation has completely failed. I've had some discussions with folks who know better than I that we might jack it up and keep it in place for a while, but a good heavy snowstorm might bring it tumbling down. More thought needed there. We do use the square footage for projects and storage, and losing it would be problematic.

We're enjoying our house here. Summer will bring boating days, events and visitors from near and far. This will be fun!

Thanks... last one out, turn off the lights.

Thanksgiving Day

The final event for the Maine house was to host the kids and grand kids for Thanksgiving. The weather was OK, not perfect, and everybody reported having a good time. We cooked fairly traditionally, turkey on the grill, mashed potatoes, butternut squash. The kids had their own idea of food, and we had the alternates for them, like macaroni and fruit juice. They'll have whole new set of traditions when they grow up.

Amelia & Luna with the Clauses
On Friday, all the moms tripped to the stores to shop Black Friday. The results were mixed to disappointing, specific deals were sold out when they got there. While the moms were shopping, the dads took the kids to see Santa in Rockland, in the rain. Everyvbody except Amelia got on Sants's knee and tried hard to remeber everything they had thought about asking Santa for earlier in the day, but the excitement forced temporary amnesia.

We then travelled but a few miles out to the Transportation Museum in Owl's head, and the kids had a blast building styrofoam airplanes and flying them in a huge empty display hall. The Dad's had fun making airplanes, too, and Grandpa had fun looking around the museum.

On Saturday, we drove down to Pemaquid Point to see the lighthouse, frolic on the rocks, and look for shells. The ocean was a bit angry after the storms that passed through earlier in the week. After dinner on Saturday night everybody (except us) packed up and left for home.

Pemaquid Point Light

We're now left with collecting everything we'll need to take with us for the next 18 months as we cpend the winter in Georgia, travel to Alaska, then winter again in the Southwest US. Plus, we're leaving the house in a condition to be able to rent it next summer, which means packing all our personal stuff away in one bedroom. And finally, setting the house on low to survive the winter.

Consuelo and I have really enjoyed spending time in Maine. We're developing compassion for the local folks who scrape out a living up here, and suffering some of the same injustices that they do, like high fuel oil prices. And the locals are welcoming us to the community, like asking to use one of my photos on their community calendar.

We're almost ready to hit the road again. On to the next leg of travel around the US. We're excited about it.

Turning the Temperature Corner

The last leaf

It's getting colder in Maine. It does this every year, I'm told. This is the latest that we've stayed in the north since we started our motorhome adventure 4 years ago. It's good to know that we can do it, but it does have a few complications.

We had the motorhome out in August, going up to Acadia for a long weekend. Most everything in it is ready to go. We didn't drain the water, in fact, I believe we have a full tank. Since the temperatures are now routinely below freezing at night, we're keeping the heat on to keep the pipes from freezing. That's burning LP, and since we haven't found anybody to deliver LP at our house, we'll have to take the motorhome up to Waldoboro to get the LP tank filled.


Maine fuel

We've been doing a lot more work on our house over the last few weeks. We stripped the remaining wallpaper in our bedroom, patched and painted the walls and the ceiling. We got the interior knotty pine put up on the new porch, and trimmed out the windows. We bought some bookcases in Massachusetts, and used one as a TV cabinet, one on the porch, and one in the hallway. The hallway downstairs has been scraped, patched, and painted. The stairwell and upstairs hall has been patched and painted.

We tried to do the ceiling over th stairs, but that was a disaster, the new paint peeled off all the remaining paint after it was scraped, patched and painted. We are having the sheet rock folks in to quote doing that job before we leave.

A fallen leaf

We've been pleased with the warmth that stays in the porch when the sun shines. We expected it to be a sunroom, and it is insulated throughout. But we've used it for several days without heat in November, which is better than I expected. The again, I understand we've been having some unseasonably warm temps over the past few weeks.

But today when we woke up, the chill of winter was around, with the overnight low around freezing. Today will be sunny, but not above 45 we're promised. We're slipping down that slippery slope of winter... you know, the one that some people ski on!

Reflecting on fall

Maple reflections

I am often amazed and amused by reactions of people, or the lack of them, in response to major events. There are some seriously historic events affecting us right now: Major financial upheaval, a presidential election with a black candidate, two major hurricanes battering the gulf coast, the Red Sox losing game 2 of the ALCS, trees in Maine changing color. OK, the last two are only historic for the moment, if there can be such a thing. But the rest are really, really important, yet we live on without much change or effort.

We were surprised that after hurricane Gustav passed through Louisiana, the major media dropped the story immediately. Electricity was out through major portions of the state for weeks, yet we had volunteers arriving during weeks 3 and 4 wondering what they were coming down there for.

The financial crisis that faces us certainly affects nearly everyone. But there are few actions that we can take locally to alter the situation. Even if we should go out and buy a new car right now to support the ailing auto industry, it's likely that the banks wouldn't give us a car loan. Plus, buying a new car would be 'more of the same' action that got us into this problem, overspending into debt.

Filling the hive

The diligent residents of New England are doing what they have always done, despite the news. Like the bee at the left, they are loading up the wood bin, sealing up the windows, canning the produce, and generally preparing for 6 months of cold, snowy weather. They talk, complain, and fret about the news, and some of it affects them directly, like the lobster men having to shut down for a few days because their major customer in Canada cannot buy any more lobster right now.

Hatchet Cove in October

But time marches on, and fall colors are a signal that it's time to put away the boat and fly rods. Fall is a beautiful time in New England. Our stop at LL Bean last week informed us that Columbus Day is the busiest day of the year in Freeport, a tribute to both the colorful countryside and the need for sturdy winter clothes.

So here's historic news for the weekend. The woods here are alive with color. I'm going to take my camera and capture some of it in a bottle to share with my friends during the long, leafless winter months down south. Call CNN. Let 'em know.