First day without rain

 Starting out with food-as usual.  Fresh bread from the oven and lettuce from the garden. AND,  I actually bought a cookbook this week at work.  It's called Summer Days and Balmy Nights, simple summer food from sun drenched shores.  It's a compendium (there's that great word again Cindy) of recipes from Spain, Portugal and Italy all in one book.  Basically a lot of small plates and salads that look wonderful.  I even went grocery shopping and bought ingredients to make some of the dishes.  Actually you'll find out later in the blog why I really went to the grocery store....

 Another picture of the bread and salad.  I know it's too busy in the background but I like the angle of the bread and salad so I put it in anyway.

AND, the big thing news is I've joined a walking group.  It's true.  I've joined a club.  We all walk when we can and as far as we can.  What more can you ask for?  We all got the Nike+ app for our phones and we can track how far we walk, when we walk, calories burned, etc. and report into the group.  Anyone and everyone is welcome to join.  One member is in Montana, one in Belfast Maine, and one in Stockton Springs, Maine.  We're hoping to pick up a member in Ohio soon and one in Georgia. FLASH: GA is in and now all we need is Ohio to join. Give it some thought and we can talk it over.  All it takes is email and the ability to walk.  Hey, if I got in you know the requirements couldn't be that stringent.

The new plant seems to be holding it's own even with all the rain.  I probably should have taken the buds off and let it put all the energy into growing roots, but I really needed color now in the garden.  The Yellow is starting to creep into the picture more and more.  In fact, you can see it in the upper left hand corner-creeping into the picture.

Even the tomato plants have yellow flowers.  But they are really starting to bloom so hopefully we'll have some RED tomatoes before too long.

 And now the real reason I went to the grocery store.  The blur below is Bob heading off for a trip to Nova Scotia.  He left Wed and will be home Monday night.  Hard to believe he didn't leave enough food for me in the fridge.  I broke down, bought the cookbook and got the ingredients since there's nothing left unfrozen in the house to eat.

there he goes.  He's off and riding

And since he left me all alone and since my old loom sold and since I had money in my pocket I went to the Purple Fleece in Stockton Springs and bought some cotton so I can weave some little washable things like dish cloths and kitchen towels.  I need a lot of practice warping the loom and weaving so I thought I would make those for our kitchen and then as I get better maybe share with people.  We'll see.  I think you're all safe for awhile and won't have to think up reasons why you don't use towels and dish cloths-yet but be warned, the time will come to use those excuses, trust me.

The New Yorker was good this week and the article by John McPhee, Editors and Publisher, enticed me to download some of McPhee's books to my Kindle.  I had forgotten what an enjoyable read he is.

We've had one whole day without rain today and the gardens, the lawns and the house are looking really good.  As always, we're waiting for you to come and can hardly wait for sons, wives and kids to arrive so I can put some pictures of them sitting in the yellow chairs on the blog.  The chairs are empty and waiting for you

Making up for Lost weeks.

 The potato salad garden is starting to come along.  Potato plants, tomato plants, peppers and oooops, eggplant.

 The salad garden is really doing well and we've had multiple salads and kale soup.  It was great.

 It's the end of June and time for Bob to pack up and head to Canada to see all his buddies from Nova Scotia and the Provinces.  He'll try to get out of town tomorrow if it isn't raining too much or wait till Wednesday and make a run for it.  With this kind of summer he can't count on too many sunny days so  he'll have to go when he can.

 I went for a walk and looked across the street.  Even in the summer, thoughts of winter are all around.  They bought 10 cords of wood and will have it all stacked and put away by September.  How did the people of the 17th, 18th and early 19th Centuries survive up here. A lot of them didn't (see below).

 This boat always cracks me up.  The boat sits in the middle of a field and it must belong to Miss Havisham. She and her groom were probably going to go across a lake after the wedding dinner to their honeymoon.  And here it sits, waiting.  Ok, you may ask, who is Miss Havisham?   Come on, you don't know? One of the great love stories that never was.

 Just some pretty flowers I saw growing wild on the walk.  I have no idea what they are but I didn't touch them so I won't get anything from them.  With my luck they're probably blooming poison ivy or something.

 The cemetery at the end of our road has more than one Civil War vet buried there.  Going to fight in the Civil War must have been like soldiers today going to Afghanistan.  The only difference is that they might have been able to kind of understand Southern.  But it would have been as strange and different from anything they were used to up here. And so far away when you're on foot.

 Found this plant on the side of the road too.

And this lovely bed of greens.  It's been a wet summer so far and things are growing like crazy.  In fact, it's raining right now-again.

Today's my sister's birthday!  She's still older than I am, but way more wonderful and I'm sure lucky to have her around.  I hope it's a great day and you get LOTS of cake and ice cream and 3 way chili.

Sunny Sunday

.

 The gardener busy taking care of the mountain laurel while others fill the hummingbird feeders and prepare the garden for the newest member.

 A red lily which we hope will bloom soon and add some color to the garden since we're quickly going into the yellow phase and neither one of us or the hummingbirds are big yellow fans.  Unfortunately it seems that we kept buying yellow plants and it didn't dawn on us till it was too late they were all going to bloom at the same time.

 Wintergreen which grows all over the side yard under the pine tress.  It smells wonderful when you crush the leaves.

 Hard to believe that this picture was taken in the side yard under the pines.  The rock is pretty rustic looking and the wintergreen loves the acid soil and the shade.

 Now for something completely different.  The curling club.  In the summer?  Absolutely.

 Why?  Because they have horseshoe pits and horseshoes for Thursday night games and Tues morning games if you're in town and know someone that's a member!  Not as cool as curling (in so many ways), but its fun.

 Ahhhh, too soon everyone will be back inside curling again in the cold, dark winter nights.  We definitely need to be outside as much as possible while the weather is good.  Today was one of the clear, sunny, breezy days you come to Maine for and as always

we wish you were here with us to enjoy it.

The last 2 weeks

Where have I been the last 2 weeks? Working, getting sick and learning to weave on a 4 harness loom at The Purple Fleece in Stockton Springs, which is about 1/2 hour north on Route 1.







It all seemed so easy when Debbie was at my side at the Purple Fleece helping me, answering questions, making suggestions and catching mistakes.I got so confident I didn't bother to take pictures like I did when I learned to use the rigid heddle loom.  Wrong.

 I finished the 3 day class Monday evening and headed out to work Tuesday morning without a chance to do anything but think about I had learned, what I hadn't learned and most of all, what I learned and forgotten.  By Friday when we went to pick up the loom I had Bob's awful cold so I couldn't talk (no voice) and we just brought the loom home, put it in the extra room and I went to bed for 3 days.

 Yesterday I decided to warp the loom and tried to remember what I had learned.  The winding of the cotton went well enough but then when I moved it to the loom and started warping it I realized I knew nothing.

 Hours later I finally got the loom warped and was able to start weaving.  Aside for one or 2 major errors it doesn't look that bad for a first try.

I like doing twill the best (weaving on the diagonal) and will work to learn some of the hundreds of different patterns so I can actually make something useful.  I'm hoping to make some towels and/or place mats before too long so lets see what how it goes. Using a 4 harness loom gives me more options with patterns in the weave so it will be fun to experiment. In the picture above there are at least 5 different weaving patterns which are all created by lifting different harnesses in different sequences which is pretty amazing.

Finally, we have flowers.

Rain

It's Sunday, it's raining and there's nothing to do outside.  This was taken yesterday when it was nice and Bob was able to work outside and inside the Bob house.  He's working on a warping board for me for the new loom.  It has to be ready for the 9th when I take the weaving course. 

Bob working on my warping board

Garden shot from front porch.

 Yet another shot of the garden.  oh well.  It's from a different angle. 

While Bob was in DC he went to the Korean War Memorial and sent some pictures home.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War_Veterans_Memorial.  As a result, I realized how little I know about the Korean War, how terrible it was and how poorly the Americans were prepared for it.  So I added some books to the reading list.http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/23/books/review/Frankel-t.html?pagewanted=all  David Halberstam's The Coldest Winter and several others that look interesting.

One of Bob's pictures of the Korean War Memorial

And now, just some closing pictures of the house since it's too rainy and cold to go anywhere to get pictures of anything.

A shot of the dining room without a pew (unrelated to a Room with a View), which by the way, didn't get auctioned.  It's in the extra room waiting for the loom.  I'll have a good place to sit as I weave.

Foreign pears of some sort on the counter.  There's little local fruit available right now so we wait and make do with what we can get.

The newest addition to the house. Aptly named Elvis because he is so darn cocky.  Right now he sits on the dining room table.  If we can't get one to come to the bird feeder we might as well have one at the table . I'm reading the biography of John Kennedy Toole, the author of Confederacy of Dunces. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Confederacy_of_Dunces   The biography is Butterfly in the Typewriter and though its interesting, I keep thinking that it would be far more fun to read Confederacy of Dunces again, which is what I'll probably do.,

Memorial Day Weekend 2012

Happy Memorial Day.  I thought I would give you all a break and do pictures of something other than the garden, though I do have a few more....

Anyway, these 2 tugs and a barge are working vessels and they go up and down the Bay escorting various vessels up to Searsport and some all the way to Bangor.  They are freshly painted for the summer and I just thought they looked really nice.  They work out of Belfast.

 On the other side of the docks are the pleasure and tour boats.  The Wanderbird is in for the summer and does trips up and down the Maine coast, the Caribbean and the Artic.  http://www.wanderbirdcruises.com/  The couple that run the tours are great and it would be outstanding to take one-if you don't get motion sickness. 

 Lets get a closer look at the pylon (or whatever you call it) in the foreground of the Wanderbird shot.

 Apparently there was a man in town that carved faces in just about anything you wanted him to.  They are all over town and in the most unlikely places. The picture below is the Harbor master's (actually in this case, the harbor mistress) office right on the water downtown.  It's not too busy right now, but give it a couple of weeks and it will be.

                                                 Downtown is definitely on a hill

Another shot of downtown. the good table is to the left of the picture and Brambles where all the following pictures were taken, is across the street from the buildings in the picture below.

Brambles is a garden store with note cards, ribbon, plants, art work, soap and oh so many other things.  You could go in there everyday and find something new each time. 

 The Dory Wreath was sold yesterday and if I had the space on any wall in my house I would have loved to have it.  

Reading.  I've been re-reading Edith Wharton and it's having the same effect on me that it did last time I read them all.  Not exactly uplifting. Her books are a study in the rigidness of society at the turn of the century (19th -early 20th) and the futility of trying to change it among other things.  But it did change thank goodness-long after Edith Wharton.

There was a good article in The New York Review of Books on public schools that's worth reading

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/jun/07/do-our-public-schools-threaten-national-security/



Just add Bob and you've got the whole crew.  3 guys from Belfast and 1 woman from Pittsburgh.



Time to cook dinner.  Bob's off and about with 3 friends down in DC so I'm having veggie pizza again!  yea!  And I forgot, the church pew is still here and will be put to good use.  More later.  It's actually really good news.