Upta camp!

I have learned that this is the New England expression that would translate here into "to the lake" or "to the ranch" or to some other weekend destination.

In the case of my daughter-in-law's lovely family, "camp" is a charming what-we-would-call-cabin on this beautiful body of water named Bunganut Pond on the maps. 

"Pond" or "lake?" While not being as big as the Hill Country lakes we are more familiar with, it's certainly larger than the cattle tanks that are normally called ponds around here.

Of course, I've often said that some of our "rivers" wouldn't even qualify as named creeks in the moister northeast. So I guess it's not surprising that they call a lake that takes you 15 minutes or so to circumnavigate in a motorboat a "pond." Regional differences in terminology like this are one of the most interesting things about traveling, don't you think?

But, like "a rose by any other name," whatever you call it, this is a delightful place to spend a few summer days. (Winter would be intriguing, too, although perhaps not delightful; usually the pond freezes over!)

The first day we arrived, it was windy and actually a little too chilly for water-related activities. (So nice to be able to say this when it was close to 100° back home.) But later we not only took motorboat rides, but swam some in the clear, spring-fed water, and even got to kayak!

Here's Hal on an expedition to a neighboring cove...

...here's a kayak-level view of Bunganut's lovely water from my boat...

...as well as an even closer look when I took a dip...

As I write this, back in sweltering San Antonio, remembering the feel of that cool water is so refreshing!

Here are some other snaps of this peaceful, relaxing place...

Loons!

rocks like this one make motorboat navigation a bit tricky, but
fortunately kayaks don't have this problem

lily pads and sunlight on the surface

the dock and late afternoon, liquid-gold sunlight,
from the screen porch

There were patches of the surface covered with lots of pine needles, leaves, and seeds from some of the many gorgeous trees surrounding the pond. In my next post, I'll show you more about these beauties.

As if we didn't need another reason to love it here, the sunsets are terrific!

Thanks again to my generous in-laws for sharing this lovely spot with us!

Maine flowers, part 1: closeup and then step back

I think I might finally be getting the hang of my macro settings. What do you think?

Although I tend to be conflicted about whether I like closeup shots of flowers or a more panoramic take on the whole plant. 

I offer a few examples here from the kids' Portland neighborhood. First, the cheerful daisies shown up close and personal above, then with a step back here:

The lovely tree/bush/shrub below was identified as a Japanese Willow by the master gardener whose yard it graces. Her yard was just one of the showpiece gardens that one finds in the neighborhood.

Japanese Willow up close...

...and the whole show

Stopping to admire another outstanding garden gained us an invitation to walk through it, much to our delight.

One of its showiest features was this bush that I named a "cloud bush," since its gauzy blooms/foliage/??? makes it look like it's enveloped in fog. I wish we'd thought to ask its owner for its name*...

cloud-bush up close...

in this case, the panoramic shot shows off the "cloudiness" better, I think

She also had this handsome snapdragon-ish fellow that we also didn't get identified*...

I took many, many more photos of flowers, trees, and berry bushes on our various strolls through the neighborhood, the cemetery, and elsewhere. I'll be sharing some of those with you in the weeks to come. When you have such a short growing season as the folks do in northern New England, it pays to make a big splash while you can!

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*Updates: the cloud bush is called, at least in Colorado, a "Pink Champagne Smoketree"...very descriptive, don't you think? And another friend commented that the last flowers might be hollyhocks. Maybe? Nope, I think it's foxglove. Thanks for all the flower id help!

Wordless Wednesday: Madeline is the Best!

Cemetery tourism

This large, lovely cemetery is just a few blocks from the kids' house and I've had many walks through it during my stay in Portland. It's called Evergreen, and I'm sure that's what it is, given all the pines, hemlocks, and spruce throughout.

I've always been interested in cemeteries on my travels; it's so interesting to see how they differ from, and resemble, each other from one region of the country to the other. (I spent a lot of time in another cemetery, half a world away, that was near my flat in London.)

And the New England ones are particularly fascinating since you usually can find much older graves than in those in my neck of the woods.

Since I was able to spend so much time in Evergreen (and a lot of it walking slowly with a toddler—you notice SO much more this way!) I was able to notice all kinds of interesting features, which I will proceed to share with you now.

Indeed some of the graves are pretty old, although you can't always tell their age by how worn the headstones are. Some have obviously been refurbished or replaced, but I imagine the ones on the right above had not. They are in the older section of Evergreen, where we saw some birthdates in the late 1700's. (I saw some older ones in another cemetery that I'll briefly mention later on.)

What particularly caught my eye, however, was how both older and newer gravesites had almost all stand-up headstones instead of the flat ones that I'm used to seeing (see my parents' headstones at the bottom of this page).

Here's an example of this style on a newer family plot:

The older ones aren't always so regular and consistent in their styling...

...but some are...

Some of these individual headstones only had initials on them; it's assumed, I guess, that everyone who's interested will know who everyone is (although it's been my experience with family photos, that the names of and relationships among the older generations are often lost, no matter how familiar people were with this information long ago).

Others went a little further and had first names given, like the lovely stone on the left, commemorating a relative named Louise.

Some displayed what seemed like a rather inefficient method of giving birth and death dates—they would say the number of years, months, and days that a person had attained when they died on such and such a date, rather than just giving the two dates. Of course, information is not always complete, as I saw many headstones without birthdates on them. But if you know enough to do this calculation, why not just put the birthdate on the stone? Victorian over-elaborateness, perhaps?

Some other interesting features on offer at Evergreen:

bell from a Portland fire engine, in use 1879-80

sealed tombs that looked for all the world like locked-up hobbit holes!

The other cemetery I visited briefly while in Portland is the Western Cemetery over on the Western Promenade.

It's older than Evergreen; I saw a few birthdates there in the 1730's. A large percentage of the headstones were worn almost smooth or sadly in need of repair, but one category that had obviously been replaced and well-tended were those of military veterans. I was pretty impressed to find several veterans of the War of 1812 (!) buried here, as well as a large number of Civil War vets. Here are one of each:

I also saw this lovely stone, and the name of the person buried there seemed an apt admonition among so many sad reminders of young men dead in our wars...

Sad as such reminders are, I still find cemeteries to be such peaceful, restful places, and I love to include them in my tourism itineraries whenever possible.

Plus, they're great places to feel the grass between your toes, and, perhaps, ruminate a little upon the chains of memory that connect us all, from those long gone to those whose life journey is just beginning...

Wordless Wednesday: Just keepin' an eye on things

Home sweet home in Portland, ME

Our Maine-r kids live in such a lovely neighborhood! 

As I've toured it in slow motion (the way you do when accompanied by a toddler) I've been continually impressed with the handsome style of the old homes in the area. Beautiful structures, and so different from what I'm used to in the almost-desert southwest.

Many of them have such wonderful features—like the inviting front porches on the one above, and these other examples:

And of course it doesn't hurt that it's an old neighborhood (the kids' house was built in 1911!) with lots of gorgeous old trees...

...don't worry, there will be a tree post or two coming up soon!

But the most striking thing to me is just the different structure—tall and narrow, with lots of handsome windows. When there's no need for air conditioning, during the short, warm summers, cool breezes from outside are a must. And, I imagine, letting in some winter sun for passive solar heating is also a plus.

Plus those handsome porches are set 'way off the ground, to accommodate the basements that we just don't have in our part of the world.

Regardless of the practical reasons that these homes were built the way they are, they are just flat out gorgeous, aren't they?!

Now, we've also taken some jaunts a little further afield, and seen some even more spectacular, and even older residences. During a walk along Portland's Western Promenade the other day we saw these old showcases...pretty spectacular, with no doubt equally spectacular views of the Fore River joining the bay (and the airport, today, but that probably wasn't in the plan when these homes were built!)...

As regal as these houses are, though, we're still partial to our home stomping grounds. I'll be showing you more of this wonderful area in posts to come. 

East or West, we think home is best!

Raking muck (and putting on a show)

There's been a lot of work in the neighborhood lately (my Maine neighborhood, that is) on the storm water intakes.

Most of them have newly stenciled warning signs with super-cute lobsters like the one you see above. (You can learn more about Casco Bay here.)

But even if everyone follows this admonition, there's still a lot of muck that gets washed down a storm drain. And not only are the drains not very large, the gunk that gets washed down them might adversely impact water quality in the bay. (They are working very hard to improve the coastal and tidal water features around here, as I learned the other day on my walk around (or, more accurately,  part-way around) the Back Cove.)

So periodically the muck gets raked out. Or, more precisely, flushed out and vacuumed up. Much to the delight of the neighborhood kids (including my little granddaughter) who watch the operation with intense interest.

the grandma and kids here had been following the truck around all morning!

On our walk the other morning, we encountered a worker who was more than happy to take a break from this (as he admitted) rather tedious job to explain the process to us and answer our questions.

What happens is that the long tubes on the front of the truck (a Vactor 2100, if you were curious) suck muck out of the sewer, helped along by high pressure water applied from a nozzle conveniently stored on the side of the vehicle.

He kindly let us look down into a partially-cleaned-out drain which I snapped on the left. If you enlarge the image you can see the lovely brickwork that makes up the walls of the drain...obviously constructed in a more craftsmanlike (and labor-intensive) era.

The morning before we had our talk with the muckraker his colleague had worked in front of our house, providing probably close to half an hour of toddler entertainment (which is really saying something!).

I had noticed that after doing the vacuuming, he re-positioned the truck and then looked for all the world like he was pumping stuff back out of the truck and into the drain via the flexible blue hose on the back. (This appendage is in the red box in the photo below, which also shows the guy shooting that high pressure water down the drain.)

So I asked our garrulous friend about that. Sure enough, something goes back down the drain every once in a while, but it's not slurried muck, as I suspected, but just water. There are apparently filters and screens inside the Vactor's tank that retain the solids while the water can go out into the bay via the drain in a relatively clean condition. 

As a matter of fact, the EPA requires that the water go back down drains in the same neighborhood where it was mucked out, I suppose to keep undesirable elements from spreading. (I admit to being not too clear about this part of the process.)

Anyway, I found this unusual operation to be as fascinating as the kids did, although from a Dirty Jobs/engineering aspect rather than just an interest in large, noisy machinery. 

Thanks for indulging my desire to share this aspect of New England utility work with you!

Back Cove at high tide, with part of the Portland skyline