Fall in Maine

After our quick trip to New Hampshire, we were back in beautiful Portland, where the colors were spotty, but still impressive to us.

As is often the case on our visits to this great city, some of the best scenery is just a few blocks away, at Evergreen Cemetery. Here are a couple of the best leaf-peeping views from this trip:

the monuments are impressive, too

But another great scenic spot, though rather unexpected, was this nice soccer complex in Grey, Maine, where eldest granddaughter's team was in a tournament. I mean, grass-covered fields (what a concept!) and autumn woods as a surrounding backdrop—what more could you ask for?

Because of the increased level of activities which take up more and more of the family's time, we didn't have a chance for the kind of extended day hikes we made when the kids were younger. But we did take time for a short visit to Jewell Falls, a lovely little bit of woods and rocks that's part of the Fore River Sanctuary. This waterway is an important part of Portland, forming the boundary between Portland proper and South Portland, as well as hosting all kinds of sea-going traffic.

However, upstream at Jewell it's much quieter. Although there wasn't much water coming over the falls, and there was some major refurbishment work going on with part of the trail. But it was still a nice interlude and place for grandchildren who are part mountain goat to do some climbing about:

blue jacket in upper left is one of the climbers

And of course a trip to Portland wouldn't be complete without at least a short excursion to one of its wonderful beaches. 

Higgins Beach at low tide

Some boogie-boarding was attempted, but it was a little chilly (!) so the brave surfers didn't last long. I only waded up to ankle depth. 

I'll close out with a shot of a couple of trees still (and one is always) green....even without the fall colors, the flora around here is always wonderful to see:

A bit of downtown Portland

I have often blogged about my fondness for Portland, Maine—not only special as home of more than half of my grandchildren, but also because it's just such a cool little city.

Our recent late Christmas trip was mostly spent indoors with family stuff, but we did get out and about in Portland's Oldtown a few times.

Much as we were looking forward to snowy adventures, the weather didn't cooperate with the white stuff until just before we left. So I don't have winter-wonderland photos for you, just a few randomly interesting structures and objects we happened to see.

Like the handsome building you see above, across the street from a park where the kids enjoyed climbing on rocks and generally running off the sugar from their Standard Baking pastries. I was quite taken with this edifice; here's a closeup of some of its cute decorative elements:

A rather cool thing about the park where we played, in addition to the rocks, were a couple of these at first mysterious post-boxes (it is Post Office Park):

I was immediately reminded of the post-boxes in London, and how you can tell under whose reign they were erected (see one at the bottom of this post). But the Asian characters were a puzzle...

...for a few minutes, anyway, until we saw this plaque (and you'll notice I was able to sneak a pic of Oldest Granddaughter into the story).

I saw another informational plaque down by the harbor when we went to one of our favorite eateries. 

Portland has been welcoming to folks escaping from bad situations for a long, long, time, and the tradition continues with their embrace of refugees from many recent conflicts. Like I said, a really nice city!

Picnic with history

A lovely picnic spot, you would say, right? And it certainly is! But that's not all you get at Fort Allen Park on the Eastern Promenade in Portland, Maine. It's practically oozing with military history information!

Just take a look at the handy sign on the left (click to enlarge). Wow! Revolutionary and 1812 War stuff, Civil War stuff, Spanish-American War stuff, and a monument to some seriously impressive World War II stuff. 

I'll show you the individual monuments and artifacts from each of these conflicts below. But first you can admire the late afternoon sun on Casco Bay in the picture above. Something about the light at this time of day, at this latitude, makes the water so amazingly, magically, blue. Like, the bluest blue you can imagine!

But now, on to the history.

There is another very useful sign that enumerates the various forts that you can see, or almost see, from this vantage point. 

Early in the nation's history, this area was not only a major industrial area, but also a strategically vital port. Plus, it's the closest our territory gets to those European powers we weren't completely sure bought into our independence. Hence, these fortifications, many of which were built, as you can see, around 1812, when these worries burst into conflict.

Some were also erected during the Civil War, but the main attraction in the park with regard to that war was this:

It was the site of a massive reunion of Grand Army of the Republic vets, which must have been an impressive gathering. (I left the gorgeous Eastern Prom houses in the background of this shot for your enjoyment  ) 

Moving on to 15 or so years after this reunion, we have this impressive piece of artillery:

What's most notable about this gun is where it came from: the Maine...yes, the "Remember the Maine" Maine! But wasn't the Maine sunk, historically astute readers might ask? Of course it was, but somehow this piece of it got recovered. As this plaque verifies:

But I personally don't think this is the most impressive informational plaque in the park. My vote goes to this one:

The Portland isn't here, and actually doesn't exist any more. But the mast you can see on the left in the picture at the top of my post is from it. And in the plaza where it's displayed are some informational panels describing this ship's remarkable record in WWII. Just take a look at those battles listed on the plaque above. I mean, it was everywhere in the Pacific war! All the big battles, for sure. Then to top it off, while the surrender that happened on the Missouri is the famous one, the Portland accepted the surrender of an important naval base at Truk, in the Carolinas, at the same time.

The city of Portland has every right to be proud of its namesake vessel, don't you think?!

Portland churches of various kinds

OK, this isn't really a church but as far as I'm concerned it's just as sacred a space...it's the Portland Public Library. Specifically the lobby in the downtown main building. We went to story time here a couple of times with the Amazing Granddaughter and I also got some supplementary reading for myself.

Schools are another category of sacred spaces. Here's Deering High School, with an impressive main building worthy of a small college...

Memorials of any kind (not to mention cemeteries) also count as church-like spaces, making one stop amid the bustle of everyday life to contemplate something larger and more serious. Here's a Civil War memorial in the middle of downtown Portland. The glass-fronted building behind it is the Library; you can probably pick out the distinctive light fixtures from the picture above just inside...

In addition to these not-really-churches, there are lots of gorgeous actual church buildings around town, and I was able to snap shots of a few...

impressive steeple on St. Joseph's Convent 

Deering Community Church, conveniently across the street from a nice coffeeshop

State Street Church

Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception (snapped from the car)

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Thanks to the AG's equally amazing Mom for help with identifying these structures!

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...

Maine's Fabulous Flora

Although we're here at the end of the flowering season (not quite late enough for fall color though, sadly) there is still an abundance of photogenic floral feasts for the eyes in and around Portland.

The super-cheery daisy-ish flowers you can see above were evident in many gardens. As were some related species...

Another flower type that shows up a lot in Portland yards are these hydrangea trees. In my part of the world, you only see much smaller versions in pots, but, it's amazing what happens when you have adequate rainfall and cool nights all year...

We also have altheas (or Rose of Sharon, as they seem to be called up here) in Texas. Although I think they're more common in Houston than in San Antonio; the ones in our yard came from my Mom's in big-H. But even over there you don't see such stupendous bushes of these flowers...

Close up, they look just like mine, although my guys don't have nearly so many friends!

Before venturing further afield, here's a selection of some more lovelies in the Deering neighborhood:

the morning glories, especially in the–duh!–morning, were incredible 

ENORMOUS sunflowers in the community garden

nasturtiums–which always remind me of our yard in Montana

and how about these lily-like beauties!

There's a nice little woods nearby that is a favorite walking destination, partly because of these lovely flowers...

...well, not just the flowers, at least for the younger set. Their seed pods, which are beginning to develop, can be induced to pop open, rather alarmingly. Showing this to Gramma was great fun for the experienced Mainers I was walking with. But I liked the flowers, too.

On my previous post about the various coastal views I enjoyed, you can see some of these striking goldenrods. But here is a closer view:

a few individuals in a large field of the flowers

Also near the coast you can find some incredibly aromatic beach roses...

Sorry I couldn't provide the fragrance!

At another beach, the blooms were gone, but they left behind the largest rose hips I've ever seen! They look like very healthy cherry tomatoes, don't they!?

I don't know if they would make good tea or not, but they were excellent for decorating sand castles!