JOURNAL
As we speak, the snow is melting in the warmth of 43 degrees (F) and we’re entering that never-never time between Winter and Spring. This image is of an iconic boathouse that is a recurring joy to all who travel between Blue Hill and Brooklin.
It has the squid-like ability to change its look depending on the environment – rail, snow, sun, high or low tide. However, unlike a squid, the boathouse doesn’t change to hide in its background, but to say, “Look at me now!” (Brooklin, Maine)
Why are we thinking that there probably aren’t too many of these weather vanes in Indiana? Did you wonder about the colors and numbers on the striped lobster trap buoy?
They’re not the street address of a barber; Maine regulations require fishermen to put their license numbers on their buoys and their lobster traps. The buoys also should not be of similar colors to other buoys in the same fishing area. (Brooklin, Maine) NOTICE: Our posts will be suspended for a few days while our computer is in the hospital getting a brain transplant.
If you sneak up on a Wild Turkey here today, we think that you won’t hear the usual “Gobble-Gobble, Gobble-Gobble”; we think you’ll hear “Enough Already, Enough Already.”
It’s snowing as we speak, and it’s supposed to continue to do so until we get up to three new inches of snow on top of the piles that we already have. This is our fourth significant Nor’easter snow storm in March, and the month is only two-thirds over. (Brooklin, Maine)
It’s about mid-day yesterday as we take this image on the first day of Spring. The temperature is in the low 40’s (F), the sky is clear blue, and the water is tinged with green. In a word: beautiful. We’re looking across a small bay to a 940-foot hill that looms over a small town, all of which share a name –Town of Blue Hill, Blue Hill, and Blue Hill Bay.
When the Town was settled in 1762, the Hill was densely covered with trees, mostly Fir and Spruce, that emitted a dark blue hue when seen from a distance. (The Hill still does that under certain conditions.) As we speak, this morning also is beautiful. However, our weather tellers are forecasting our fourth March snow storm for tonight and tomorrow. (Brooklin, Maine)
Our spring-blooming Hibiscus gave birth on the windowsill yesterday to an outlandishly-dressed flower. This young dandy looked out at the deck, saw more than a foot of snow, and nearly shuddered its stamen off. We’ve decided not to tell it about the snow storm coming tomorrow evening.
By the way, Hibiscus flowers reportedly are edible and, when dried, considered to be delicacies in some countries. They’re also ingredients in teas that are used as diuretics. (Brooklin, Maine)
This old chapel has a complex and beautiful way of making us muse about times gone by. Its walls and windows have for many years framed and featured the trees that surround the building – the trees’ broad shadows on the clapboards, their slim reflections on the glass, and their sinewy bark viewed through the darkened church.
This is Eden Chapel, built in 1900 beside Naskeag Road; it is closed, except for hymn-sings and other special occasions. (Brooklin, Maine)
The heavy snows here have forced many Wild Turkeys that aren’t fed by humans to leave the fields and forage for nuts and seeds in deep woods. Wild Turkeys apparently are not bothered much by cold weather, but research has found that they don’t do well scratching through more than a foot of frozen snow.
So, they often search for food in stands of large conifers, where the evergreen branches act as snow umbrellas under which there is less drifted snow. (Brooklin, Maine)
Familiar forms are reemerging from the deep snow, silhouetted by the bright sun that is bringing them back to us.
(Brooklin, Maine)
Cover those ears! It’s sunny out there, but it’s very cold and going to get colder over the weekend. We’re caught in a mixer bowl that continues to churn us in winter weather.
Our mid-week Nor’easter blizzard moved on, sucking cold Canadian air down on us, creating potential winter storm conditions for next week. Today’s early morning temperatures here were in the 20s, with whitecap-producing wind gusts up to 16 miles per hour.
Over the weekend, the weather tellers predict, actual temperatures will not exceed the teens and the bone-penetrating wind will continue. Nonetheless, today’s sunny sharpness is beautiful. (Brooklin, Maine)
Simplicity and Complexity within a quarter of a mile from each other:
(Brooklin, Maine)
The third Nor'easter within the first half of March swept in slowly, surely, and steadily about 11 a.m. yesterday. The blizzard never stopped snowing here until about 2 p.m. today. It looks like we got more than two feet of snow on our property. All the images in this post were taken while it was snowing -- sometimes a fine mist of snow, sometimes a near white-out.
MARCH 13, MORNING
The storm blurred the landscape as it invaded Naskeag Harbor and streaked across the fields along Back Road. Our driveway was plowed in the early evening as the snow came down.
MARCH 14, 2018, MORNING
It snowed all night and into the early afternoon, varying in intensity all the time. We had a few momentary power snaps, but never lost power long enough for the generator to come on. An incomplete survey indicates that we did not lose a single tree. The vengeful climate gods seem to have a soft spot for Brooklin.
At about Noon, conditions lightened up, the snow was very fine and disapating, and one of Jerry Gray's crew plowed us out again.
(Brooklin, Maine)
A recent one-sided conversation with our good neighbor Dottie, pictured below, inspired two questions: (1) Why do we call a man’s hair patch on and under his chin a “goatee” and a female goat’s similar hair patch a “beard?” and (2) Why does that get my goat?
As to the first question, beards can grow on both Billy (male) and Nanny (female) goats, but not all goats have beards.
As to the second, apparently there once was a practice of placing a friendly goat in a racehorse’s stall overnight to keep the horse calm before a race; competitive owners sometimes stole the horse’s goat (“got their goat”), making the horse upset and unable to give a peak performance in the race. (Brooklin, Maine)
We’re under a Winter Storm Warning for our third serious Nor’easter in the first half of March. The vengeful climate gods are expected to return and drop up to another foot of snow on us starting about noon tomorrow.
Meanwhile, we’re avoiding the already-accumulated snow by walking the rolling and winding back roads around here, sometimes not having to share the dramatic winter landscape with a single car or truck. (Brooklin, Maine)
What is brightly colored, lurks alone in dark places in the summer, and gathers in groups in sunny front yards in winter?
(Brooklin, Maine)
This is an image of a seasonal high-end condo down the road about a mile. It has wonderful water views and is taken each spring and summer by members of the famous Martin family.
(Brooklin, Maine)
Additional Images and Text Added March 9, 2018
MARCH 8, MORNING
It’s been snowing and blowing here since yesterday afternoon. The weather tellers are now predicting that we might get 12 to 16 inches of snow, which isn’t bad for a March lion. We haven’t lost power yet, but did have one annoying power snap, just long enough to intimidate all the digital clocks and get them blinking. The snowflakes are small, but they’re sticking to branches and needles. Fortunately for the weighed-down trees, the wind gusts are mostly less than 10 miles per hour. Here are some morning images:
MARCH 8, AFTERNOON
The snow continues incessantly, sometimes very fine, sometimes fat; still no significant wind and no flooding. The private drives through the woods have been plowed once; the public roads are being plowed and "salted" continually; driving is no problem, except for one part of Back Road, where a tree is down. Here are some afternoon images:
MARCH 9, MORNING
We awoke to a beautiful morning and with thanks to the weather gods for sparing Brooklin from any significant damage during two March Nor'easters. (Our theory is that those gods signed up for summer courses at the WoodenBoat School here and want to make sure that the courses start on time.) It looks like we got about a foot of snow in settled areas of our property. Here's what it looked like at 8 a.m. this morning as we gazed to the Southwest over our North Field to Great Cove and Babson Island and other islands in Eggemoggin Reach; the open Atlantic is just out of frame to the left:
(Brooklin, Maine)
We took the image below yesterday to remind us of what a clear, crisp, hint-of-spring March day looks like. We’re in for several foul days, with icy rain and up to a foot of snow, according to the weather tellers who have issued a Winter Storm Warning for our county.
Of course, such generalizations often are not exactly right for each coastal town in DownEast Maine; many towns have their own mini-climates, depending on the size of harbors and other topography. Often, it’s snowing in nearby Blue Hill and not here and vice versa.
The remembrance image above is of Acadia National Park as seen from Brooklin across Blue Hill Bay. Later today or tomorrow, we may not be able to see across the Bay. (Brooklin, Maine)
Above-freezing temperatures are opening the ice on ponds here, bringing us to the time when we can play the cloud game with them – imagining what the gaping holes look like. Yesterday, as you see, we found Jimi Hendrix’s guitar.
(Brooklin, Maine)
As we speak, this and many other Christmas wreaths are still displayed on homes and barns around here – and they will be until at least Easter. Why? The reasons that we’ve gotten mostly are these: “That’s what my parents and grandparents did” and “I like the way they look.”
Perhaps another partial reason is that, in this land of Balsam Fir, Spruce, and Pine, Mainers have a rich tradition of creating Christmas wreaths for themselves and others. The state is one of the major producers of such wreaths for shipment worldwide and, in recent years, has been donating the wreaths for Arlington National Cemetery. (Brooklin, Maine)
This is the rolling sea from Eggemoggin Reach into the Atlantic Ocean during yesterday’s surge from Winter Storm Riley, the so-called Nor’easter that attacked the Atlantic coast:
In Brooklin, we had high tides of over 12 feet both days in addition to storm surges that increased those tides to an estimated 15-plus vertical feet of water. Here are the Town Dock and the WoodenBoat School piers, as well as what remained of Naskeag Point during the surge:
Measured wind gusts here reached at least up to 26 miles per hour. The Town Dock got a bit of a swamping yesterday during the gusts, but we’ve seen no significant damage here.
(Brooklin, Maine)
