In the Right Place: War and Peace

We have far fewer Eastern Gray Squirrels here than we do their smaller cousins, American Red Squirrels. However, as far as we can see, there is no problem with these natives getting along here.

Eastern Gray Squirrel

American Red Squirrel

It’s different in England and Ireland, where our Gray Squirrels were introduced and have a scarcity of effective predators there. Those Grays are in the process of wiping out the native Red Squirrels by out-competing them for food. In Maine, both the Gray and the Red Squirrels are considered to be potential household pests and both may be hunted. In fact, there is no limit on when and how many Red Squirrels may be killed here. Nonetheless, they’re cute outside the house.

(Brooklin, Maine)

March Postcards From Maine

The proverb about March coming in like a lion and going out like a lamb was an understatement for us this year.  March came in like a howling, snow-breathing dragon and left us with its apologies in the form of beguilingly calm last moments. The month's fantastical extremes can be illustrated with two images:

We had four significant Nor’easter snow blizzards this March, with enormous tides and winds approaching 50 miles per hour at times. Fortunately, we had little significant damage here and the sights were spectacular. Here are a few:

The White-Tailed Deer found it easier to stroll in the roads, and the Wild Turkeys had some tough times, often having to fly instead of walking in soft snow; barn doors were opened on sunny days for the goats and chickens to stretch their legs:

The winds of March had us watching the many interesting weather vanes here, including these:

March was a series of freezes and thaws from the beginning. The thaws brought fog to the shore and fields, followed by cold, cleansing snow. In between, rain chains became ice chains and melt chains.

On March 22, the Glass Eel Elver fishing season began, as these valuable baby American Eels came back from the sea on their annual migration to find the streams of their parents. And, our eel fishermen had their nets waiting for them.

As March was leaving, it showed its best: the wonder of that hopeful time that is neither winter nor spring:

(Brooklin, Maine)

For larger versions of the above images, as well as many additional images of special moments in this March, click on the link below. (We recommend that your initial viewing be in full-screen mode, which can be achieved by clicking on the Slideshow [>] icon above the featured image in the gallery to which the link will take you.) Here’s the link for more:

https://leightons.smugmug.com/US-States/Maine/Out/2018-in-Maine/March/

In the Right Place: Lush

This is yesterday morning as the rain came down within the fog and began freeing the snow-captured needles, mosses, and lichens.

The well-watered woods are beginning to look lush again. (Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Immigration

For some people here, the arrival of flocks of adult Robins on lawns and fields is the harbinger of spring; for others, it’s the swarm of baby eels at the mouths of our rivers and streams. The annual arrival of the strange and valuable babies (Elvers) of American Eels (Aguilla rostrate) has begun. Their long and dangerous trip to become residents has just one final major obstacle: walls of nets to capture them, including these at the mouth of Patten Stream yesterday:

Maine’s fishing season for those lucky enough to get an Elver license is March 22 through June 7. Fyke (“Fick”) Nets seem to be the preferred fishing equipment for them here. These nets are large, fine-mesh funnel traps that end in a cylindrical netting bag that contains cones that make it easier for the fry to enter than to exit.

These babies actually are cute in an eely way – they’re transparent (except for their eyes and spinal cords), which is why they’re also called “Glass Eels.”

Most of the trapped Elvers are air-shipped in special containers to Asia, where they’re raised to nontransparent adulthood and then sold as delicacies. The price paid here to fishermen by Elver dealers during the first week of the season ranged between $2,700.00 and $2,800.00 per pound, according to government reports. That price should decrease as the number of migrating eels increases daily.

Part of their high value is due to their miraculous lifestyle. American Eels spend 8 to 25 years growing up in brackish or fresh water, where they are a favored food for many predators.

When they feel ready (no one seems to know how that happens), they swim down into the ocean and out to the Sargasso Sea south of Bermuda. After spawning there, the adults die.

Their eggs become larva that drift into the Gulf Stream and transform into the little glass eels that migrate in the winter and spring back to the fresh or brackish waters in which their parents grew up. (We haven't seen an adequate explanation for that trip, either.) Most of them will avoid being caught by fishermen, especially at high tide when some of the nets -- even the floats -- are submerged.

 (Surry, Maine)

In the Right Place: Preparedness

The weather gods aren’t trusted around here after four March blizzards. Although the snow is melting steadily in our current “heat wave” (41 degrees F, as we speak), many people are keeping their generators oiled and their cross-country skis at hand for a while.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Squid-Like

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)

In the Right Place: Local Color

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.

In the Right Place: Too Much of a Good Thing

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)

In the Right Place: Feeling Blue

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)

In the Right Place: Spring Arrivals

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)

In the Right Place: Time and Place

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)

In the Right Place: Scratching

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)

In the Right Place: Reemergence

Familiar forms are reemerging from the deep snow, silhouetted by the bright sun that is bringing them back to us.

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Mixer

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)

In the Right Place: Contrast

Simplicity and Complexity  within a quarter of a mile from each other:

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Nory III

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)

In the Right Place: Crooked Questions

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)

In the Right Place: Vengeance

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)

In the Right Place: Down East Riddle

What is brightly colored, lurks alone in dark places in the summer, and gathers in groups in sunny front yards in winter?

(Brooklin, Maine)

In the Right Place: Maine Real Estate

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)