JOURNAL
For People of a Certain Age –
“Mona Lisa, Mona Lisa, men have named you
You're so like the lady with the mystic smile.
Is it only 'cause you're lonely they have blamed you
For that Mona Lisa strangeness in your smile?
“Do you smile to tempt a lover, Mona Lisa?
Or is this your way to hide a broken heart?”
(Brooklin, Maine. Apologies to: Mona Lisa songwriters Ray Evans and Jay Livingston, singer Nat King Cole, and artist Leonardo da Vinci.)
This is the image that appeared yesterday in our monthly column in the Ellsworth American. Click on the image to enlarge it. To read the column, click MONTHLY COLUMN, above.
As usual, our annual winter trip to the tropics consists of visiting our stair landing and admiring our Hibiscus bloom. It’s a curious experience to be there while snow covers the ground outside the windows. This flower is the first of 2019.
The bloom offers all that it has during the day – an exotic explosion of unfurling colors and soft shapes meant to attract pollinators. At night, it wants to rest alone and closes itself tightly. This bloom soon will fall to the floor, a victim of its own exuberance. But, there are at least two more buds waiting for their chance to give away a Hawaiian vacation. (Brooklin, Maine)
Common Cattails (Typha latifolia) look like corn dogs on a stick most of the year. Now, in the bare winter, those Cattails that have discharged their seeds (which is most of them) look like cannon bore cleaners after a big battle:
So, why are these native plants called Cattails? It has to do with a short time in the lush summer, when a wiggly, cat-tailish male spike appears for a while atop the female corn-doggish flower cluster:
Native Americans and our original settlors not only ate most parts of this plant, they used its “down” or “fluff” for lining moccasins and papoose swaddle boards and stuffing quilts and pillows. During World War II, when kapok (a buoyant tropical fiber) became unavailable, Cattail down (also very buoyant) was used in American Navy life vests.
(Brooklin, Maine)
It’s snowing as we speak. We brought a camera to the desk about 15 minutes ago because a yearling White-Tailed Deer slowly slipped through these spruce trees outside our office window – and we weren’t quick enough. We’re ready and waiting for the other three members of our daily deer quartet to follow. We write and look up; read and look up; drink coffee and look up; listen to Maine Public Radio and look up; take this image and put the camera down ….
We realize that Mother Nature (again) has decided that we need to work on Patience and Acceptance. We finally agree: things are good enough the way they are. Click on image to enlarge it. (Brooklin, Maine)
This is the tide eagerly coming to us in Great Cove on New Year’s Day, 2019. Our two daily high tides in January range from almost 9 to above 12 feet. (Imagine an 8-foot stick arising vertically at our low tide sea edge; at high tide, its top would be almost 1 foot to more than 3 feet under water.)
If we had stayed on the spot from which this image was taken, we would have been under water at high tide. With such relatively large ocean bulges here, we usually can see the tide’s small waves chasing each other to the shore. (Brooklin, Maine)
Yesterday was dark and moody. There’s a lot said and shown of the sparkling and bright side of the January weather coin here, but the moody side seems to have been repressed. It’s understandable that some feel that gray winter days here are dull and dreary, perhaps even bleak.
Yet, when we go out into most of those days, we find them to be more provocative than anything else – especially when we come to familiar places such as the one above. That place yesterday spoke to us of a silent eternity and wooden lace that three months ago was soft layers of reds and yellows and greens in which fall warblers teemed. (Brooklin, Maine)
You’re more likely to see Barred Owls in the winter because they court now and they often emerge from the conifer shadows to soak up the warming sun.
They’re the only common owl in Maine with dark eyes. (Barn Owls have dark eyes, but they’re uncommon in Maine and rare in these parts.) All other northeastern owls have bright yellow eyes.
Barred Owls get their name from the vertical, jail-like bars on their chests. The first image is of an injured captive bird; the other two images here are of our wild neighbors.
(Brooklin, Maine)
We had the first prolonged snow flurry of the new year yesterday. It wasn’t much more than a long sneezing fit by Mother Nature, but it was enough to brighten the landscape without causing traffic troubles or making the grazing white-tailed deer dig deeper than their big noses.
Yesterday, most of the fishing vessels lay at their moorings while the constantly-prowling snow trucks salt-sanded and plowed the roads into slush:
There wasn’t enough snow to plow driveways and, by early this morning, things had brightened.
A thin frosting covered garden plants and fields.
The light snow posed no navigation or browsing problem for our resident White-Tailed Deer who were out for their morning walks.
(Brooklin, Maine)
We humans have been decorating our homes with replicas of other animals since our homes were caves. Why? That’s part of the question raised by the fascinating January Exhibit at the Friend Memorial Public Library in Brooklin, which opened yesterday.
Titled “Animals That Bring Us Joy,” the show was conceived by neighbor Si Balch. It fills the Library exhibit room with more than 50 animal works from area homes. Some are fine works of art, others are fine works of fun, and others are fine works of I’ve-Never-Seen-Anything-Like-That-Before” – all joyous to their owners. There’s even a game that you can play: how many figures can you find in the background of the beautifully drawn framed picture of horses below?
Here are a few more images of pieces in the show, which must be seen in person to be fully appreciated:
Highly Recommended. (Brooklin, Maine)
Yesterday, we posted images of daybreak on that first day of the year – a miserable combination of driving rain and 22-mile-per-hour winds in semi-darkness. About three hours after those images were taken, the sun finally arrived. It made up for its poor sunrise performance with a respectable New Year’s Day sunset, shown below:
All’s well that ends well. (Brooklin, Maine)
This is the first daybreak of 2019 in Naskeag Harbor, a few hours ago, which means it’s among the first daybreaks in the United States. (The top of very nearby Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park wins the contest for the first sun rays most of the time – when there is sun – according to a study last month by Yankee Magazine.)
Let’s face it: our new year baby is not pretty – she was snow and sleet in the early a.m. and whipping rain with wind gusts of 22 miles per hour at the appointed time for “sunrise,” when these images were taken. Glad we don’t believe in omens.
(Brooklin, Maine)
We say goodbye to 2018 today, the last day of December. The month has many moods, from melancholy to merry, including weather variations that change the character of familiar sights.
December waterscapes can range from silver haze to eye-popping clarity, from smooth water to jagged sea ice :
Snow in the woods and ice in the streams and ponds can create alternative December worlds:
Most of the lobster boats brought in their traps and ended their seasons in November. But, some remained alone in coves and others sprouted booms and masts and became trawlers when the scallop fishing season began in early December:
The December snows mostly were of the fat-flake variety that sprinkled more beauty than inconvenience; we even had sun during one snow flurry:
As for winter birdlife, the Great Blue Herons that we saw during the month were of the abstract kind, but they did have a merriness about them; the Wild Turkeys thrived during cold snowy December days as well as on unusually warm ones, and a Great Black Hawk — a native or Mexico and Central America that is extremely rare here — decided to celebrate the winter holidays in Portland, Maine, where we “caught” it:
As for flora, there was little Winterberry here to brighten December roadsides this year, but the Red Twig Dogwood did its best, while Rhododendron leaves curled in the cold and their firm buds held a promise of a colorful spring:
The annual Holiday Concert of the Bagaduce Chorale always provides musical color in December. It was magnificent this year:
December, of course, contains important secular and religious holidays, which were celebrated in Brooklin a number of ways, including neighbor Judith Fuller’s road banners and the General Store’s decorations:
The Winter Solstice occurs in late December, when the low sun often produces spectacular sunsets to end the year with drama:
(All the above images were taken in Down East, Maine, during December 2018, except the images of the Great Black Hawk, which were taken in Portland, Maine, during the month.)
We’ve been getting whip-sawed by the weather this December: below-freezing days interspersed with abnormally warm ones and, every now and then, torrential rain or feeble snow flurries. The result is not good for the vegetation juices, which start to awaken only to be put into shock. The wooded streams, however, seem to love life now: they’re running clear, cold, and full; sometimes icing over, sometimes bubbling unimpaired. The image below was taken yesterday morning:
(Brooklin, Maine)
Sea ice is having trouble forming around here, as you can see by the recent images below. We’re beginning to wonder whether we’ll see significant cold and snow this winter.
December is turning out to be a wimp. Our daily December temperatures consistently have been warmer than their historical averages, according to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s records for Hancock County (measuring Bar Harbor mostly).
No major snowstorms are predicted for here in January – yet. Historically, January is our coldest month, but there is no prediction of Arctic blasts coming down from Canada any time soon.
All the same, based on experience, we won’t be putting away the show shovels until mid-April. (Brooklin, Maine)
It’s snowing here and has been for hours. The weather doesn’t seem to bother our neighbors who prefer to dine al fresco, as you can see from this image taken this morning.
That’s probably because there’s no wind, it’s relatively warm (34oF as we speak), and it’s getting warmer – the kind of day that turns to rain. But, so far, it’s been a nice flurry.
(Brooklin, Maine)
With the regular National Football League schedule coming to an end, it’s time to consider the proverbial question: Why are Bald Eagles like Rob Gronkowski? As with the Patriots’ famous tight end, the size of Bald Eagles makes it difficult to appreciate their travel speed. The birds can travel horizontally at 30 miles per hour on their long, loping wings, often an eight-foot spread.
The natural speed can become obvious when the 265-pound Gronk is running among linebackers and the 12- to 14- pound Eagles are diving (“stooping”) from great heights. The birds plummet at up to 100 miles per hour on partially folded wings. If you’re close enough, you can hear the wind whip through their feathers, including their leg chaps.
(Brooklin, Maine)
Sometimes, on a December morning in ice-skimmed Great Cove, when Mother Nature thinks that no one is watching, she tries to copy Tom Curry. She never succeeds, but she often gets close.
(Brooklin, Maine)
The 5 Back Road folks hope that everyone can find a little joy and merriment today.
(Brooklin, Maine)
“Christmastime” and “Christmas” mean different things to those along the spectrum of Devout Christian to Devout Consumer. Somewhere in the middle of that spectrum tere must be a shared sense that a time of giving and receiving and merriment and joy and food and song is a good thing for everyone, even if a little fictionalized folklore is mixed in.
For example, tonight is the part of Christmastime when Santa Claus (or St. Nicholas) arrives for children who believe in him. For some of those children in rural communities, he’ll be expected to land his deer sled on the roof and come down the chimney; for those in apartment buildings, he’ll have a pass-key to the apartments of those children who believe.
Around here, it looks like we have only one combination of reindeer-supportable roof and a Santa-sized chimney, and it’s over 100 years old. See the image above of the WoodenBoat administration building. Other local house chimneys may seem to cynics to be too small for an old man who has a little round belly that shakes when he laughs like a bowlful of jelly. Don’t believe them.
(Brooklin, Maine)
