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Not the greatest picture of our first meal there, but it does show
the two new house-owners and most of the guests: Nancy was away from the table at this time. (Click on the picture for a full sized image.) |
Chapter 2:
Our first week in the new “Little House” in Maine
Saturday, 23 July, Red-eye! Mark, Madison, and I pulled in to Green Airport in Warwick (“Providence”) at the assigned time in the morning, picked up our baggage, and went to the car-rental. Our plan was to meet the other Greene folks at Chelo’s, a family-style restaurant right there in Warwick. Nancy and Ellen would meet us there, too. The weather was frightful, really heavy downpours from time to time, but we all got there before too long. One of the decisions that was made was conditioned by Madison’s longing to see and take care of the new young goats that were now living at home (well, actually in a goat shed with a nice fenced-in run, convenient to the poison-ivy banks that the goats are fond of). So, instead of driving north with Mark and me and Nancy in two cars, Madison would stay in Greene for one night. Since Madison would be coming north the next day, ferried by Diane, Harris decided to stay behind one day too.
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The lunch at Chelo’s was convivial and giddy. Devlin, in particular, looking forward to two weeks in Maine followed by a week in California, simply could not keep still, so great was her excitement.
The drive up was easy enough, surprising since it was a summer Saturday, and we found the house in good shape. Cindy had been busy all Spring furnishing and making sure all was in order, often with Mike’s help. They appeared, with the elder Kings, just a bit later in the day. My only pictures from this day are from dinner time: you see the only others that I took that were any good over there to the right.
Weather this day and the next was amazingly hot and humid. Mark and I both found it impossible to sleep upstairs in our bedroom; we both wound up sleeping in the living-dining room downstairs: M in a chair, J on the floor. It was only afterwards that we discovered that among the furniture that Cindy had bought, the sofa down there was a pull-out, and we could have slept on that.
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| I know it’s big, but I just wanted to show the detail. I specially like the reflection of the clouds in the water. |
Next day was Sunday, 24 July, and we were expecting Diane to be driving up from Greene with Madison and Harris and a load of bicycles for the kids to ride around on.
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To tell the truth, I don’t recall how we spent our time in the morning—probably shopping for food and cleaning materials—but I seem to have opened my camera up around two in the afternoon, when many of us sat on the deck of the Cottage (across the street from the Little House) and read or watched the view. As you see in all the pictures here, it was a fine clear day ornamented with pleasing cumulus, especially in the distance. The picture to the right (big image, small) was taken at about the same time as the big one above.
It’s a simple pleasure, but I find it endlessly fascinating to just sit and watch the tide go in and out here. Howard pointed out to me long ago that you can tell which way the tide is flowing, because the mouth of the river is over to the right, and when the moored boats are facing right, to the mouth, the tide is coming in; when left, in-land, it’s going out.
Not long after I took those pictures of the boats in the Scarborough River, Diane drove up with two girls and three bikes. That's not her car you see in the picture to the right (big image, small), but the rental that Cindy and Mike, Thelma and Howard, came up in the day before. But there the three young Greeners are, definitely ready for a full two weeks of fun. I think they had elaborate plans, even as early as this, for as many trips to Old Orchard as might be possible.
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To forestall complaints from Mark, and to answer questions from others, I should explain that, growing up in southernmost New York State, I rarely heard the word “minnow”, never in reference to these fish: they were always killies. My dictionary says that the word is a regionalism, localized to New York, but I suppose it must also be common in northern New Jersey, since the Dutch influence is just as great there.
There were loads of terns flying about, and we soon saw why: the water was alive with killies, Mummichog more specifically, I suppose. They were jumping out of the water for their own reasons unknown to me, but this did seem to be suicidal behavior, since the terns were going after them most assiduously. In the upper left picture here (best in the big image), you can see a couple of them to the right of the right-hand bird. Besides that, you can see a number of circular-pattern ripples, where fish have broken the suface just a few moments earlier. The lower-left picture shows the leaping killies even better, also seen best in the bigger version. The tern in the upper right picture looks to be in relatively good focus, but notice how blurry the wing-tips are, in spite of the 1/800 sec shutter speed.
Seagulls are a dime a dozen here, in a way taking a picture of one is like photographing a crow or an English sparrow. Nevertheless, nevertheless… It’s an ordinary Herring Gull, of course, Larus argentatus. I read somewhere that a hundred years ago, they were considered to be an endangered species; but then they learned to eat garbage.
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Diane left too early to have supper with us; as I recall, she was going on northward to see her father. So the cast of characters you see below was the ones we’d be having dinner with for the next several days, till Nancy left for Rhode Island. After dinner, we relaxed, all the easier since the weather had broken, and the unseasonable heat was no more.
| Sunday Dinner in the New Little House | |||
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| Clockwise from the head of the table: Howard, Devlin, Madison, Harris, Mike, (Jonathan), Mark, Nancy, Cindy, Thelma. | |||
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No pictures from Monday the 25th, and just a few from Tuesday, 26 July. Mason had arrived from a stint as a river guide in California, so could join us for meals. Although the Moorman-Kings and the elder Kings were staying at the Cottage across the street, the Little House has a much roomier space for eating in, so most of the meals that we had all together were here. (Pictures to the right.)
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Wednesday, 27 July, only a few snapshots, but they are kinda nice. (To the left)
No pictures from the next day, but on Friday, 29 July, I decided to get up early and walk around the salt marshes along the edge of Jones Creek, the arm of the Scarborough River that the Cottage backs up onto.
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Jones Creek near Pine Point Road (Route 9), from Google Maps |
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I knew that the tide would be low around this time; otherwise I’d be getting wet up to my ankles at the very least. It was kind of fun tramping around on the marsh grass, but I can’t say that I saw lots that was very interesting. I did like the views of the red house nestled in the woods on the other side of the wide stream, as you see in the fifth and sixth pictures to the right.
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The Queen Anne’s Lace in the last picture in the block to the right is the ordinariest thing you can imagine, but I’ve always wanted to get a good picture of the little purple floret that is invariably there right in the middle. In fact, it was the absence of that feature in the plants growing by the side of the pond in Greene that made me think that they were something different; and when I used the wild-flower guide there, I realized that what they had growing there in such a picturesque setting was really Water Hemlock, Cicuta virosa or C. maculata, described as one of the most poisonous plants in North America. I read somewhere that one root of the plant is enough to do a cow in. This became of the utmost importance when the Greene folks decided to get goats: all the Water Hemlock had to get pulled out.
I took pictures on the walk back to Jones Creek Drive. This is beach country, so naturally the hedgerows are filled with beach roses, R. rugosa. These plants are so omnipresent along the East Coast that I always thought that they were native, just like the poison ivy that’s so often found amongst them. They’re really from Japan—but no matter, they’re very well adapted to growing in salty environments. I especially like the two bottom pictures, since I’m a sucker for any opportunity to photograph an insect or two in a flower. Notice that the bee, maybe it’s even a wasp, in the last picture is not a regular honey bee. Not as fat or fuzzy, and the stripes on the abdomen are very different.
The kids left for a weekend back home so that they could participate in the pie-making contest of a local festival. As it turned out, Harris won a first prize for her pie, and also for some cookies. When the Greene folks came back, it was in full force: all five of them, and Walter, M’lyn’s father. They would just fit into the Little House, so Mark and I moved across the street to the Cottage.