Celebrating the apple

One of the things my sister Ellen and I did while she was here was go to the annual Apple Festival at Lakeside Orchards in nearby Manchester. We both enjoyed it enormously. As Ellen put it, it was a bit of Americana, New England style.

Besides being able to go out into the orchards to pick your own apples -- which Ellen and I didn't do, as we'd already purchased a few of their apples a couple of days before, from the bins they have in their little shop (which was when we found out the festival was coming up) -- there were craftspeople with their wares on display...though not as many as in previous years...little kids being led around a circle on a pony (this actually made me tear up, it was so sweet, smacking of another time), a very energetic young magician keeping a whole slew of kids, and accompanying parents, highly entertained, lots of those big plastic things for kids to jump up and down on, and the usual hotdogs and hamburgers being sold by church groups.

There was also a really excellent bluegrass band, which I gather was actually parts of two different bands: the Sandy River Ramblers and the Maranacook String Band. For this outing they were being billed as Stanley Keach and Friends. The fiddler, Jay Smith, who disconcerted me by bearing an uncanny resemblance to my nephew, was absolutely fantastic. He was very serious while he played, and indeed, didn't seem to be having much fun. However, when I went up to the edge of the stage during one of their numbers, to try to get a written sheet with information about them (no luck, but I put my name & email address down on their list to receive announcements about their upcoming concerts), I glanced up at him and said, "You're great," and he flashed me a big smile and said "thank you." Boy, do I love talented people.

I was quite disappointed that there were so few craftspeople. Later I found myself talking to one of the people who organizes the event -- to my amazement, she was one of the parents attending our Children's Hour at the library the following Wednesday, and mentioned that she had seen me at the festival -- and according to her, the event has been the victim of bad weather so many times in recent years that many of the craftsmen decided not to take the chance. And then of course, the weather was lovely, if a little windy.

But despite the reduced options for shopping, Ellen and I each managed to find something for the other. She bought me two beautiful pair of earrings, at the super bargain price of $5 each, and I bought her a little mouse in a dress. Not a real mouse, of course; one of those things you put out as a decoration. Ellen is very into decorating her house for the different holidays, the different seasons, and she declared that Little Mousie in her red dress would be perfect for Christmas.

All in all, a splendid afternoon. Followed, on both our parts, by a nice long nap.  One of the fortunate things about this visit: we were on a par in terms of stamina.

Playing host

My sister Ellen, who lives in Colorado, finally arrived for her visit, a couple of weeks ago.  It was her first ever trip to Maine, and she was properly impressed, though this was not one of our "glorious" autumns. I think it was too warm and dry too long for the trees to produce their usual flaming scarlets/salmons/ yellows. And naturally, after two solid weeks of absolutely gorgeous weather, the weather chose not to cooperate the week she was here. The first day after her arrival (in the dead of night) was forecast to be the only reliably sunny day of the week, so we raced off to the coast, as a coastline, dotted with almost obscenely picturesque towns, is one thing they do not have in Colorado. We hit Rockport and Camden -- lots of photo ops in both places, with their beautiful little harbors full of boats -- would have gone on to Rockland, but both of us had run out of steam.

At Camden we had lunch in a very pleasant little Greek cafe called Cafe Mediterranean. Adorable, tiny interior, but we ate out on the small terrace, which was lovely. I've since learned, at good ol' Tripadvisor and elsewhere, that the place has gotten very mixed reviews, and my own review would be mixed. Service was painfully slow, as several people mentioned (and we were hungry!), the dish we both ordered -- salmon kebob -- was o.k., to my mind, but not distinctive, which was also true of the tzatziki we shared. When properly made, this yogurt and cucumber dip is out-of-this-world delicious. Admittedly, I may have been spoiled by having spent six weeks living in Greece, years ago, and experiencing the real thing.

Actually, small disappointments were connected with most of our dining-out experiences. Another day we had lunch at Slates, located in Hallowell, and arguably the best restaurant in the Augusta area (see Note of Feb. 15, 2010). While the dish I ordered, crab and artichoke crepes, was excellent, when it first came to the table it was barely warm, and I had to send it back. And since, being "purists," Slates does not believe in having a microwave on the premises, it was a bit of a wait for the dish to be warmed up. This has happened to me more than once when I've eaten at Slates. Don't know if the problem is one of kitchen management, so that the multiple orders at a particular table are not ready at virtually the same time, or one of simply needing a better heat lamp (or maybe they don't have one of those, either!)

One day we "did" Portland. It was cool and very grey when we first got there, in the late morning, but the sun had come out by the time we finished our guided tour of the very interesting William Wadsworth Longfellow childhood home, which made it possible for Ellen to get some postcard-perfect shots of Portland Head Light, where we headed after lunch. For lunch we sought out a little-hole-in-the-wall place called Fisherman's Grill on Fore Street (not to be confused with The Fisherman's Net, which is just a few doors down from it) that I had found recommended online. This place is extremely hard to find/easy to miss. And there are few seats, so I imagine if you got there at lunch time (we arrived at almost-two) you would either have to wait for a seat, or take out. And service was very slow, with only one counter man, with whom you place your order, and one cook. Even though there was only one couple ahead of us, we waited over half an hour for our duplicate orders of the crab-and-swiss toasted sandwich and cup of clam chowder.

However, the sandwiches were delicious, and so full of crab that we both found we could eat only half, and so were able to take the other half home for a later snack. And we agreed that we'd never had a clam chowder with as many clams in it. An unusually thin chowder, more like a milky soup, to my mind. But very good.

Our one unalloyed lunch success was at the Riverfront Barbeque and Grill, located on Water Street in downtown Augusta (see Note of April 29, 2010). We both had the seafood and sausage jambalaya -- hot and spicy in true Cajun fashion -- and loved it. And they give you so much, we took home enough for another meal each.

For me being able to eat out is one of the pleasures of traveling. Ellen is pretty much as uninterested in cooking as I am, so I hope (and trust) our various gastronomic experiences were a treat for her.

Doesn't look or feel like fall

Well, it looks like we're not going to have a fall this year. Although we've had four or five scattered days of pleasantly autumn-like weather, mainly it's been unseasonably warm and dry. Today, here in the Augusta area, it's gotten up to 77 degrees; tomorrow it's supposed to reach 80! And this is Maine, second weekend in October.

The result of all this warm, dry weather is that the trees have not been undergoing their usual dramatic transformation. The leaves are just drying up and turning pale brown or, at best, pale yellow. There is a huge tree behind my house (neighbor's back yard) that is always a joy to behold every autumn, because the leaves turn a vivid orange. But not this year. Many of the leaves have simply dried up and fallen off already -- we've had a number of windy days that contributed to that -- but those that remain are an unprepossessing pale brown.

This same phenomenon occurred two years ago (see Note of Sept. 19 2009), and my friend Fae and I speculated about its being the result of global warming, that perhaps the chemical processes the trees usually underwent were being inhibited by the warm temperatures, especially at night. This year the warm, dry weather has gone on even longer and the lack of color is even more striking. I feel sorry for any tourists who have driven up this weekend to look at the "gorgeous fall foliage," because they're going to feel cheated. Gorgeous it ain't.

Nature, behaving strangely

Here it is the beginning of the third quarter of the month of September, in the state of Maine, and all the leaves are still green. They are tired and worn out, a dull green, as opposed to the perky, full-of-promise lime green of early spring, or the serenely lush forest green of mid-summer, but still, green. Oh, there's the occasional patch of red or orange here and there, but it's very occasional. When we have a breezy day there are leaves all over the place, but they are dried-out, brown leaves that seem to have fallen from the trees without going through the mandatory color change first. Even the big, gorgeously round tree I pass every day on my way to work, that normally starts churning out the colored leaves in the middle of August, is still determinedly green, though many of its leaves are curling at the edges and turning brown.

A word to the wise: don't come leaf-peeping for a few weeks.

Has it been too dry? Is it because we still haven't had a frost? We have been having absolutely gorgeous weather for the past month -- sunny days, highs usually in the upper 60s, low humidity -- after a perfectly miserable June, when it rained or was overcast for all but three days, and July, during which if it wasn't raining it was the hot, humid weather that makes it so much hotter than whatever the thermometer declares it is. I have been enjoying these so much more cheerful and comfortable days as much as everyone else. People come into the library saying "isn't it a beautiful day?" and of course I agree. But I'm thinking, why aren't the leaves changing? And I wonder why no one else seems to have noticed.

I just checked online, and at scifun.chem.wisc.edu, on the Chemical of the Week page, learned that low temperatures destroy chlorophyll, which of course makes leaves green, and if those low temps. stay above freezing, it enhances anthocyanin (the red pigment found in some leaves) production. So maybe it has been too warm -- even at night the temperature has been dropping only into the lower 50s/ upper 40s (I can hear my Texas relatives, still enduring daily highs in the 90s, yelping "Upper 40s!") which may not be cool enough.

The information on this Chemical of the Week page says one thing that really confuses me: "bright sunlight also breaks down chlorophyll." But in that case, why are leaves so green during the summer? Admittedly, at the beginning of this summer, here in Maine, we didn't have that much "bright sunlight," but other places have lots of sunshine during their summers, and they still have green leaves.

But then, chemistry has always left me in the dark. I realize it's life at the most basic level -- that it isn't just biology as destiny, but chemistry as destiny -- but that just means life at the most basic level leaves me in the dark.

And why aren't the leaves changing?

A feast for the eye and the soul

All of last week Maine was playing its trump card. Never mind the severe winters that linger too long, the cold, muddy springs (until those two weeks in May when all the flowering trees are in bloom and the sun finally shines), the hot, humid, but all-too-short summers. Comes the autumn and all else is forgotten. Last week “we” Mainers, and the leaf peepers from elsewhere, were treated to autumn colors in all of their splendor on mild, sunny day after sunny day. Clear blue skies the perfect backdrop for the reds, the yellows, the oranges, the paler salmons, intermixed with the still remaining light green of leaves that haven’t changed yet, the darker green of the white pines, the hemlocks, the balsam fir that will never change. On my commute to work I was forever saying “Oh, wow,” or “My God, how gorgeous,” or “”That’s so preeeetttty!”

It isn’t just a matter of color; there’s a sense of texture to all the trees. I think that may be partly because the leaves on a tree are rarely all the same color at the same time. If nothing else the edges of the leaves may be a different color from the surface (rust and bright red, for example). But also some of the leaves may be further along in the process, so some may be a bright orange, while others have more of a brownish tinge to the orange. And there’s the fact that the leaves are in the process of drying out, which effects their texture. So what you find yourself driving through is a kind of pointillist painting, passing tree after tree of impressionist dots in different colors, producing a living (but, interestingly, dying) masterpiece.

My soul craves beauty. It has feasted, this past week. Today, the Columbus Day holiday, was supposed to be another such day – even at 10 a.m. the radio was still declaring it would be “mostly sunny”, although cloud cover was solid – and as it turned out, it was overcast all day. The leaves still look lovely when it’s gray, but not so striking.

I’m off from work all this week. The Starving Librarian can’t afford to go anyplace, but is looking forward to napping whenever she feels like it, to not eating sugar, which I consume far too much of during the work week, in an effort to stay alert and on top of things every minute, to writing (last night it was until 3 a.m.), including catching up on some neglected correspondence, and to reading old letters. What, you ask? My old letter collection is quite impressive: I have every letter or card I’ve received from anyone since 1967, and copies of most letters I’ve written since 1976. This is my conservative (as in conserve) self at, I suppose it could be argued, its worst. But a current writing project calls for remembering what was happening in my life 30 years ago, and those letters are proving a godsend. The things I had forgotten, or remembered incorrectly. The things we forget, or remember incorrectly...

Pumpkins!?

This evening when I went to the supermarket, there were large pumpkins sitting out front, waiting to be purchased and whisked home to sit on someone’s front porch. On September third! Surely it’s entirely too early for this. But there’s no question that once Labor Day is past, Maine goes into autumn mode. We’re still having warm days, but the humidity of deep summer has lessened (though it will undoubtedly rear its ugly head a time or two before disappearing altogether), and the evenings are pleasantly cool. There is even one tree on my commute to work that has been displaying more and more of its autumn foliage for several weeks. Obviously it’s got a gene loose, but any day now the other guys are going to hit the color switch, and things will start happening. And the season that is many people’s New England favorite will be in full swing.

A lot of people in Maine have vacation homes they call camps, though you and I would probably call them cottages or cabins. These are not usually fancy, and sometimes are only about an hour, maybe a couple of hours’ drive away. Their owners will often go up for a weekend, or a few days at a stretch. Folks are now starting to shut these up, and return to home base. This, too, seems way early to me. But life in Maine is so tuned to the seasons. Summer is the time to spend time “up at the camp.” Autumn is the time for pumpkins on the front porch (I always get a little one, and it sits inside my house), visiting apple orchards to pick a bag or two of McIntoshes or Cortlands. (I love to do this), and politics (Maine folk are very involved in local politics). Winter is the time for skiing, snow-mobiling, and shoveling, shoveling, shoveling. This last I do not love, but Mainers of all ages do it, grumbling about it while looking upon it as one of life’s givens. And spring is the time for grumbling about how long the winter has gone on, for rain and mud, for the coming of green, and flowers, for gardening. And then it’s summer and it’s time to open up the camp.

By the way, I recently realized that I made a mistake in my Note ‘And where were you born?’ I said that all the people who know me are five other people away from knowing one another (me being the first of the famous six degrees). But of course, they’re really only one person away from knowing one another, that person being me. Good grief. I’m surprised no one called me on this. But then, maybe no one’s reading...