Sunday morning in Maine

We are definitely geographically challenged. We decided to make a pilgrimage to the coast of Maine, as we do every few years. We came last year, with those thoughts in the backs of head "one last time" but then here it is another trip around the sun and Maine is still here, and so am I.....



Nathan and Katie made the fall vacation trip that we always did when the kids were young - September to Nag's Head, N.C. Katie's on maternity leave until early October, and since she's a teacher, this might be a once in a lifetime opportunity for her. They invited us, but we had already planned the trip to Maine for two weeks later. However, I had not rented a house, and when I found one available the week immediately after Nathan's trip to N.C., it seemed the perfectly logical route to come to Maine by way of Nags Head, then spend the night in Maryland at Matthew's and Larisa's to break the trip into two parts and visit even more grandchildren. That's a lot of miles! Greg drove every one of them so far, it's a tradition on vacation, even though I do most of the "around town" driving.



The oral chemo is both a blessing and a curse, I guess, when you're trying to fit in a trip. With IV chemo, you get the dose, hang low for three or four days, and then slowly start climbing out of the hole. With this every day stuff, it's less intense suffering, but spread over the whole two weeks, so just generally feeling crappy all the time. Not really crappy, just enough to not take much interest in doing anything, or having an appetite. Unfortunately, it hasn't affected my weight yet. Last evening we stopped at the grocery store on the way in to get something quick for dinner, so we wouldn't have to go out. Boxed salad, frozen potatoes, couple of lobsters and some steamer clams. The smell of the garlic rosemary potatoes was the end of my appetite. I had to eat to take the chemo with food, so it was bread (very good bread, I might say) and 7-up. Though I did have a few of the clams.



There's such a difference in the quality of the ocean between Nags Head and here. Sometimes the beach at Nags Head is still, this time it was quite windy and rough for the two days we were there. And the Outer Banks, being a barrier island, always gives the sense of the ground moving beneath your feet. It's measurable, of course, from season to season they will have lost so many feet of shoreline, the Cape Hatteras Lighthouse has been moved - twice, I believe. The sand shifts and you can't stand in one spot or you sink. Houses we have rented in the past thirty years have fallen into the ocean. I remember the very first time we went to OBX in September, we stayed in a house called the "Beach Baby" that was cheap because it should have been abandoned. At high tide you could step off the back step (it wasn't on stilts) right into the water. It had a room with bunk beds and another room that was a combination kitchen and bedroom, basically a double bed in the corner where you might have put a table. We went in September, the weather was absolutely glorious as it can be only in September or October. But the next week a hurricane hit that area directly and took out most of the beach along that strip, including a lot of the beach road. In the footage shown on national news, there was video of a wave coming up and taking the Beach Baby. I have a confession to make. I stole something from that house, well, I traded. I had taken my own cookware, not knowing what the house provided, but the Beach Baby had a square cast iron frying pan that I really liked, so I traded one of my pans for it. I still have it and use it very often. I felt so guilty for that short period of time before I saw the Beach Baby tumble into the ocean, and for a while after that I had pangs of guilt.



The Maine coast, however, is completely different, being built of huge boulders and very little sand. It's not a beach for walking, unless you're a bit of a mountain goat (I'm not). On the other hand, the air is moist and temperate this time of year and so the vegetation is lush right to the edge of the water. The houses that are for rent are old, old family home places that have been retrofitted with plumbing and sometimes cable tv, and wireless internet (yay!). Many old families live here year round, and you don't get the feeling of transciency that you do in the southern beaches. It all seems very old and solid and New English. But you don't get the rolling, rhythmic surf, either. In that way it's kind of like being beside a great big lake. Except with salt water, and lobsters.

It's chilly here, and it makes me think of the fall chores that we'll have to attend to at home. Greg has pretty much taken over everything except the thinking about them, since I'm on oxygen most of the time. But I can still make lists! The sun room needs just a light cleaning before the plants come back in. I always prune them hard, even though it's the wrong time of year to do it, they grow so much over the summer outside that they have to be cut. And it's the one time I really go against my organic gardening principles. I spray them down with Sevin, let them sit for a few days, and then give them a good bath with the garden hose. I don't want to bring in spider mite and scale, and Sevin is the most reliable way to de-pest everything at once. I'm thinking about getting rid of some plants this fall, so let me know if you want something, maybe you can have it. The sun room is so full that by February I can't see through the plants to the outside very well.

We haven't yet decided what to do about housing for the chickens, so that's the issue that will require the most effort on my part (making a plan). Likewise, there's a pile of mud on the back side of the pond that washes back into the pond when it rains hard - don't want to think about leaving it there all winter long. There's the drainage ditch that I started digging with the backhoe - it has to cross the driveway, not an easy task, and possibly be encased in concrete for that section. I'll do the tractor work and the planning, but not the shovel work, you can be sure! Some time during that time, the leaves will fall and need to be gathered, and that begs the question of what we're doing about changing the gate to the garden, and then we're back to the question of the chicken accommodtions. Oh, my. On the way home from vacation, we'll make a master plan.