Rain, rain, rain.   But not flooding and not freezing so guess we shouldn't complain even if the ground in places is a bit soggy, as in enough to ruin a good pair of NIKE 811s, my favorite shoes.

The drive through the marshes today as I went to lunch with the Scarborough Seniors, showed yet a new pallet of colors.   The new green coming up around the old brown which is now much darker and taken on a reddish hue, and the taller nearly black stalks left from the hardier reeds, tell us regardless of the unseasonable chill in the air, rebirth is happening.   The random neck and head of an egret here and there are like punctuation marks in the middle of a sentence.  Nature seems to take care of the Maine salt marshes in a way the Everglades in Florida doesn't enjoy.   We almost never have a burn to turn the scene to black.  The highway is never closed because of the thick black smoke the way it is from the sweeping fires beside Alligator Alley.   The winding canals with their mucky sides at low tide and their over-flowing banks at high tide, might well keep a fire from getting out of hand I suppose.   Although in 1947 when the fires swept to the ocean in Kennebunkport, neither marshes nor canals stopped the rolling fireballs until they had consumed all in their path.

The ocean was at half-tide, incoming, grey and a bit wild.   Three hardy surfers were out there trying to catch a good wave.   There were a lot of swells but it was too early in the tide to produce really good curlers.   One of the men rode a small wave in, came ashore and after stowing his board atop his white oversized pick up truck with a business logo on the side, peeled out of his wet suit and went on his way.   I suspect since it was that time of day, he was on his lunch hour getting a quick fix of his favorite pastime.   Skinny to begin with, he looked like a walking stick in his skin-tight, all black neoprene garb from head to toe.   But I got a good look and he looked incredibly happy, not the grinning kind of ecstatic happy but just really happy-with-life happy.   

Plants to put in the ground, some seeds from two years back I am going to toss in to see if they still have life, and digging up a dandelion that wants to drive a rose bush out of existence,  I am going into the last of May and early June with what I hope will be a "happy-with-life" look.   Maine is a good place to live and truth be told, I am pretty happy in what I am told are my "golden years."

Have a happy day.   

Long winter - welcome spring

It seemed winter would never move along so Spring could settle in, but in the last few weeks great mounds of snow at the edges of parking lots and on the edges of the roads in the country (away from the coast is "country) have melted away.   As usual the sand from road care was left behind along the edges of the roads, and the sweepers which creep along picking it up scatter nearly as much dust as they gather.   Not to mention the traffic tie-ups they cause crawling along at 5 miles per hour.  Anyway, the ducks are back in the pond; Mrs. in her best brown feathered dress and he in his fancy full colored tux.   They paddle around in the pond, occasionally going under, and he waddle up the bank and cross the road for a daily constitutional.  That worries me.  I don't know why they cross the road when their pond is so safe and handy.  

The turkeys, which entertained us all winter coming for their daily ration of corn and seeds, have now withdrawn into the trees to sit on their eggs.   The Toms are no longer waking us at day break.   All winter there was one very small hen who never quite fit in the flock. She often laid in the sun while the others pecked around.   Now she is the only one I ever see, all by herself.    The deer came regularly and decimated a lot of the trees and shrubs.   I was hoping they would really eat more of the tree behind my house as I think it needs to be taken out anyway.   Well, maybe we need to keep it so she will have something to munch on next year.

The fountains are back in the pond.    The marshes are full with tidal excess and the grasses flooded with water and populated with tall white egrets and occasional great blue herons, short legged herons and geese, are changing to that beautiful gold that reflects the sun and comes just before they get green with summer heat.   I remember when farmers used to ted that marsh grass for fodder.   No one bothers now to do that.   So it lays flat in the fall, and becomes the soil, eventually, for more of the same.

It is beautiful and I am grateful for another spring to enjoy it.

jmajor@maine.rr.com