The Asticou Azalea Garden, Northeast Harbor, Maine

The Asticou Azalea Garden is a local landmark, and like most locals, I rarely manage to visit our landmarks during their seasons. You New Yorkers out there, betcha only visit the Statue of Liberty when you've got enthusiastic houseguests, right? Same here.

Well, I finally made it to the Azalea Garden during peak bloom this week for the first time in seven years. Wow, what a show! Most of the year it is a calm Japanesque garden in shades of green and white, with granite bridges and a dry sand garden. In June, though, it goes from tea ceremony serenity to full-on Kabuki glitz. 

Azaleas in flaming orange, hot pink, vivid purple ...

and a few calmer patches of pale pinks and lavenders.  There are lots other rare and unusual plants here, many of them moved here from Reef Point (Beatrix Farrand's estate in Bar Harbor) when that garden was dismantled in the 1950s. This beauty:

is Paeonia obovata var. willmottiae, a woodland peony. I find that purple center mesmerizing.

For anyone planning a visit, the Garden is open during daylight hours from May through October. If you're anywhere nearby, go quickly, it's in full bloom right now!

Beachcombing series No.69 (Old Orchard Beach, Maine; April 27 and 29, 2013)

Old Orchard Beach, Maine; April 27 and 29, 2013

Old Orchard Beach is a classic Southern Maine tourist destination, with a long sand beach, a restaurant-lined pier, and an amusement park. I'd been there once in the summer when my kids were little, and just about lost my mind with all the crowds and the heat (and the over-excited toddlers.) In April, I love it. This time was gorgeous, sunny but not hot, and lots of people (but not crowds) were out enjoying the sudden end of a long winter. The beachcombing finds are a little different from what I see here in the north, most notably the skate egg case in the middle. I've never found one of those on Mount Desert Island. If you're not familiar with them, skates look a bit like rays (you've probably seen photos of manta rays), and we have seven species here in the North Atlantic.

Also in this photo are razor clam shells, driftwood, seaglass, coralline, a moon snail shell, a sanddollar, a blue mussel shell, an acorn, and an oyster shell. The snails and the oyster are shells I don't see often on my home turf. And the driftwood was fantastic. I have to say that Old Orchard Beach in late April was a treasure trove of small, beautifully rounded driftwood bits. There was even one piece, just above the egg case, that formed a perfect ring (but is just a little too small for my fingers.)

All together a very happy day of hunting!

I've been translated into Gallifreyan

Much to my astonishment, one of my photos was posted on the Dr. Who tumblr, where someone thinks this looks like Gallifreyan writing. Dr. Who is one of those shows I've been meaning to watch for years. I probably first started intending to watch it in the late 70s, and have been a regular non-watcher ever since, so I have no idea what Gallifreyan letters look like. But in one of those peculiar coincidences novelists like so much, I have a two-day series of medical tests coming up that will leave me alone in a hotel room in another city, and I had just announced to my friends that I plan to use the time to catch up on Dr. Who. So by the end of next month I may be able to say whether the Tumblr comment was true or not.

Incidentally, the photo has been re-posted 4,236 times so far, which unquestionably means it has been orphaned from the original link and is floating out in cyberspace, and I am kicking myself for not having put my name on it. I started signing everything I post online about a year ago, but haven't gone back to update older work. Ah well, if you see these watches in your internet travels, say hi for me, ok?

Sand Patterns, Ogunquit, Maine

The beaches at Ogunquit had an amazing variety of patterns left by wind and wave action. I couldn't stop taking photos of them:

Maybe because my home shoreline is so rocky, sand fascinates me. There's a marvelous blog called Through the Sandglass whose author, Michael Welland, offers up fascinating tidbits about the physics of sand movement, creatures that dwell in sand (like the sand skink, which swims right through it!), and other sand-oriented info.

Yes, that stretch of beach was really and truly pink. I believe the color comes from nearby formations of pink granite. Doesn't it look like strawberry frosting?

June 2, 2013

P.S. Just found out the pink in pink granite (and therefore in this sand) comes from a mineral called  feldspar.

Ogunquit, Maine

My sister and I ran away to Ogunquit a couple of weeks ago, and I got to play tourist in my own state. It was awesome! The company was great (yay, sis!), the weather was idyllic, and the town was adorable. Every morning I woke around seven and went straight out for a long walk along the beach.

 On my way back to meet up with my sister (whose circadian clock runs about two and a half hours later than mine) I stopped at the Bread and Roses Bakery for a chai latte. Wow, those were good - not too sweet, with lots of cardamom. And such nice people, too.

 

They do have rocks in Ogunquit:

but the star of the town is their incredibly long, sandy beach.

I had lots of company on my walks:

 eiders ducks in the waves,

 periwinkles in the tidepools,

seagulls keeping an eye on me in case I had something edible,

a curious mockingbird inspecting my camera,

 and my sister!

Ogunquit has the tiniest, cutest, most-likely-to-end-up-at-Disneyland harbor I've ever seen. Even the signage was quaint. It's hard to believe that the expensive hotels and summer homes can coexist with working lobster boats (which have really loud engines and start work at the crack of dawn.) I guess they've made it work somehow, and good for them!

A few more picturesque buildings:

I'll close with my two favorite photos from the weekend:

 A Blue Mussel shell in my favorite purply-blue,

and an extremely self-expressed gathering of gulls.

A Gift and an Experiment

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To be more precise, it is an experiment in giving a gift to you. Well, I hope it's a gift, anyway! I've wanted to make some photos available as desktop wallpapers to you for a while, and have had the darndest time figuring out how. I think Google Docs may be the answer, and I'm wondering if you'd be willing to try this image out for me? It is 1600x1200, so it should fit all but the most gigantic monitors. It won't make a very nice print, but it will make a lovely background on your computer. Absolutely free, of course!

5/22 ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS 
1. Click on the photo. Just a regular click, not a right-click. It will open in Google Docs. (You don't need to have an account there.) 
2. When it opens in Google Docs, look at the top left of the screen. 

 See the little black arrow pointing down? Click that to download the photo. 
3. A window will pop up something like this:

Go ahead and save it. It will probably go into your Downloads folder, depending on how you've set up your computer. 
4. Open your System Preferences and choose Desktop. Select the Download folder (if that is where you saved the image.) Then select the image and choose "Fill screen."
5. Look at your desktop - there should be amber waves of grain in front of a sandy beach.

Please let me know if you have any trouble with the download process, if the copyright information is subtle enough, or any other constructive criticism that springs to mind.

Just two little notes about copyright:
1. Other bloggers, please don't share this as a direct download on your own blog, but feel free to link here so your readers can enjoy.
2. Please don't sell this image in any format or use it for commercial or editorial purposes.

And while we're here, anybody recognize that view?

Beachcombing series No.68: The Shore Path, November 3, 2012

The Shore Path, Bar Harbor, Maine; November 3, 2012 (Beachcombing series No.68)

Well now, here's the very last Beachcombing still life from 2012, number 68. After number 67 sat on my light table for six months I felt guilty, somehow, as if I'd been procrastinating on a process that should have been much more efficient. But when I finally got the test prints back, I really really liked the photo. It seemed brighter and more balanced and somehow more satisfying than many I did last year. And I like this one a lot. So maybe my object-arranging-mojo needed a break. I spent a lot of the winter inland, too. You'll have noticed there are photos of snowstorms and beavers and fox cubs and frog eggs, but there haven't been any beaches yet this year. It certainly wasn't a conscious decision, just that when I've wandered, my feet have been going into the swamps and the woods this spring rather than down to the shore. But a couple of weeks ago I took a mini-vacation with my sister and we spent two days walking along the coast in Ogunquit, Maine. It's taken me a long time to edit all the photos, but very soon you'll get a nice, long post full of views of southern Maine beaches. It was so exotic - they have sand over there!