In the Right Place: A Magic Show for Lunatics

[Above is the unobscured sun as seen here through a black polymer solar filter yesterday afternoon before showtime.]

Maine was the last state in the U.S. from which to watch our little moon totally eclipse its 400-times-larger sun yesterday through the magic of perspective. And, it turned out that the lunar “Path of Totality” through center-north Maine was one of the best places to view the spectacle – the skies were clear and it was relatively warm. We won’t have another chance to see a total solar eclipse in the 48 contiguous states until 2044.

Here on the coast, a bit to the east of the Path, the moon eclipse was not total. It hid slightly more than 97% of the sun, right above Great Cove. The sun became a slivered crescent to us and it got chilly, but the landscape never got very dark.

The only wildlife here that might have gotten erratic due to the event were a few wild turkeys that appeared to offer extremely loud gobbling praise when the eclipse was at its maximum. But, you can never tell when a turkey will get goofy. Also, at about 2:30 this dark, moonless morning, we were awakened by coyote pack howls, screams, and barks, but it is more likely that this offering was a spring celebration than a “lunatic” ceremony.

Here are selected images of the partial eclipse that we saw here yesterday afternoon:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 8, 2024.)

In the Right Place: High & Dry Meets Low & Wet

Virtually all of the snow from last week’s spring blizzard is gone from the woods. Most of our trails are in good shape, although there have been a few big tree blow-downs that complicate matters.

The bogs and lowlands are another story. They’re under more water now than I’ve ever seen in the spring. Many skunk cabbage spathes and early shoots have become submersibles beneath the lingering floodwaters.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 7, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Opportunities

Here’s a friend of mine. She happens to be over 100 years old. She also happens to be an apple tree. But none of that’s important to this post.

What is important is that she’s pointing out angles to me – her gnarly wooden ones and man-made gravel and dirt ones that, when focused on together, form an interesting composition. At least to me.

Stated another way, I’ve photographed this tree countless times. Like a good artist’s model, she has something special that can make her surroundings more attractive, no matter how mundane or functional they may be. She keeps reminding me that there almost always are opportunities to see things in a new way. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 2, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Pregnant Paws

These are the furry catkins of American pussy willow (Salix discolor) during Wednesday’s cold weather. (“Catkin” is not an endearment whispered to felines; it’s a botanical term for slim flower clusters with nonexistent or tiny petals.) Pussy willow catkins usually are one of the first signs that winter has lost its grip, but not this week – the following day we had an April blizzard.

Of course, the common name for this furry plant, “pussy willow,” reflects the resemblance of its catkins to cat or kitten paws. That “fur” only is on male pussy willows to protect their flower pollen from the elements. The male flowers have no petals or scent; they’re just stamens that are pregnant with pollen. 

The cat fur soon will be shed, allowing the stamens to cast massive amounts of dusty pollen to the wind, often producing small, drifting yellow clouds in the nearby air and sneezes in nearby noses. The wind has the job of making sure that some pollen finds eagerly awaiting female flowers. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 3,2024.)

In the Right Place: Tow Holds

Status: Yesterday’s miserable April blizzard has turned into today’s miserable April shower with temperatures in the mid-30s (F) and the prediction of more mixed snow. We still have no pole power and are relying on generator.

Image: Too much rain and snow and too many freezes and thaws have pitted and cracked our many unpaved and winding lanes and long driveways this year. One of the most practical devices for giving these narrow byways the delicate maintenance that they need is an old, towed grader such as the one shown here working on Tuesday. These graders can be towed by a truck, tractor, or even horses if necessary.

Towed graders are not as easy to operate as it might appear. The stand-up operator needs to have excellent eye-hand coordination to continuously manipulate the two wheels that control the height and angle of the blade. Good balance also helps. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 4, 2023.)

In the Right Place: Blizzard Report

Well, I just came back from a little jaunt into our ongoing spring blizzard and experienced a near white-out at one point. We lost pole power early in the morning and have been on generator since. I can say with great confidence that I would much prefer a traditional April rain shower at this time of year.

As I write, my computer tells me that it’s 33°(F) with wind gusts (sometimes sleety) of 23 miles per hour in Brooklin. So far, we’ve got about four inches of snow on the ground here on the coast. As you see, it’s wet snow that can build up on tree branches and cause them to bend to the breaking point.

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 4, 2024.)

In the Right Place: At the Creation

Yesterday, our bogs and surrounding lowlands remained wonderfully watery. You could wade through reflected clouds there and stand over the reflected sun:

Beautiful abstract montages were being continuously created and dissolved:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 2, 2024.)

In the Right Place: No Shame

Yesterday, spring was in the air and maybe elsewhere, including our north field shown here. Maybe it’s my run-away imagination triggered by my overactive optimism gland, but I’m seeing slight hints of green in the khaki-colored fields here. Soon, green shoots and wildflower buds clearly will be spreading on the field and painted turtles will be rising in the pond.

But first, weather tellers say, we, the green shoots, buds, and turtles are going to have to delay our plans and endure a blizzard at midweek that could deposit more than a foot of snow on that field (and our driveway). Old Man Winter has had no shame since he contracted Climate Change. (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on April 1, 2024.)

March Postcards From Down East Maine

March Madness this year included much more than college basketball here. It was a time for brilliant sun; torrential rain; damaging floods; super-high tides; murky fogs; unexpected snows; high winds; freezing and thawing ice, a Presidential primary vote, St. Patrick’s Day; the closing of scallop-dragging season; the opening of glass eel season; the beginning of spring (the vernal equinox); the beginning of the geese migrations; Easter, and a full moon that is unfortunately called the Worm Moon.

Let’s begin our review of the transitional month with cheerful scenes of this March’s good side, its sun and blue skies over our local bays and ponds.

March’s varied moods created special effects in the bogs, including large, plunging rain drops that created water spouts and bubbles, as well as floating targets.

Local piers pointed to sun-dazzled islands, foggy islands, and islands under siege of significant storms.

Our March woods were easy to roam under blue skies and through dappled sun, but a bit tricky when various snow flurries arrived without notice.

This March will probably set precipitation records. The downfalls engorged our wooded streams, large and small, and our culverts were working at capacity to prevent road flooding (which was not always prevented).

Incidentally, speaking of precipitation, our rain chain “downspout” seemed to become schizophrenic during all of the freezing and thawing:

The March flora was more reserved than our streams and rain chain. The American holly, skunk cabbage spathes, and ancient apple trees actually remained quite attractive throughout the month, especially when snow-dappled. Alder catkins and rhododendron buds also made decent spring appearances.

On the commercial waterfront, March was the last month of the scallop dredging (“dragging”) season, which was interrupted several times by significant storms and heavy fog. However, some of our handsome fleet sat for their portraits when the sun came out. So did a rogue scallop shell caught in March.

While March was the end of the scallop-dragging season, it was the beginning of the glass eel (aka elver) season. These migrating baby American eels from the Sargasso Sea are funnel-netted in rivers and at the mouths of streams as they travel to the lakes and ponds where their parents matured.

Recreational boats remained warm in their sheds while their mooring gear iced up outside during the month. Here you see three March scenes from the WoodenBoat School campus.

As for March wildlife, the month is when Canada Geese begin to migrate here from the south. Some will stay for the summer and breed here, others will continue on up to their namesake country.

Our resident white-tailed deer were never fazed by March’s tantrums. As you’ll see below, they even held pajama parties in pouring rain and didn’t pay attention to the cold and snow. That’s because they’re still wearing their winter wonder-coats. (It’s raining steadily in the first two images.)

March calendar events included a Presidential primary on the 5th; St. Patrick’s Day on the 17th; the vernal equinox on the 19th; the Full Worm Moon on the foggy night of the 25th, and Easter on the 31st. (By the way, that’s our heroic Christmas Amaryllis below, which kept blooming long enough to become our Easter Amaryllis.)

Finally, although March sunsets and afterglows usually are not among the best that we see, this March sunset warmed the heart while the hands froze.

(All images except the St. Patrick’s Day banner were taken in Down East Maine during March of 2024. That banner photo, a Leighton Archive image taken here in a prior March, was again posted on March 17 of this year.)

In the Right Place: Wriggling Wildlife

The glass eel (aka elver) season opened last week and here you see Fyke nets set to catch them at the mouth of Patten Stream yesterday.

Fyke (usually pronounced “Fick”) nets are large, narrow-mesh funnels with a catch container at the end and floats along the top. They usually are set up in rivers, streams, and stream mouths that historically attract the migrating eels. Those set in deeper water often take on fascinating forms that seem alive in fast-moving water:

As you may know, glass eels are baby American eels (Anguilla rostrata) that are transparent except for their small eyes and spine. They’re born in the Sargasso Sea and migrate here in the spring to return to the ponds and other fresh waters that their parents inhabited after a similar trip. In a number of years, the non-transparent, matured eels in the United States will migrate back to the Sargasso to spawn and produce more glass eels to return here.

The three-inch glass eels are the state’s most valuable form of wildlife, if you judge value on the basis of cost per-pound. Since 2015, per-pound prices paid to the limited number of licensed fishermen of these transparent wrigglers have been over $2000, except for the Covid epidemic year of 2020. Most of them are shipped to Asia to be raised to adulthood and served as expensive delicacies there.

(Images taken in Surry, Maine, on March 30, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Rain, Deer

Here you see part of a ladies-only pajama party that lasted at least two hours in steadily pouring rain yesterday morning.

These white-tailed deer are some of our “regulars”; they and others often sleep in that area of our field apparently because it faces southwest and gets warmth (on sunny days), has large open escape-ways, and it’s near the edge of protective woods.

Pajama parties provide deer the advantage of combining multiple eye, ear, and nose security systems. Their ears and noses reportedly stay turned-on in their sleep, and researchers report that they sometimes sleep with their eyes open. The deer seem to doze off only for several minutes, look around, maybe lick themselves or otherwise tend to a need for a few minutes, then doze again. They often place themselves facing in different directions, apparently to maximize surveillance.

It seems that cold and steady rain usually are not problems for white-tails. Thunderstorms and fierce winds may cause them to seek cover; but, otherwise, the deer around here don’t seem to pay much attention to the weather. They still wear their thick winter coats, on which the rain just beads up and streams off. Perhaps you can see the beading and streaming on these two when they finally arose to browse:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 29, 2024.)

In the Right Place: A Fishy Tale

It rained steadily most of yesterday and last night; it’s raining steadily as I write this, and it’s predicted to rain steadily all day. It already has caused flooding in some areas and there is a Flood Watch posted for all of our Hancock County Coastal Area until 8 p.m. tonight. March of 2024 likely will set a precipitation record here.

There already was flooding yesterday in the low areas of the woods, where raindrops were creating fascinating water targets, as you see above.  Many ponds were overflowing and, apparently, flying fish took to the trees. Well, that’s one interpretation of this image:

Spring has sprung. A leak. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 28, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Foggy Thoughts

It’s foggy today, as it was yesterday. Perhaps the most famous American observation of fog was by the poet Carl Sandburg in his 1916 poem “Fog,” a self-described form of “American Haiku.” (Haiku, as you probably know, is a stylized form of short, Japanese poetry, usually about nature; Sandburg’s poem does not quite meet all of haiku’s style requirements, but it’s a beaut.)

Sandburg described what he saw in Chicago one day, looking at a harbor in Lake Michigan:

The fog comes

on little cat feet.  

It sits looking

over harbor and city on silent haunches

and then moves on.

Most often, the fog here on the Maine coast does not arrive on little mammal feet, especially when it’s mixed with rain as it was yesterday. A larger, more threatening animal often seems responsible.

Yesterday at Naskeag Harbor, shown above, it wasn’t hard to imagine that the incoming rain-fog was the spittled, billowing breath of a giant sea serpent. As with Sandburg’s cat, our serpent moved on. It was last seen looking over the islands in Great Cove:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 27, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Down Memory Lane Again

Here you see ice-covered Great Cove Drive and the WoodenBoat School’s post-and-panel boat shed on Sunday’s cold morning. The Drive is literally named – it’s last 30 feet or so consist of a sloping boat ramp into the Cove waters, right behind the camera here.

More important, as you’ll see ibelow, the shed is protecting some of WoodenBoat’s precious fleet of small boats. As you know, I visit them regularly to refresh fond summer memories and to please some of the School’s far-flung alumni who browse these posts.

Among some favorites shown there: the big-ruddered Beetle Cat “Whimsey” in the foreground; to her bow’s port, with the white lapstraked (overlapping planked) hull, is (I think) the sailing dingy “Skylark”; and, in the center, is the green-hulled outboard skiff “Babson II” sporting her big Yamaha outboard motor.

Some of their mooring gear hangs outside all year:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 24, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Saint-Like

The March full moon, the first full moon of spring this year, appeared last night and the night before at 100 percent luminosity to us. (Some years, the March full moon appears before the spring equinox and, therefore, becomes the last winter full moon.) This year. it was shrouded in misty clouds both nights. The luna sea craters were only hinted at, but the moon had a mysterious halo that was worthy of a saint.

Unfortunately, our forefathers and native Americans did not have saints in mind when they named this the “Full Worm Moon.” That’s because it comes when the ground is softening enough for robins and fishermen to find worms, not to be blessed. (I wonder whether there is a patron saint for worms.) (Image taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 24, 2024.) Click on the image to enlarge it.

In the Right Place: Transformation Department

Perhaps it’s fitting that a plant that was used unsuccessfully to treat the bubonic plague in the Middle Ages has started to flower and provide life-saving nectar to our earliest insects. It is one of our earliest plants to flower in the spring, second only to skunk cabbage.

The plant, shown above as it was yesterday at its earliest stage, is Japanese sweet coltsfoot (Petasites japonicus). It reportedly was introduced into North America in the 19th Century by Japanese immigrants to Canada’s British Columbia. It has a sweeter scent than other coltsfoot plants, including Maine’s native sweet coltsfoot (Petasites palmatus).

The Japanese version goes through an enormous transformation in which the little one- and two-inch flower clusters shown here are replaced by sturdy stems of about three feet in length. The leaves at the ends of those stems can grow up to four feet in width and are shaped like a colt’s hoofprint, hence the plant’s name:

Leighton Archive Image

The mature leaves also are the source for one of this plant’s alternative common names: Japanese Butterbur. In days of yore before refrigeration, those large leaves were used to wrap butter for storage in cool places. By the way, the plant is very invasive; I wouldn’t recommend planting it. (Primary images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 24, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Our White Spring, Yet Again

If many April showers bring many May flowers, what do many March snowstorms bring April? Many exasperated Mainers, that’s what! As you very well may know, we had another spring snowstorm yesterday with high winds last night that knocked out pole power.

Yes, the snow was pretty. Yes, it increases groundwater. However, I’ve had enough of white prettiness; I want some green prettiness. And, we have more than enough water flowing underground now; I want some flowers swaying above ground.

Nonetheless, we might as well document yesterday’s pretty annoyance:

(Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 23, 2024.)

In the Right Place: Yesterday’s Sunny Memory

Our springtime continues as I write today while more halfhearted snow flurries outside in wind gusts of up to 30 miles per hour and a temperature of 20° (F). That is to say, a wind chill of 05 °. Did I mention the Flood Watch and Gale Warning we’re under for this afternoon, Tra-La-La?

NONETHELESS, I’m enjoying the memory of yesterday, the first full sun day here since the vernal equinox. Of course, yesterday wasn’t perfect; it also was cold and windy. But, as I say, it was sunny and clear, which was enough for those of us who are spring-starved.

As for that sun, in the images above, you see the WoodenBoat School’s pier prodding the white caps of cold, clear Great Cove yesterday morning – no snow, no rain, no fog – but a little wind. The pier points to the Cove’s protective islands, Babson Island (aka “Big Babson”) and Little Babson Island. (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 22, 2024.)

In the Right Place: A White Spring, Continued

Our springtime continues today with early morning temperatures in the teens and windchills in the single digits. Yesterday, we had another half-hearted snowstorm, mostly during the morning hours. There wasn’t enough snow to require driveway plowing or hinder travel. But there was enough snow to provide some interesting photographic effects while it was annoying us.

As you see above, the snow was dramatic while coming down and trying to bury some of Brooklin’s skunk cabbage spathes, including the unusual yellow ones on which I previously reported. As you’ll see below, less snow in Blue Hill provided accents for red-orange holly berries there:

More monochromatic scenes abounded in Brooklin, including these:

(Images taken in Brooklin and Blue Hill, Maine, on March 21, 2024.

In the Right Place: What Happened to Tra-La-La?

Yesterday morning, we had one of those events that make life interesting here. But first, a relevant fact: Yesterday also was the first full day of Spring. (The vernal equinox arrived at 1:06 p.m. the day before yesterday, Tuesday.)

Now, back to Wednesday morning. At first, it was raining in a routine sort of way and the temperature was around freezing, but rising. The wind picked up at about mid-morning and began to deliver whipping rain. Then, all of a sudden, as if a switch had been flipped on, everything turned into what you see here, a furiously raging snow flurry that was blinding at times:

After about 15 minutes of high winds flinging around mini- and maxi-sized flakes, the snow stopped suddenly, as if that switch had been flipped off. Pale sunlight appeared for several minutes and revealed that a fraction of an inch of snow was on the trees and ground. It soon melted:

The rest of the day returned to mostly routine rain, raw winds, and several unsuccessful attempts by the sun to break through a dense overcast.

Then, last night, it snowed again, leaving a light white cover here and there this morning. Now, we’re under a Gale Warning until Tomorrow at 9 a.m., and the forecast for today is: “Windy with morning snow showers. Highs in the low 30s and lows in the upper teens.” Ahh, Spring! (Images taken in Brooklin, Maine, on March 20, 2024.)