waving at you

It is, of course, Halloween season again.  I have something of a sense (yes, I know it's only October 19th, but still) that the decorations aren't as copious or as elaborate this year as they've been in the past, but some of the houses that one annually looks forward to are on fine form.  This waving skelly was new to me (I was taking a back street route from mailing stuff at the post office), but makes for a quintessentially Californian sight.

 

reservoir grasses

We're still on east coast time (and Alice is back out to Madison and Chicago tomorrow), so we were up very early to walk at the reservoir.  These pink grasses are so pretty.  We're meant to have lots in our back yard ... but last year they all bloomed white, not pink (which was pretty, too), and this year there's no sign of them sprouting flowers at all.  So I'll borrow these for my seasonal pleasure.

 

back!

We were welcomed back in style by Moth and Gramsci - clearly very glad to see us, even if Iris, their cat sitter, looks after them impeccably well.  Here's Grams, in a scratching box that also functions as a safe hiding spot from which to leap out at Moth ...

 

on our way back

A plum colored morning in Vinalhaven; a very grey ferry ride, and then a wet wet wet wet wet drive back to Boston - from where we'll be leaving at some early hour ...

It's been a terrific and very full couple of weeks.

 

more Vinalhaven. and lobsters for dinner

An excellent quiet day in Vinalhaven - there really is nothing like an island, and this one reminds me so much of the Île aux Moines, the other side of the Atlantic - so of course the minute I set foot on it, I loved it to bits.

Rocks, seaweed,

and a hike with a monarch butterfly, and, on a tiny off-shore island, lots of seals (not pictured),

and Alice and Charlotte trekking valiantly through the bushes - Charlotte's hat making her look very like Vera ...

The Historical Society was full of documents and images of the island's granite industry - followed by netting (not so much for fish, but nets to keep flies off horses), domestic crafts and life; local businesses, and of course lobstering.

Did I say lobsters?  Of course, it was very fresh lobsters for dinner:

trying to put out of our mind the fact that they'd been in the ocean enjoying their lobstery lives this morning.

And then the moon and stars over a quiet Vinalhaven night.

dawn to dusk - Bar Harbor to Vinalhaven

From our room balcony this morning - pure Sugimoto marine fog.  Somewhere out there there's a cruise liner, but one couldn't, by that point, tell that.

Driving away from town - misty bogs and trees.

Over the bridge at Barnsport - itself spectacular, and with a formidable looking ... what?  prison?  military installation? on the right - googling showed that it was Fort Knox! but it was long past by the time I found that out...

Then the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, with lots of Andrew Wyeth as well as Maine art - I'd post examples if we weren't staying in a friend's house with no internet and only very shaky phone coverage, so I'm typing fast while I have a bar or two of contact ...

... and it is, indeed, isolate, on Vinalhaven, an island off the mainland: an hour and a quarter on a ferry to get here, and then the most extraordinary, beautiful, seaweed-filled sunset.

 

a wet day in Acadia National Park

It was wet - very wet. Before it got to extremely wet, we went for a walk along the southern shoreline of the Acadia National Park, with me wondering at every turn who painted what where - this looks very much like a Frederic Church sunrise location, but obviously there wasn't much sun today.  Indeed, none.

This was dramatically barren (and wet).

There are some terrific little paths between thick granite walls - this went up to Otter Point (no otters in sight, alas).

The wet woods around the Wild Gardens of Acadia were stunning -

and here are two of my book chapters collapsed into one shot - a slug, and some very striking lichen.

Out of the park, we drove to Mother's Kitchen, which had been recommended to us (and yes, I'd recommend the curried chickpea sandwich), and this seasonal decoration was round the back - pumpkins in buoy nets.

Since it then became even wetter, we were very glad indeed to be in a comfortable, dry hotel ...