July 2: Wood Lily

This afternoon I had lunch with an old college roommate whom I hadn't seen for twenty years. After lunch we walked up Beech Hill so I could show off "what I do" and hopefully spot the black vulture that my friend Brian photographed there this morning. As we made our way up the trail where it skirts the blueberry fields, I was a bit startled to see patches of fully blue, ripe blueberries. From the road up to the summit of the hill, the view of the blueberry fields broadened, with a wide backdrop of ocean and islands, from Monhegan to our far right panning left over Vinalhaven, North Haven, Isle Au Haut, Mount Desert, all the way to the knob of Blue Hill back on the mainland. And behind us, the beautiful green carpeted curves of the Camden Hills undulated through the countryside on one of those afternoons when I felt particularly grateful that this is my home.

A towhee chinked in the bushes, and a silent Savannah sparrow flitted across the path. And in the fields wildflowers were blooming among the blueberry plants, including a Beech Hill specialty, the wood lily. The wood lily is an uncommon wildflower found scattered throughout the preserve's open fields. Beech Hill is the only place I know to find it. Despite preserve guidelines asking people not to pick native vegetation, every year there are always a few idiots who can't resist or who mistake it for the more common roadside variety day lily. "What's this beautiful flower?" they ask. Something you shouldn't have picked, we want to reply. Each flower is a rare and precious thing, a work of art.

The bright orange flower is a sort of flag that the blueberries are ripening, as it always seems to blossom just before the berries are ready. By the time of the harvest, the fields have erupted with lilies. I saw just a few lilies here and there on the hill today, the petals like flames amid the waving grass and other wildflowers. I think I may even have seen one raising its head on the sod roof of Beech Nut. Soon I know more will be brightening the fields, signaling to humans, birds, and animals that it's berry time.

Watchfire of July--

flame of the wood lily licks

the ripening fields.

June 11: Ripening Fruit

My co-worker Joe returned from the Beech Hill Preserve today with what he called "something scary": a sprig from a blueberry bush containing a few berries already turning blue. Coastal Mountains Land Trust manages about 20 acres of fields on Beech Hill as a MOFGA-certified, organic blueberry farm. We sell 10-pound boxes of berries by pre-order, and the profits are used to help manage the preserve. Normally our blueberry harvest takes place in early to mid-August. The fact that Joe is finding berries already ripening indicates that the harvest will be several weeks ahead of schedule this summer. (That's the "scary" part, because it also means he may have to pull together a crew of blueberry rakers and packers a lot sooner than he thought.)

This morning a family of Canada geese was grazing along the edge of the Land Trust parking lot: the two parents and three half-grown goslings. They were big enough that I had to look twice to pick out the adults.  These too seem ahead of schedule. I guess early berries and big fat baby geese are the benefits of the beautiful warm weather we had for much of this spring. It gave a few things a head start. Other flora and fauna--many songbirds, for instance, and sea birds--seem to be on schedule, so there hasn't been a complete shift of the natural order. But enough for nature observation to be particularly interesting right now.

Ripening to blue--
handful of crazy berries,
this early June sky.

May 12: Blueberry Milk

Sometimes a day's pleasures are simple ones: my first chestnut-sided warbler singing as I walked into my office; a Cooper's hawk chasing a flock of pigeons; a big patch of baby blue forget-me-nots blooming in my back yard.

And blueberry milk with my lunch today at Farmer's Fare. I love blueberries. Blueberry milk makes regular milk more palatable. The glass pint bottle that it comes in is pretty cool to drink from, too. Somehow blueberry milk seems slightly more grown-up than chocolate milk. I wish it had been around when I was a kid, though. I drank a whole pint with my lunch and barely forebore drinking another one with my dinner. Maybe if there'd been blueberry milk when I was a kid I'd be taller now--good for the bones and all that. As it is, at my age, hopefully it will at least help prevent me from shrinking with osteoporosis.  

Blueberry milk and
ghost stories shared with a friend
make for a good lunch.