June 25: Before the rainfall

Was just poised in that moment right before you know rain is imminent, feeling the wind pick up a little and the air pressure shift, when someone called the office from southern Maine and asked if it was raining here yet. Right as he asked that, as if he invoked them, the first drops began to fall and thunder rumbled overhead. And now it's pouring. 


Before the rain falls
four crows fly into the trees,
sheltered now by green.

June 24: Pairs

Our drive down the coast from Camden to South Portland was punctuated by the sight of quite a few pairs of ospreys. Every time we approached a body of water--the St. George River, Sherman Lake, Great Salt Bay in Damariscotta, Back Bay in Portland--we'd see the brown and white fish hawks circling overhead. In Bath, we saw one on the nest in the Route One median strip. We even watched a couple of ospreys flying together over Portland harbor from our outside table at El Rayo, a Mexican restaurant in Portland. (We also noted, roadside, one bald eagle, two red-tails, and two broad-winged hawks.)

The year's young are hatched out and growing fast in the nests, so parent birds are fishing for more than themselves now. The sacrifices of parenthood take on a different perspective when they involve spending all your waking hours flying over the water and catching fish.

Blue sky, blue water--
ospreys best enjoy both realms
fishing together.

June 23: Breaching the dam

I watched footage taken this morning of excavators breaching the Great Works Dam, sited on the Penobscot River just south of Indian Island, home of the Penobscot tribe. This is the largest ever river restoration project in North America. Veazie Dam will also be demolished starting next year, clearing the last obstacle between young salmon and the sea along the ancient path of the river. I found myself staring at the screen for long minutes, fascinated as any child by the dinosaur-like efforts of the big yellow excavators as they picked their way over to the dam and began shredding it apart--as well as by the widening stream of water pouring through cracks and openings in the old walls. This dam removal is a truly historic occasion, one that will help restore balance to one of Maine's great rivers.

The Penobscot River feeds Penobscot Bay, the western shores of which include my town. If you look at a map of Maine, Penobscot Bay is the big v-shaped divot in the middle of the coastline. This amazing project lengthens our ties by water to interior Maine--soon, you will be able to get there from here once more. And more importantly, fish will, too, without having to be trucked there from the base of these dams. There's something about a free-running river flowing unfettered to the sea that stirs the soul--the freedom of the water and what lives in it, yes, but also the relinquishment of control, the removal of obstructions--the wild nature of water.

We free the water
and remember all that flows
through those wide blue veins.

June 22: Morning thunder

Morning thunder: sounds like the name of an herbal tea. I woke a bit disoriented to the rumblings of thunder this morning. It took me a few minutes to figure out what I was hearing behind the higher-pitched whining of juvenile (delinquent) crows--was it something in the house? Was it a truck outside? And why wouldn't it let me just sleep a few minutes more?

By the time I was done with breakfast, the storm had opened its rain gates, wet the streets, and moved on eastward over the mountains.

Morning thunderstorm
washes streets clean, freshens air
to start the day right.

June 21: Leeches

Some days I really love my job. This afternoon I got to join my director and some volunteers on a site visit by canoe to a property along a pond in Waldo County. We paddled across the pond and up a narrowing, winding inlet, enjoying the birds and other wildlife along the way.

Dragonflies and butterflies dipped in the reeds and cattails. Marsh wrens chattered from shrubs, while swamp sparrows trilled unseen and blackbirds flashed their red epaulettes. A great blue heron flew in and perched on a nearby tree as we paddled past. Along the pond's edges, bullhead lilies and water arum bloomed.

Water Arum

Green frogs croaked like banjos from within the reeds, and in the shallower water, we could see foot-long small-mouth bass lurking in the shadows. Along the inlet, we startled a deer getting a drink, a buck in velvet, and where he'd been, we noticed a beaver trail over which beavers had been dragging trees to enhance their lodge. 

At one point we had to make a short portage over a pile of rocks augmented by beavers--not the hop over sticks pictured above--and it was there I noticed the leeches. They were several inches long, with red bellies, and moved through the water like pieces of ribbon unfurling. I'm not normally a fan of leeches, but today I found them worth watching. Perhaps it was the influence of the landscape around me on this beautiful afternoon. On another day, in another setting, they'd have undoubtedly been creepy--or if one had attached to my foot while I was standing in the shallow water, hauling on the canoe. But today, I found them fascinating. 

See the leech, above the white thing in the lower left?

Even a leech has
its good points: grace in water,
a rouge-red belly.

June 20: Solstice snow

Tonight at 7:09 EDT we officially celebrate Summer Solstice, the longest day, the first day of summer. As if on cue, a heat wave has rolled in, bringing some of the first hot weather we've experienced in months. The air is positively sultry, and you won't hear me complaining. We get too little of this in Maine to whine about it.

Which is why it's ironic that this morning I experienced a snow shower. Maybe "snow" is not quite accurate, but the locust tree's flower petals scattering down upon my parents and me as we stood in their driveway sure looked like snow. The hypnotizing swirl of white "flakes" tossed over our heads by the breeze certainly looked like a snow shower, too, but the blue sky and the 80-degree air caressing our bare arms contradicted what our eyes were telling us. Not snow, flowers raining down on our heads, petals sprinkling over the green grass of summer. Our Solstice blessing from the black locust.

Not lotus: locust.
But its white petals also
convey a blessing.

June 19: Unripe berries

Over the next day, as this hemisphere officially shifts into summer, a heat wave is supposed to kick the temperature up about 20 degrees, into the 80s. Summer is truly upon us at last, thankfully, and the fruits of the season are getting ready. Outside my office the high-bush blueberries are laden with unripe fruit, funky, pale green globes creating their own clustered galaxies in the universe of our lawn. Within the month we should be enjoying our berries--or at least, those that the crows, jays, squirrels, and random passers-by don't eat first. But right now, on summer's cusp, the eve of Midsummer's Eve, those hard berries in first blush hold pure promise of things to come. 

Already a crow
eyes the unripe blueberries--
it, too, has to wait.

Gratuitous lupine shot, also taken in office yard

June 18: New Moon

At an inexplicable low point in the biorhythms cycle today. Maybe I can blame it on tomorrow's new moon. But when I returned home, my day was salvaged by the explosion of fragrant peonies in my garden and the call of a loon in the distance, wending its way upriver back to the nest for the night.

Impending new moon.
If not for these peonies,
I'd own that darkness.

June 17: Damselfly

We spent this beautiful almost-summer day with my family at my sister and brother-in-law's camp on Crawford Lake.

Hanging out on the dock, my husband spotted a couple of damselflies that had just emerged, still-damp, from their nymph cases. One flew off by the time I came to look at them, but the other still clung to the boat bumper. Since the boat was about to head out for a cruise, I worried the baby damselfly wouldn't be ready to fly in time. I encouraged it to crawl onto my finger, then moved it to a nearby leaf out of the way of people and dog. The next time I passed the leaf, it was gone. I never even saw it open its wings. By the end of the summer, its life will be over. I wish it many more days like this one before that time comes.

So short a lifespan--
damselfly is blessed to hatch
on this perfect day.

June 16: Chick

My friend Janet recently incubated some fertile eggs from her own chickens. Two of the chicks--Barred Rock and Brahma crosses--are big enough now to have their own room out in the coop, but one just hatched a few days ago and still resides in a box in the house, under a heat lamp. Janet has become quite attached to this little chick and hopes that it's female so that it can eventually join her flock (which cannot sustain two roosters). Her affection for it is understandable--it's just a warm little ball of fluff with feathery feet (inherited from her Brahma father).

I was at Janet's house today working on a project in the room next to the one where the chick was being kept. Along with food and water, Janet had hung a bunch of dandelion greens in the box to pique the chick's interest in natural food (as opposed to its tiny tray of chick feed). As we worked away nearby, we could hear the chick's occasional quiet peeps.

At one point Janet checked on it and removed the wilting greens. She also put the cover over the chick's box. Shortly thereafter, we could hear the chick peeping loudly in apparent distress. Thinking that the chick didn't like the cover, she rushed in to remove it. But it continued to chirp anxiously. Then Janet thought to dig the wilted bunch of greens out of the trash and hang them back in the box. The chick immediately settled down. It had missed the dandelion greens! Apparently, it had imprinted on the greenery in its box, even if it didn't yet consider it food.

Chick in a box, gazing adoringly at its dandelion greens

All-natural chick--
box-coddled, yet already
comforted by greens.

A woman and her chick

June 15: Bird on lupine

This morning I chuckled to see a great-crested flycatcher swoop across the lawn to perch on a tall blue spike of lupine, which of course immediately fell over under the bird's weight. But the flycatcher kept its balance and hung on, swaying atop the flower as if it meant all along to make a pretty perch out of it.
 
Flycatcher sputters--
a flower isn't the most
secure of perches.