Weekend Things ~ July-ing

I am a summer girl at heart—despite the bugs and the poison ivy and the deadly caterpillars—and July in Maine is summer.



As often happens, it came on suddenly.



After a chilly June and a late end to the school year, suddenly it was Fourth of July weekend and it was hot and humid.



For some unfathomable reason, the members of my family do not like going to the beach.



They like it once they get there, but the getting there is always an ordeal.



I managed to coax E and Z to the shore Sunday, and they discovered/remembered that, yeah, they actually enjoy the beach.



They've gotten brave enough this year to swim out to where the water is deeper than they are tall, which means I have to swim with them or watch them closely again.



The water was co-o-o-old, which is just what the doctor ordered on this sticky, sunny day, and they stayed in the water until their lips turned blue around their chattering teeth.



I almost thought we'd be too cold for ice cream on the way home, but once we hit town, and the heat island effect, we were ready for a cold dessert.



Monday, C, E, Z and I partook of July's other favorite activity—strawberry picking (M is working at the strawberry farm this summer and had no desire to go there on his day off).



C was determined to get the 40+ pound discount.



So we picked. And we picked. And we picked.



Coming home with 57 pounds of berries!!!



C has been busy hulling and freezing them, and, when it became clear we'd never eat them before they went bad, I relented from my anti-domestic stance and made a double-batch of jam.

And that, dear Reader, is why I am a summer girl.

Wild Wednesday ~ November Color

I had Wednesday off last week, for Veteran's Day, and I went out again in search of my missing mystery tree. I tromped all over a different part of our woods, but still did not find one. I did, however, see several interesting fungi, including this one that had kind of spiny things instead of gills.

And this pretty green and red shelf polypore (I really need to get a fungus field guide!!).

I also found this little Christmas fern (Polystichum acrostichoides), which I didn't know we had growing out there. Supposedly it's named Christmas fern because it stays green through the winter, but I think it's really because the fronds look like children's drawings of Christmas trees.

On Saturday we went hiking with visiting guests and saw some more November color, like this orange jelly fungus.

And a bright red partridge berry (Mitchell reopens).

And finally I found my tree: witch hazel (Hamamelis virginiana).

C spotted it first, one of several growing together in an area. I think I would have just passed it by because it's not what I expected. Even though I've seen native witchazel growing in the wild, and know intellectually it's a smallish shrub and pretty low-profile, I had in mind those two beautiful cultivated trees (which, incidentally, are still blooming) and I was looking for something equally tall and bright and grand. These little wild guys had already shed their flowers, which look like leggy yellow spiders. So now I have a new mission: find witchhazel in my woods, looking for something smaller, and subtler, and altogether completely different from what I was looking for before.

What's wild in your neck of the woods?

P.S. I'm taking a self-imposed blogging break over the next week or two, while I deal, once and for all, with the storage issues on my computer that I've just been bandaging along for the last year. I'll see you on the flip side!

Raspberries

Berries just might be the second-best part of a Maine summer (the first-best being, of course, the beach).

Each berry season unfolds into the next: strawberry--raspberry--blueberry--blackberry.

So that you're almost never without berries from the Fourth of July to Labor Day.

E has been scouring our wild raspberry canes for about two weeks, but they give up only scant handfuls at a time.

Luckily, we happen to have neighbors with a gorgeous raspberry field. 

And even more luckily, they always go on vacation right at the heart of raspberry season, and call us on their way out of town, "Go pick our raspberries!"

C left a jar of maple syrup on their front porch as a thank-you, which is a good thing, since my strawberry jam was a disaster (I abandoned it mid-boil to read to E and Z and it way over-cooked. And, yes, I know you're not supposed to turn your back on boiling sugar, but what's a mama to do?) so I didn't much feel like making raspberry jam, even to reciprocate.

In the midst of picking, I lay down in the grass nearby for a short nap (C, our slave-driver, was sitting in the middle of the canes and could not see me slacking). I listened to the bees hum and M do Napoleon Dynamite impressions and sing (his latest favorite is Weezer), and watched a yellow spider the size of a pin-head crawl through the jungle of the fine cotton fibers of my shirt sleeve.

We put most of the berries in the freezer for winter enjoyment, and the rest I made into a pie that E claimed to be "the best pie I ever had!" (Though C was somewhat critical of the runny nature of the filling).

While we were picking, I happened to catch a glimpse of this Northern Pearly Eyes resting on the garage window. A very accommodating butterfly, it let me get in up close to take its picture.