The birds and squirrels have already harvested the sunflower seeds. I like to leave the stalk up anyway, just as a perch for the critters.
Tag: New England
WATSON AT WORK
Why let power go to waste? A small hydroelectric station captures a share of the Cocheco River. The Watson Dam itself is a V-shaped design stretched across the stream. I imagine it runs in front of a waterfall.
PRESIDENTIAL HOMEPLACE
The presidency of Franklin Pierce (1853-1857), with its tilt toward powerful slave owners, left the nation headed for Civil War.
While he was born in a humble dwelling nearby, this Hillsborough, New Hampshire, estate is where the family moved in his infancy.
LINING THE RAILS
Maybe the taggers think they’re creating motion pictures? Not all of the railroad graffiti lands on the train cars. There’s a lot along the route, too.
WHITE ISLAND LIGHT
The Isles of Shoals are a cluster of small islands off the mainland of New Hampshire and Maine. White Island is occupied by its lighthouse and supporting structures.
F*** U-TURNS
Next time you see one of those “No U Turns” signs on someone’s driveway, think about their side of the story and the audacity of some of the public.
We know an old farm in Maine that has a driveway connecting to both the busy highway in front of the house and a country road to the side. It gets plenty of “summer people” congestion at the traffic light, along with drivers who try to beat it by driving taking the driveway – or worse, just driving through the yard.
Recently, during a sudden storm, one SUV dodged in under the tree in the front yard to deflect hail, in the process mowing down hostas and other flowers before then backing hard into the parked pickup truck on the way out, and gunning it down the road.
Later, when one of the residents of the house was turning up the driveway from the side road, another car, crowded with tourists, came the other direction – and gave her the finger when she refused to back out so they could pull on through. Look, it’s her home, not theirs!
Their New York plates did nothing to soften the reputation.
A HARD MESSAGE CUT IN STONE
Winged skulls are part of the New England colonial legacy. The region’s harsh environment invoked a stoic outlook on life. The images also inspire a collection of my poems, available by clicking here.
BEFORE THE INTERNET, THERE WAS THE TELETYPE
Well, we also had the telephone – and memos, sometimes delivered by a mailman and sometimes by an office courier and sometimes, gasp, in person by the boss himself. Or maybe just his secretary.
But when I began drafting Big Inca Versus a New Pony Express Rider, the Internet was somewhere over the horizon. Yes, online communications did exist in what we now consider some crude form. That’s progress for you, I suppose.
Still, in developing the story, I wanted some kind of encrypted exchange between the distant handler and young Bill in the field, and that led to the technical arrangement described in the novel.
Thus the events could be disclosed in a series of memos covering a three-year period. It’s almost like playing cards, one at a time.
To tap into their exchange, just click here.
CONTOOCOOK STONE ARCHES
As the sign proclaims, built without mortar … nearly two centuries ago.
WALNUT ASSAULT
Among the mature trees surrounding our house are several black walnuts, including one that hangs over the 1928 one-story addition where our kitchen sits. Its open ceiling allows us to hang pots, pans, and stemware from the joists – shall we just call it a rustic look? – and I’ve sometimes considered installing a skylight or two.
On the other side of that roof, squirrels strip the nuts from the trees early in the season of a typical year. Watching their frantic action can be quite amusing, first as the leaves on a branch shake furiously and then as a squirrel bounds away with a large ball in its mouth.
A few nuts might actually survive into autumn. More likely, we find them buried the next spring as we prepare the new garden and sift compost. Having lived here for a decade-and-a-half, we think we know what to anticipate as the seasons advance.
Not this year, to our surprise, at least as far as the walnuts go.
Our awareness that something was amiss began in the middle of the night. Was somebody trying to break into the house?
The next morning, though, as wind whipped around the house, the noise really picked up. Imagine someone hitting the kitchen roof with a baseball bat. Repeatedly, sometimes three or four a minute. The whack was enough to make us jump.
I moved one car further from the house – we’d seen what large hail did to a friend’s pickup truck and the damage wasn’t pretty. These nuts were larger and heavier, after all, and ones that fell on that side of the roof were bouncing into the driveway.
The tree still has a few nuts left on the branches, but the racket has slowed considerably. Instead, some of the pathways leading to the garden are now covered in walnuts. As my wife observed, it’s like trying to walk on marbles.
Between that and the noise, it’s enough to drive anyone nuts.
Or squirrelly.
Jnana's Red Barn 