You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
The bed stand, salvaged from a roadside, holds forsythia back so the blueberry bushes may thrive. The netting in the foreground is actually on the blueberry bushes, to keep birds and squirrels from picking all the berries, rather than on the ground, where the bricks anchor the netting.
At the mouth of the Piscataqua River downstream from where I live, Fort Foster has long guarded the entrance to Portsmouth Harbor. It’s now a town park.
By purchasing a season pass each year, I’ve come to consider it my private patch on the ocean — one shared with some folks who’ve become sunny friends as we swim and then warm in the rays.
The rocky shoreline allows a fine introduction to tide pool life, while the pebble beaches have their own experience. There are also some sandy pocket beaches and a trail to meander while looking out over the cobalt Atlantic.
Lake Winnipesaukee wanders through the center of New Hampshire. Here’s a portion viewed from the top of Mount Major.
New Hampshire has more than its share of vanity license plates, a practice that often provides amusement in the thick of traffic or parking lots. For a number of years, mine said QUAKER, which spurred some lively conversations — to say nothing of what happened when parked next to Bob McQuillen’s QUACKER plate. (His goes back to his days of teaching high school shop classes — the result of one day when a student I will not name accused him of sounding like a duck when he got angry.)
So we were driving through downtown the other day when we noticed this plate:
Only in the photo do I notice the second D rather than O — representing another variant on the root surname Hodgson. Still, it can be unsettling when you have a rather uncommon one to see another around.
No idea who left them this way, either.
Actually, it was from the cellar and left out in the yard to dry. Add mythology if you care.
Like Dover, the town of Newmarket flanks Durham and its state university campus, and as a former textiles mill town, it, too, is home to a number of University of New Hampshire students and the kinds of businesses one would expect as a consequence – small restaurants, bars, pizza parlors, bookstores, yoga studios, nightspots, and so on. The Stone Church Meeting House has long been a venue for emerging musical acts.
The town of approximately 9,000 also has a strong blue-collar side, which also feeds into a distinctly funky feel.
But to me there’s always been a sensation that the place isn’t fully New England. It somehow reminds me more of small cities in central Pennsylvania or even Galena, Illinois, near the Mississippi. I think that has to do with the way the central street twists through downtown and the prevalence of stonework rather than the traditional brick in the mills and a few prominent houses. It’s picturesque, all the same.
Key to its industrial development was a large inland saltwater estuary that allowed extensive shipping. In generic usage, Great Bay also encompasses Little Bay and a host of small-town waterfronts where humble rivers fall to sea level. These include Durham and its Oyster River; Exeter and the Exeter/Squamscott; and Newmarket, with the Lamprey River, before passing Dover Point and emptying into the Piscataqua River on its way to the Atlantic. It’s a major breeding ground for fish populations all along the East Coast, and the current at Dover Point is always intense.
Hope you enjoy this quick tour.
At this time of year I once got a terrible sunburn on the bottom of my nose and the bottom of my chin, where my zinc oxide sunscreen rubbed off while climbing the snowfields of Mount Rainier. This shot was from another July outing.
This view of cruising Portsmouth Harbor always reminds me of several French Impressionist masterpieces. Maybe it has something to do with the flag in motion.
Jnana's Red Barn 