Our continuing travels in Maine…

After Acadia and Bar Harbor, we began a leisurely drive down the Maine coast. I had made a list of places that sounded interesting, and we decided to explore what took our fancy, deciding where to stop for the night on the fly, since we didn’t know exactly where we’d be when it was time to find a place to stay. We were between the tourist seasons of summer and “leaf peeping,” so it wasn’t too crowded. If you want to stay somewhere special or if you go during a busier time of year, it would be better to make plans ahead of time, but this worked fine for finding a place just to sleep for the night. We had a couple rooms that were just OK, but mostly every place we stayed had something nice about it, whether it was a tasty breakfast, a pretty view, or even an adorable puppy in the office.

We started with the Farnsworth Art Museum in Rockland. The Farnsworth focuses on American art from the 18^th century to the present, with a special focus on artists who have lived and worked in Maine. These include artists like Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and Georgia O’Keeffe, in addition to works by the Wyeth family: N.C. Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and James (“Jamie”) Wyeth.

I especially enjoyed the special exhibitions, “Andrew Wyeth: Witches Ghosts and Mischief”, and “Jamie Wyeth: Untoward Occurrences and Other Things.” 

On recommendation of some people we met at the tire repair shop—because of course we had to have a little adversity on our trip—we ate lunch at Café Miranda, an adorable little place just a few streets away from the museum. My husband had a late breakfast, but I had the “Fabulous Bowl of Meat,” which was actually…Thai lettuce wraps. And delicious.

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Thus fortified, we meandered down to Boothbay to visit the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. As I mentioned on Instagram, we may not have seen many colorful fall leaves, but we made up for that in displays of flowers. We saw gorgeous flowers everywhere, but, of course, the botanical gardens were exceptional.

The garden opened in 2007 after 16 years of planning, and is the largest botanical garden in New England. Seventeen of its 295 acres feature plants native to Maine as well as other plants suited to northern coastal conditions.

The children’s garden area was especially fun:

Introduction by Ted Kooser: Surely, some of you have paged through an old book and come upon a dried flower, fragile as a spider web, the colors faded. Here’s a fine poem about pressing flowers by Chelsea Woodard of New Hampshire, from her book Vellum.

The Flower Press

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation (www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2014 by Chelsea Woodard, “The Flower Press,” from Vellum, (Able Muse Press, 2014). Poem reprinted by permission of Chelsea Woodard and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2015 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006. We do not accept unsolicited manuscripts.

“We do ourselves a great disservice by judging where we are in comparison to some final destination. This is one of the pains of aspiring to become something: the stage of development we are in is always seen against the imagined landscape of what we are striving for. So where we are—though closer all the time—is never quite enough.

“The simple rose, at each moment of its slow blossoming, is as open as it can be. The same is true of our lives. In each stage of our unfolding, we are as stretched as possible. For the human heart is quite slow to blossom, and is only seen as lacking when compared to the imagined lover or father or mother we’d like to become.

“It helps to see ourselves as flowers. If a flower were to push itself to open faster, which it can’t, it would tear. Yet we humans can and often do push ourselves. Often we tear in places no one can see. When we push ourselves to unfold faster or more deeply than is natural, we thwart ourselves. For nature takes time, and most of our problems of will stem from impatience.” 

—Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening

It’s only been a couple of weeks since my last Happy Little Things post, so instead of posting about one thing at length, today I’m going to share five mostly little things that are giving me hits of happiness right now. After all, life is so much better when we stop and enjoy the simple pleasures. 

1. Fresh flowers. I love fresh flowers but don’t often spend the money for them. This week, though, for three dollars and change I brought home these gorgeous hydrangeas:

They should last at least a week, if I can keep Prudy out of them!

2. Doctor Who. I know, I know, Doctor Who has been around a lo-o-o-ng time, but it’s only been this summer that my husband and I have made his acquaintance when we started watching the reboot of the series that started with the Ninth Doctor. We’re about to move on to the Eleventh Doctor (oh, how I will miss you, David Tennant). We’ve been borrowing DVDs from the library and have quite a few seasons to go before we catch up to the current season. Which is a good thing, because we don’t get BBC America and we won’t be able to watch the current Doctor until he comes out on DVD. (If you want to know why there are so many Doctors, you’ll just have to watch the show. It’s “timey-wimey, wibbly-wobbly stuff”…

3. Pumpkin Spice Lattes at Starbucks. I used the last of a gift card to buy one this morning. Yummy.

4. Freegal Music. This awesome service, accessed through my library system, lets me download three free songs every week. I’ve significantly expanded my music library, three songs at a time. You library may also offer this, so check it out at Freegal.com.

5. Airplane reservations for California! In less than a month, I’ll be visiting my family—I can’t wait. (Better start choosing books to take with me, right Danielle?) 

Some unusual things have been happening in my own back yard. This plant/tree is blooming:

Anyone know what it is? A neighbor gave us a piece trimmed from her tree (it looked like a three-pronged stick), and it’s growing leaves and blossoming. It smells nice, too.

The ginger is blooming:

So is the geranium:

And the angel wing begonia:

One of our sago palms has produced this:

A mature male Sago produces this cone every second or third year. (Though technically, this is in my front yard.)

On the downside, our dog, who is 15 years old, cut her leg badly enough to need stitches and a trip to the emergency vet. Then two days later, she came in from the backyard with a punctured foot—the vet says either a bite or an entrapment injury. She’s now on lockdown—can’t go out in the backyard without supervision—which doesn’t please her, but oh, well. She’s pretty much back to normal, and I’m taking her to have the stitches removed this morning. (I have pictures of those, too, but I’ll spare you!)

Even though I love to go exploring, it’s clear that there are plenty of everyday adventures to be had right in my own backyard.

What’s been happening in your backyard lately?

The poet and novelist Marge Piercy has a gift for writing about nature. In this poem, springtime has a nearly overwhelming and contagious energy, capturing the action-filled drama of spring. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

More Than Enough

The first lily of June opens its red mouth.

All over the sand road where we walk

multiflora rose climbs trees cascading

white or pink blossoms, simple, intense

the scene drifting like colored mist.

The arrowhead is spreading its creamy

clumps of flower and the blackberries

are blooming in the thickets. Season of

joy for the bee. The green will never

again be so green, so purely and lushly

new, grass lifting its wheaty seedheads

into the wind. Rich fresh wine

of June, we stagger into you smeared

with pollen, overcome as the turtle

laying her eggs in roadside sand.

Singing. I love to sing—not for an audience, but with the radio or CDs, in the shower, driving down the road, etc. I just started doing it again lately, after falling silent for months.

Robins Eggs. Every year when the Easter candy hits the shelves, I treat myself to a bag (just one) of Robins Eggs. In order to be satisfying, they have to be made with Whopper brand malted milk candies and they have to be the full size, not the minis. I’m very particular about my junk food.

My dog. Scout makes me happy nearly every day…except when she has to go potty at 4 in the morning. I spend considerable time each day petting her, giving her treats, loving her. Today’s her 14^th birthday, and we’ve had her since she was eight weeks old. She’s an integral member of the family, and we know that since she’s aging she won’t be with us forever. I’m making the most of the time we have.

Gardenias. I just picked the first gardenia blossom from my plant and its gorgeous scent perfumes my desk. Once picked, the flowers last only a day or two, but while they last, they can make a whole room smell wonderful.

The Olive Grove, by Katherine Kizilos. I loved visiting Greece a few years ago, and while I’d love to return someday, for now I have to make do with other people’s trips. Kizilos makes me feel like I’m there when she describes the blue of the Aegean, and the way the island of Santorini rises up out of the sea. 

What’s making you happy right now?

“Help us be ever faithful gardeners of the spirit, who know that without darkness nothing comes to birth, and without light nothing flowers.”

—May Sarton

Finally we had some gorgeous, fall-like weather this weekend, so my husband, mother-in-law and I checked out an orchid show and sale at the USF Botanical Gardens in Tampa. Lucky for us, there were only 12 vendors. We still managed to buy six orchids.

It’s a sickness, I tell you.

My husband and I go for variety in both size and color. I’m partial to scented orchids, my husband likes the dramatic and unusual ones. (If it’s variety you want, orchids are your flower: according to Wikipedia, orchids are one of the largest families of flowering plants, with more than 20,000 species found in 880 genera. Horticulturalists have produced more than 100,000 hybrids and cultivars since the introduction of tropical species in the 19th century.)

The new additions joined their brethren on our lanai where I hope they’ll be happy. One of my next chores needs to be writing down what types of orchids I have and what conditions they like.

I never thought I’d be interested in orchids. I’ve always preferred flowers like peonies, hydrangeas, roses. I can’t grow those here in Florida—at least not very successfully. (I’ve also become resigned to the lack of tulips and daffodils in my life.) But I can grow orchids—they thrive in our humid climate, so I’m going with the flow. If I can’t have a cottage garden, I’ll have a tropical one instead. At least I have flowers.

Here are the new additions. This one is tiny:

At the other extreme, this vanda is huge: 

This one, also a vanda, is scented:

Just love the color of this:

This was unlabeled, but I think it’s a phaleonopsis:

I don’t know what this is, either, and am not sure of what the label says. Any ideas?

It felt good to be outside (and not be sweaty), to drink in the beauty of the flowers, to be with people I love, while at the same time fanning my passion for orchids. A satisfactory Saturday.

How have you fed your passions lately?

Jane Hirshfield, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area, is one of our country’s finest poets, and I have never seen a poem of hers that I didn’t admire. Here’s a fine one that I see as being about our inability to control the world beyond us. [Introduction by Ted Kooser.]

The Promise

Stay, I said

to the cut flowers.

They bowed

their heads lower.

Stay, I said to the spider,

who fled.

Stay, leaf.

It reddened,

embarrassed for me and itself.

Stay, I said to my body.

It sat as a dog does,

obedient for a moment,

soon starting to tremble.

Stay, to the earth

of riverine valley meadows,

of fossiled escarpments,

of limestone and sandstone.

It looked back

with a changing expression, in silence.

Stay, I said to my loves.

Each answered,

Always.

American Life in Poetry is made possible by The Poetry Foundation www.poetryfoundation.org), publisher of Poetry magazine. It is also supported by the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Poem copyright ©2011 by Jane Hirshfield, from her most recent book of poems, Come, Thief, Alfred A. Knopf, 2011. Poem reprinted by permission of Jane Hirshfield and the publisher. Introduction copyright © 2012 by The Poetry Foundation. The introduction's author, Ted Kooser, served as United States Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 2004-2006.

“One of the secrets of a happy life is continuous small treats.”

—Iris Murdoch

How will you treat yourself today?