Welcome Downeast

Illustration by Candice Hutchison

Dear Friends,

Summer for some is a time of lazy leisure, but for many others it’s the busiest time of the year. Among our kind, we think of busy farmers, gardeners, fishermen, carpenters, landscapers, construction workers of all kinds, and people in service jobs who work hard for people for whom summer is a time of leisure. All of these workers are running from pillar to post this time of year, although maybe a little less so than some years because of the pandemic.

Our winged friends are busy now, too, raising their young. The neighborhood crows are feeding their new fledglings, as are birds of many other kinds. All day long, the crows take the popcorn we throw out for them. They fill their beaks with it, fly to the watering trough and dip the corn in the water to soften it, then bring it to their young who wait with mouths open and heads back, even though they look nearly full-grown— like some teenagers we have known. For their part, these crow young have a lot to do, too. They are learning how to fly, how to converse in Crow, and how to find their way around the fields and woods while hawks circle overhead looking for something young and tender to eat.

The hummingbirds are constantly at their feeder, taking sweet nectar to their nestlings all day. Our six-legged cousins are active, too. Most insects winter over as eggs. This means that they have a short Maine summer to hatch, go through several stages of development to adulthood, and lay their own eggs before the weather gets cold again. Busy, busy, busy.

Field and forest report, July

The grasses and flowers of the field are also busy. They must grow to maturity, present blossoms that attract pollinators, then mature their seeds and send them off into the world some way, by bird or burr or squirrel before the snows come. Trees are maturing their fruit, and isn’t the recent rain just what is needed to make the apples nice and juicy? Blueberries, too. With a Maine growing season of just over four months, there is no time to lose. The pandemic seems to have accelerated a notable trend in agriculture country-wide. There is a greater interest in locally-grown vegetables and meat, and small farmers are hustling to keep up with it, adding to a trend that has seen local food production double in the U.S. in the last five years. We are fortunate in Maine to have more and more small farmers bringing good food to the market.

Natural events

We tend to think of plants as being motionless unless blown by the wind or moved by some other outer force. Then maybe we happen to walk by a clump of daisies a few times and notice how their faces follow the sun across the sky. Or we watch the tall sunflowers in our garden do the same, turning, turning through the day, adoring their deity. Even slower is the movement of climbing plants in our gardens; pole beans, grape vines, morning glories. When we walk through the garden in the dewy morning, we notice that they are not holding the same position they were the night before. Time-lapse video shows them reaching longingly up and out in all directions, and then wrapping themselves around a twig or pole or arbor as they climb higher. These plant motions are slow and graceful, but they are most certainly movement.

For his whole life, Charles Darwin was fascinated by the motion of plants. His next to last volume was called The Power of Movement in Plants and published in 1880. Plants that move! What next? Plants that think? Plants that feel?

Saltwater report

The many foggy mornings in our bays and inlets have provided a dramatic backdrop for the coastal day-sailor or kayaker adrift on the great sea. The last 20 years have seen a sharp increase in recreational small craft plying the waters, from kayaks to peapods to dories, many of them handmade. People who love going out on the water on their own are a particular breed, and many are acutely aware of the damage industrial society has inflicted on the seas and sea creatures. Many sailors and paddlers have widened their circle of compassion by calling for cleaning up the oceans and protecting the thousands of creatures who make the oceans their home.