Heading In For Some Luna Grill Food Out On The Terrace.
Folks on the road around Maine, around the nation enjoying high school and college graduations.
It’s that time of year again and just made a Jeep trip to Washington DC to watch oldest son, one of four children graduate from college.
Fun time to eat at Old Ebbitt Grill and Fogo De Chao. The first two down from the White House sperated by the US Tresury. The other a steakhouse from Brazil where table side carving of meats of all kinds happen. Had to waddle out of that last place. Nando’s with spicy chicken was hard to beat too. The Luna Grill and Diner was great food and atmosphere and a place my oldest daughter remembered eating at ten years ago when a page in Washington during high school. She was there when 911 hit and in the Library of Congress.
Three down, one to go on the college front. The youngest in Colorado Springs CO and has completed two years, half way through his college career.
It will be neat to have the two youngest, the boys, home for the summer in Maine.
Have lots of jobs around the Maine farm to tackle and hope for a sunny not rainy summer for lots of reasons.
It’s fun to visit Washington DC and see it through the eyes of your son who just finished 3.5 years of college schooling there. But boy is the open space of Maine some kind of neat to return to. And leaving humidity of the noisy city behind where you have to think about crime, lock everything up. It’s just too crowded, too many people.
Give me a Maine lake side gas grill with a sunset, loon singing and whatever you cook up for the family is A-OK in my book. Guess I am a personal fan of Maine, made with only the most natural, fresh ingredients.
You Made A Mistake On The Spelling Of Victorian Robin.
The owners of a cat in Amity Maine were moving to Florida.
The couple had tried for a long time to have their first child. And learned during the home sale that a stork was flying over head.
They were excited but worried at the same time. About what they heard on the grapevine. Read online about cat boxes causing problems with pregnant moms. Did not want to take any chances.
So Hero, their cat was not making the relocation trip to the Sunshine state.
Would never get to see Mickey and Minnie and their cartoon friends on the drop of a hat easy.I Need A Nap, So Hurry It Up With The Photo Shoot. This Is My Best Profile, Side. Meow.
During the home listing, Hero followed me around the house as we “staged” it for images. And a video that we shoot, edit, render and upload to video platforms like youtube.
He was very personable, curious/ And during the home property listing on the kitchen table climbed in to my lap, was socialable.
So in addition to buying a big screen television set at the home moving sale and getting their home sold, I came away with a Sylvester looking one of a kind cat.
We had a kitten from the local Houlton Maine animal shelter, a gray tiger, a female. Hero, a neutered male fit right in.
Polite, cool, calm, collected. Letting her always eat first. Pretty laid back, chill. Not easily excited. Never neurotic like the little gray tiger can be.
He was able to get Allie to consider going outdoors.
She seems less nervous with him here and they do the things pairs of cats do. NASCAR races around the house, bath time. Power nap, sleeping in the sunniest places found and shared together. Herding Cats, In Maine Don’t Try To. They Run, Rule The Roost.
My neighbor calls him Steve.
Because she did not realize the new cat who arrived in the winter was ours.
So he was a double agent cat, with two dishes going and juggling two households.
I’ve blogged about Kim my neighbor before who is a girl scout den Mom and moves a lot of girl scout cookies. The yard is like LAX when spring distribution happens, with set times for parents and brownies to show up and get those addictive cookies. $40,000 worth of cookies are bought, sold in Houlton Maine!
Hero Thinks “Wonder If He Has A Treat In His Pocket For Me?”Hero has been to the Katahdin Bank next door a lot. He has been in their vault, and sneaks in with customers when the door opens to the bank. He comes in to our office and the kids of real estate buyers and sellers love him. He has it made. I am his third, but final forever home.
Today Hero decided to help my secretary Robin and found a place to hide and watch like cats do. They say you don’t own a cat, but that they have servants. Life would be very different without Hero and Allie around our house.
Cats, dogs, pets are part of the family.
Help adopt one needing a home. Especially if you know of an elderly person living alone. They won’t be anymore with a cat on board running the daily entertainment show. Ever notice how you talk to cats? Higher pitched baby talk voices. Giving them total attention when they want catnip, special snacks, a scratch where they can’t reach.
Ahhhh That Feels So Good. My Hooves Are Killing Me.
Less traffic, more wildlife, that is part of what Maine is all about.
This big bull moose lives on a farm I own outside of Houlton Maine. I worry about him during hunting season but he has practiced the art of stealth non detection whenever all those folks wearing tacking blaze orange show up in the fall.
But he is not far from the US highway or Interstate 95. He would make the wrong kind of hood ornament if you met him at 55 miles per hour. All that weight and the dent would be more than one you pop out with holding your mouth right and using one hand with a litte pressure applied the right way.
You want to meet a Maine moose if you have not been to Maine before.
Everyone hopes to see one when they are in Vacationland.
Come see me, I know where one lives that would like to meet you too. Maine, all natural ingredients. The kind you do not find in a city, can not buy with all the money in the world. Get here quick as you can.
Maine, the recreation here is not like a man made Space Mountain, or anything resembling the Las Vegas strip.
It’s usually one of four colors. Blue, green, brown, white. During the fall foliage explosion of colors tons of reds, yellows, oranges too. Maybe the attraction to Maine it is real. All the wildlife, the simple, refreshing, spacious feeling all around you.
In a day and age where you wonder about what you read in the newspaper, hear on line, see on the tube all quoted as gospel. Where spin and marketing, advertising gets awards. Is an art form. The average Joe and Jane is being bombarded with signals, messages to buy this, try that and be all you can be.
So when a Maine lake is pictured or you watch a video clip with the morning steam rising off it with the sound of a loon in the distance, it gets your attention.
Especially as the sun comes up and a small motor boat droans, heads out in to the largest part of the waterfront.
The setting hits you deeply. Because it’s real, no paid actors, no special set built. Just Maine pure and simple. No one puts on airs, everyone is down to earth.
Maybe less people helps and makes those that are here in Maine more connected, special. You get to know the folks in a small Maine town working on church bean suppers, volunteering for local canoe races, coaching little league or a minor hockey team.
The distance away from large sprawling urban areas may also help insulate, protect, preserve Vacationland.
The folks that visit Maine are looking the abundance of four season outdoor recreation. Fewer, moit more people. They get enough up close and personal with all the people in traffic, gangs, the increasing crime.They need a week’s reprieve from all that. Need Maine for all it offers, her abundance of natural resources that is everywhere you look.
Here are some images of Maine. Some Maine local community videos. Follow our other Maine blogs. Check out the 2200 posts on Active Rain’s blog platform too. Get to know Maine up close and personal. Come walk the wood lots, sample the rock bound coast line, kayak a lake or river. Climb up a mountain or ski down one. Your heart has been here for a long long time if you are being honest right? Help the rest of your major body part catch up. Help them find their way to Maine.
Maine Is Simple Living, Always Involves Family, The Outdoors.
When you live in Maine full time, the lack of crime, the abundance of natural four season beauty can lull a person in to forgetting about places on the planet where it is just not this way.
In small town rural Maine towns, you get a satisfying, secure feeling of community too. A connection where all of us are needed. Everyone a vital part of the local fabric. All here to offer something worthwhile.
Like a covered dish church supper contribution. Creating a life of purpose. Involving, including our kids and teaching them by example that it is others that count. In a world of “me me me” when you watch and read beamed in signals that tout just the contrary.
Why is it different and so hard for other places to be like Maine? For starters, the focus is not about money here. True Mainers are content with basics.
Grateful for what we do have in Maine.
Not obsessed or lamenting over what we don’t need. Creating shelter for our families. Home grown food. Energy conservation with often local wood heat the norm. An abundance of love to meet that family’s needs in big supply. It all starts and ends with family. Our activities, fun, discipline, nurturing and end all goal is family.
When you live in the fourth lowest crime state, safety concerns are lessened. That anxiety is wiped off the board. Not like that in an urban area where eight out of ten people live these days. The cost to live here is divided by three and four compared to other places too.
Super Sized, The Living Is Home Made, Tasty. Small Pleasures Are The Biggest Ones.
Cheaper Maine real estate is quickly paid off, debt is not a friend or accepted condition either. Lower population because we are further away, insulated from crowds makes it spacious, roomy. So time not wasted stuck in noisy traffic, fearful of gangs, or fighting for space that cities have far too little off.
Go a third of a mile in any direction from a small Maine town and you are in the country. More wildlife than people. Respect for other people’s feelings, property a given. Probably why our insurance protection costs are cut in half and more in Maine too.
Lower population means the people here have a role in the community day to day. Have to step up, get involved. Each and everyone of us would be missed if absent a day.
Our Maine neighbors, family, co-workers and friends check in on us and we do the same with them.
We worry and care for elderly folks that are shut in, not able to drive and make sure they have what they need. It’s Martha, the widow or great aunt down the road in our thoughts. We call and remind her we are heading to the local store, do you need anything or why not come on along thinking. In expensive city living, Martha, who’s Martha? We all need each other in Maine.
Cats Have It Made Like Their Owners Living In Maine.
Less people means less wear and tear on the surroundings too. Lower mileage Maine means the crystal clean pristine lakes, the rolling woodlots and fertile fields are respected by the few that do live here.
Without sounding selfish, maybe I am glad there are less people in Maine. All boils down to the fact too many people would rock the boat. Mess it up. And I am glad the folks who do live here appreciate what we have with mutual respect.
Everything we have we worked for in Maine, it was not handed to us.
Wake up and start your dream in Maine. There is fierce pride in our home towns, our counties and state and deep appreciation for all we do have. Is that the way you are built, wired too? Be part of Maine, the way life should be.
You own a Maine farm with wooded and open sections.
The woods if they are tree plantations maybe have been planted years ago. In soldier like rows of thousand or twelve hundred plant grids per acre. They may have holes. Missing trees. You need to fill those holes and the sooner the better. It takes a long time for trees to grow. I think trees know the meaning of the word patience best.
So I need about two hundred small seedling trees. To fill in holes in tree plantation plots on my Maine family farm.
And getting them takes planning, logistics. Because the tree seedlings are not available year round in Maine.
Early spring is the time for me to be planting the new pine, fir, spruce seedlings. That is now. This University of Maine bulletin on planing trees, shrubs has some handy, helpful information. Maine is too special, natural not to do our part and plant, not just cut trees.
The Houlton Maine Rotary club back in the early 1980’s intiated a program to plant trees along the major streets. These maples, other varieties designed to replace older trees coming down due to weather, age. And especially trees the Dutch elm disease killed, took from our local streets. I have a giant oak tree at a lake vacation home and do not see many oaks in Northern Maine woodlots we list and sell. So this video with a project to plant a 1000 trees got my attention on You Tube.
There are many Scandanavian transplants in Northern Maine. And all I have run in to have told me you give your woodlot to your kids in better shape than you received it. It is good stewardship, respect for a precious natural resource we take for granted. And will lose if we are not careful, vigilant.
