When the calendar ushers in spring, what is it like in Maine?
Past times like spring smelting happen. Canoe and kayak river races show up on the Maine community event listings. Folks head to
Free Of Layers Of Players, Maine Simple Living Means Reduce, Reuse, Conserve.
camp to assess the damage from the ravages of winter weather and water to the outposts are hooked up as spring cleaning in the vacation shanties gets underway. Maine loons return to lakes as do the two legged snow birds that belong to the properties on the waterfront. That side step a Maine wintry setting and avoid the use of a snow shovel for a few months in the sunny south.
Spring in Maine.
A time of renewal, of perusing seed catalogs, planting plots to create a bounty of food from the Earth rich soil. Thoughts of next years the one after that for firewood is always on the mind of a Mainer who uses the renewable resource from the timberlands Vacationland is blessed with top to bottom, side to side. 91 percent of Maine is wooded. I just ordered a F 45 Jotul woodstove and left a message on a tree length timber processor I saw in the local Maine paper. We are prepared for the season called winter and don’t want twenty minutes old sticks of green wood to feed our faithful home heaters.
No Walls, No People, All Real And Natural. Bask In That Vacationing In Maine. That’s What Attracts Maine Tourists.
Boats, old cars, campers all get pulled out of winter storage. Projects around the home and camp properties get put on the drawing board in earnest. Lots of bartering happens in small Maine towns where everyone is a jack of all trades. Resourcefulness trumps the size of your wallet for expenditures in Maine. New fencing gets added to pastures and old posts get righted and put straight on Maine farmsteads.
Hosing down houses, washing windows to make them sparkle in the spring sunshine glinting off a Maine homestead.
The dandruff from asphalt roofing shingles that did not make it through the blustery months of the Maine calendar around the major holidays. A Maine home owner takes notice and plans accordingly. Maybe it is time to replace the roof covering and a trip to an Amish supplier of metal for the job is explored. Estimates for the cost to renovate are on going around the year for a Maine home property owner.
Putting the lawn furniture on the patio or front porch that was stashed away upstairs in a shed or barn. Spring is in the air as lawnmowers are wheeled out into the daylight and oil changed, air filters inspected to get the grass cutters ready. Mainers love to mow lawns and some of your best thinking is done atop or pushing a grass cutter. Big lawns, it is like haying and taps into our old farm habits with the sickle and cutting bar.
Trade shows for boats, house improvements, for gardening all fall out of Maine newspaper circulars.
If you want a renovation hired out to spruce up your home or tackle a much needed repair, this process is going to take a little time. Don’t expect overnight miracle or to snap your fingers and all down quick and easy.
Next Year’s Wood Pile In Tree Life Form. Ready To Knit On, To Slowly Cut And Split Into Just The Right Stove Lengths. Mainers Stay A Season Ahead With Their Wood Stash.
In your home in a small Maine town, you best make the call and secure a place in the line way way early on. Many new to the area transplants remark of the shortage of tradesmen or the fact that it takes considerable time for a new customer to get a call back. Let alone the repair or housing update performed.
The best of the tradesmen are busy and have their regular customers to service. They also don’t pass up a chance to do fiddle heading, smelting, or an outing with the family that is an annual tradition. Mainers have their priorities in order.
You can not look up a list of electricians, plumbers, carpenters in the yellow pages where you let your fingers do the walking in a small Maine town.
Nope. You ask around, you hear the same names come up in the grapevine conversations. There’s your daily double winner in the housing trifecta for the win, place, show.
Have you ever been to Maine? Are the familiar tourist traps the only visit you have made to Vacationland? We recommend traveling deeper, more north into Maine’s interior to sample the goodness of living in this northern most New England state.
Spring in Maine, a time of yard work to repair the truck plowing lawn scars, to remove rocks air lifted in from the snow blower.
Sides of houses pressure washed to release the sand and salt residue that clings to the exterior. And garage doors thrown open high and the interiors swamped out and organized. Just like the cars and trucks we hunker down in when the white blanket covers the landscape in Maine.
Spring is a time when not just your Maine house cats, dogs, whatever pet that samples the two dishes through out the day acts a little funny. Like they are on too catnip.
Cabin fever from the being stuck inside a little more than you would like over winter intensifies as the snow banks surrender and the temperature rises in the tube sampling the air outside your kitchen window.
Free at last. Especially if you are in the elderly demographic of Mainers and worried sick for too long. About that hidden layer of glare ice that might be lurking under the new fallen snow. That snow adds lubrication to the polished ice formation like a moat causing house arrest. That makes conditions ideal for a broken hip or dislocated shoulder if the house dweller inside gets any ideas of a quick escape to Wally World, Piggly Wiggly or Mardens. No one wants the siren ride to the ER and the OR pin applied to the hip right?
Searching For A Snack. Shy Maine Black Bears Shake Off Hibernation And Become More Social.
Throwing open windows and house doors to exchange the air inside for the fresh stuff the other side of the insulated barriers.
Study intently of the online and newsprint canoe and kayak racing circuit schedule news. For trophies to add to the collection gathering dust in the bookcase or on the fireplace mantel. Or the row row or paddle your boat for just the sheer pleasure of floating, coasting with the current at your own pace. Down a winter run off engorged river or stream in Maine with fellow friends, family and neighbors that is a spring tradition for many in Maine. You see the green and red water craft leaning against garages, getting ready for the heave ho hoist to the rack on the back of pickups around Maine. As the angled yellow or red or stainless steel angled plow and frame come off the other end.
The vegetable seed catalogs have long ago been delivered and peat pots on old newspapers cover card tables and porch room window sills.
Both areas littered with jump started, sprouting vegetables to transplant because of they are the best areas to capture the all important sunshine.
That is invited into Maine homes lucky enough to have an eastern, better yet southerly exposure location. The pools of warm sunshine same areas cats like to lounge as they follow the yellow and red ball radiation of heat and light from room to room in houses around Maine.
Maine Moose Jogging By A Maple Syrup Tapped Grove. Spring Air Stirs The Wildlife And The Local Natives.
Plans for a bigger garden this year with new editions that were not on the menu for family dining when harvested after the regiment of planting, weeding, watering, feeding in the labor of love. To serve your family, yourself and all the folks you share the excess bounty from the good old Earth that creates the all natural foodstuffs. In the piece of dirt that can be measured in feet, yards or acres depending on the size of the metes and bounds legal description in the deed to the house you call home in Maine.
Funneling the income tax return to needed repairs or to erase debt for the free and clear. That is part of spring’s ritual involving whether you owe or get a refund. Filling in driveway pot holes, pushing dirt back in to smooth out the runway stop and go. Spring means lots of exercising that involves ladders, holes, window washing and tightening, straightening what is loose.
New Year’s a regular time of resolutions for a better disciplined life as the ball drops and you kiss the one you love and rip off the month of December from the kitchen calendar.
But spring is a time of action to get results from the pledge IOU’s written under the influence of bubbly grape juice or barley pop or whatever firewater tickles the taste buds to fresh you in life celebrations and mile stones. Gratitude is riches and that blessing increases inside especially in spring. A time of renewed hope, faith and relief that robins and song birds return from the south along with lake loons who serenade us nightly as we circle our chairs around open fire pits for some outdoor gap fests and heart to heart therapy sessions.
Opening up the lake, woods, river camps in Maine.
Chasing out the mice who hung out while you were gone. Making a mental list transferred to the scribble on the job jar items that may be a little too ambitious for your back and wallet. But nonetheless created in gusto with prioritizing like the triage exercise in an emergency room. To determine whether the machine shed roof on a set of Maine farm property buildings trumps the replacement of the two windows or sliding doors that have lost their seal and fog over. Interfering with the view of the bird feeder that attracts winged delights of all kinds and a fair share of the cats and squirrels, chipmunks from around the neighborhood to shoo away with the daisy red rider broadcasting copper pellets.
Next Year’s Wood Pile In Tree Life Form. Ready To Knit On, To Slowly Cut And Split Into Just The Right Stove Lengths. Mainers Stay A Season Ahead With Their Wood Stash.
Screwing back on or replacing hanging by one screw mud flaps. Getting a new windshield pinged by a sand truck rock on the way to the local sport’s team and their quest for a gold basketball or coveted hockey trophy. The new sheet of glass so the new vehicle inspection sticker can be applied to avoid the blue lights from Smokey Bear asking for license and your registration please.
Tending the wood home fires stops. Feeding the stoves and furnaces winds down. Next year’s tree length is delivered to prepared early for the next round of winter weather. Staying ahead of the heating curve.
Trips around Maine because you are lucky enough to live here and sample easily the delights of the many regions of Vacationland. Those are mulled over in the shower, humming while shaving with the guy you meet and greet each day in the bathroom mirror. Or while performing the thorough, deep spring cleaning where interior walls get scrubbed, curtains washed or dry cleaned and wardrobes exchanged. To slip into something more comfortable to match the weather in Maine now playing outside your home or camp or cottage.
Treks with picnic baskets to Baxter Park, down to the rugged rock bound coast line in Maine.
Hiking up the hills, biking around the islands that deliver whatever you peddle by ferry boats running on tight schedules when the Maine weather allows them to without peril. Collecting another light house in Maine for the collection.
The Sweet Stuff, Rock Maple Sap That Boils Down 40 To 1 For The Golden Mixture To Ooze And Drizzle On Your Griddle Stacks Of Maine Blueberry Pancakes.
Trips to visit, pay respects to family plots on the spots in a cemetery where departed loved ones are buried. The plastic flowers replaced with rear ones in some cases. Trimming bushes, shaping landscaping trees to keep them low to the ground and respectful. Silent and audible conversations had with the ones you miss but know are in a better place with no suffering and saving you a seat.
Maine home shows around the state give you ideas for renovations to your castle this spring and beyond.
New toys for the water front or all the trails that dot and dash the Gazetteer map to explore get attention too if sales too hard to pass up are marketed correctly. The seed is already planted in Mainers who study the Uncle Henry’s and Craiglist for a true bargain. Snow sled trail markers and directional signs are collected, uprooted in muddy fields. To make way for the farmers to drop the chisel plow to get ready for another spring planting when the soil warms up and drys out.
Awareness sharpens in spring because of the lull caused by spending more time than you would like indoors over a Maine winter. The exercise regiment increases and the pounds added on during the holidays melt away like the snow flakes free loading in receding bank on properties around Maine. Green grass awaits, golf courses too and hardware trips to perform a few of the requests at a time on the honey do list.
Spring time in Maine, folks of all ages smile more, dream louder.
Kids sense it first as bikes are hauled out of storage way too early. And forgetting to wear a coat as they race for the trampoline under chilly conditions remind you what it is like to be young and not carry the weight of mortgage payments, poor medical reports and juggling the check book.
If you only spend time in Maine around July 4th, add some new dance steps to your vacation fox trot or jitter bug up the pike numbered “95” into the Pine Tree state. Maine, she does a body good and once those heart strings are found, she never lets go and you don’t mind one bit.
