Damariscotta Pumpkinfest

Our last art show of the season took us back to Boothbay this weekend, this time to the Railway Village.  It was a gorgeous weekend and a good show, but the most interesting sidelight was our accidental discovery of the Pumpkin Fest.

We usually cut off through Damariscotta to get to Boothbay, since it skips a portion of usually congested Route 1.  Damariscotta is one of those coastal towns that’s pretty enough to enjoy and not so touristy as to be overwhelmed by visitors – most of the time.  Driving through on Friday afternoon, we saw that most of the businesses had giant – really giant – pumpkins stationed outside their front doors, some of the pumpkins in the process of being decorated.  By Saturday morning, a lot of the artists had finished their work and we stopped early to take some pictures and stroll down the main street.  The variety and imagination were fantastic.  They ranged from the scenic

 to the humorous

to the funky and punky

 

and just plain fishy

 

Turns out it’s a whole week of events and activities, the annual Pumptkinfest, with a parade, pie eating contest, pumpkin hurling and all the artwork, painted, carved and assembled.

But what I wondered was – who was providing all these monster pumpkins?  These beauties are a lot bigger than anything you’ve ever seen at a roadside stand.   Well, turns out a local greenhouse with a couple of pumpkin fanatic owners supplies free giant pumpkin seedlings in the spring and amateur gardeners near and far try their hand at growing the maximum pumpkin.  

http://damariscottapumpkinfest.com/Event%20Pages/PEvents%20-%20Plantlet%20Give-Away.html

 For the Pumpkinfest, there’s a Weigh-In and prizes, and a chance to donate your giant veggie to become one of the town’s pumpkin works of art.

Who knew? 

There’s a whole art and science to the raising of giant pumpkins, and I think that if I remember in time next year, I may give it a try.   Apparently, lots of folks do this.

http://www.bigpumpkins.com/

Still haven’t figured out how you get it into the car, though.

What I Did On My Summer 'Vacation'

 

Looking back over the last couple of  months and trying to figure out what it was that filled up the days, and why there are no blog posts, I come back to two things.

I went to art shows with Ed.

I worked on the garden and its produce.

The art show/craft show circuit in the summer is an intense round of put-up-the-tent, put-up-the-art,  take-down-the-art, take-down-the-tent, load up the car, hope it doesn't rain.  And then do it again.

We were lucky to have mostly good weather this season, and mostly good shows.  Once the early work’s done, it’s not really a bad life to have to sit in the sun in a town in Maine on a summer afternoon.  Here’s Ed working hard in Belfast.

 

And of course you see some familiar faces, fellow vendors, passing friends…

And the garden – indeed the plastic owl saved the cherries, the garden overflowed with too much of too many things. It was beautiful while it lasted.

We fought off the striped cucumber beetles, thwarted the birds in the cherries and the earwigs in the peaches, plucked and squished the tomato hornworms – and still the late blight appeared on the heels of a 24 hour rain and wiped out the late maturing tomatoes. 

Gardening’s a series of wins and losses, and the balance is pretty good this year.   But next year…

It's a Hoot

Things are ripening in the garden.   The cherries are almost ready!

Three years ago we had a great cherry crop, but the last two years the birds have beaten us to it.   Last year we came home from one of Ed's art shows and found nothing hanging but the pits.

I like having the birds around, and we feed them generously, on sunflower seeds and suet and grape jelly (for the orioles, but the catbirds and woodpeckers like it too), not to mention all the yummy bugs on the cukes and zucchini right now, and we let them have most of the blackberries, which are coming along nicely.

But not the cherries...

However, the tree's too tall to net - we can't even reach the top.   So after some research on Google and various gardening forums, we've decided on the solution.

Meet Hoot-

According to a variety of garden experts, an owl decoy or owl scarecrow ( made in USA, signed by the artist who modeled him, made of plastic and hollow to be filled with sand for ballast) works like a charm to scare birds away from the vicinity.   Apparently birds don't analyse to think that owls aren't usually out all day or wonder why he doesn't move (though the experts do suggest you move him every few days).   So Hoot sits on his perch watching over the cherries.   To give him a little help, we've also festooned the tree with shiny dangling CD's, a trick I saw in France.  

He only has to hold the other birds at bay for the next two days, while we're gone, because when we get back, either the cherries will be ripe - or disappeared.   Stay tuned.

"We must cultivate our garden."

"Il faut cultiver notre jardin," says Candide at the end of his travels in Voltaire's story.   "We must cultivate our garden."   It's a full-time job.

Summer here is about the garden and travel around Maine and art shows with Ed, the photographer.  We’ll see how it all fits together.

I’ve been working on the spring clean-up, planting, and general garden chores for the last 6 weeks now.   The vegetables are in, the peas are climbing, the beans are up, the asparagus delicious.   The shade garden and perennial beds are weeded, the roses are fertilized and mulched, the raspberries are (mostly) cleaned out.   The parts that get mowed are mowed.   The garden and fields look so neat.   It’s taken the two of us 6 weeks to get to this point.

I know that all this neatness is just an illusion – and temporary.

One day of rain and a couple of days of sun, and all the weeds will be back, the peas will be doing their best to avoid the trellises, and the tomatoes will have suddenly sprawled before I remembered to stake them.   The peonies will bloom and the next downpour will flatten them, at the same time that it knocks over the delphinium stalks and bends their flowers into S curves.  

Bugs I’ve never seen before will materialize and chomp their way through the squash or the eggplants, late blight will blow in from somewhere, and a three day absence will produce what looks like a hayfield instead of a lawn.   The chipmunks will plant sunflower seeds in the middle of the tomatoes.   The bamboo will do its best to jump forward another three feet.  The grapevine will attempt to swallow the deck.

Until August I’ll be racing to catch up, and then, finally, racing to catch up with the sudden bounty of vegetables, tomatoes, apples –  and leaves.

But for right now,  my garden looks very neat.   It’s trying to fool me.

Paris - when it drizzles

I always tell people who ask about weather that the color of Paris is gray.  Pearl gray, soft gray, dove gray, misty gray.  January in Paris is just that.

We’re long past the days of chasing monuments, but we’ve been walking and bussing and metro-ing around town for a few days, through the touristy and not-so-touristy parts.  Went up to Montmartre to check our the Marché Saint Pierre, a famous fabric shop, which turns out to be surrounded by other fabric shops and provided a riot of color, even in the rain.

 

On the Place du Tertre, the artists just stuck up their umbrellas and kept on sketching, trying to hustle a few customers.  We stopped for lunch and listened to the piano player do a jazzy version of ‘Singin’ in the rain’.

 On the only day when the sun came out for an hour, we walked through Notre Dame Cathedral.   2013 celebrates the 850 year anniversary of the start of the building of Notre Dame.  Here  is one of the rose windows (there are three).

In another mode entirely,  January’s also the time of the semi-annual sales in Paris, and everything but everything is on sale.   I’m not much of a shopper, but it did give me an excuse to visit the Galeries Lafayette, one of the big department stores.  Here’s why it's worth a look, even if you're not buying.

 So - not entirely gray in Paris.   But would you believe - they're forecasting snow for tomorrow!

The French National Sport

Don’t know why I thought we could spend almost two months in France and not encounter a day or two graced by the great national sport of France.  No, not soccer – but `la grève’  - a strike.

This time it’s the taxi drivers who are on strike, which wouldn’t disturb us at all were it not on the very day that we’re taking the train from Lyon to Paris, and had decided, in view of our heavier now suitcases, that we’d just take taxis to and from the train stations and relax. 

So when I asked the desk clerk at the hotel last night whether we needed to reserve the taxi the night before, she said, ‘well, normally, it’s no problem, except that there’s a taxi strike tomorrow.’

That’s the thing about French strikes.  They’re scheduled – and announced in advance – and so although the aim is to disrupt the normal flow of things, there’s usually some sort of alternative.  In this case, it involved hauling our suitcases to the tram stop in Lyon and riding the tram to the train station.  

And then, at the other end, figuring out what was the smoothest metro connection in Paris, with the least number of stairs, because of course,  it’s a NATIONAL  strike.   Not only are the Parisian taxis on strike too, but they’re out doing something called an opération escargot, which means they’re driving the highways and main roads into Paris six abreast at a snail’s pace, snarling traffic (and not picking up passengers.)

But thoughtfully, the metro and buses are running, though the buses had to alter a few routes to get around.

All of this is finished now and everyone's gone back about their business, the point having been made.  Till the next time.

Lyon-izing

We’ve traded the sun of the south for the journey north, and arrived in Lyon to gray skies, which have only broken once so far.  I heard one man say that the air tasted like snow.  Not yet.

 Our first full day here was Sunday, so we set out to walk from our hotel to the center and see what was happening.  On Place Carnot we found the dog and cat market, with breeders showing off their dogs – the full array of chihuahuas and yorkies and jack russells and all the other small dogs we’ve seen everywhere. 

Another side of the Place held the food market and the third side the forein – clothing and household stuff.

Further along, after a stop at the tourist office, we found the big Saint Antoine food market, running along the river, with the vertical Old Lyon in the background.   

This is a gorgeous big market, the air filled with the smell of roasting chicken (Sunday dinner!) and food stands punctuated by flower stalls selling perfect tulips.   

 

We kept going and came upon the book sellers (just like in Paris, only newer stands).  

I was disappointed that we hadn’t been there on the right weekend for the book fair in Nice, so I got my fill of browsing.  On the wall near the booksellers’ quai is one of  Lyon’s famous painted walls.

Crossing the river – the Saone on this side of town – we found the artists’s market, where people had strung up their canvases and other work despite the cold.   

And another painted wall.

 On the following day we explored a little the Croix Rousse, the old silkworkers neighborhood on the north hill of the city.  Another steep hillside, which we walked down, getting lost along the way.

Lyon is famous for the hidden passages that run through old buildings and courtyards. , the traboules, which were used by the silk weavers to transport their goods down the hills to the merchants, (and much later, to foil the Nazi occupiers during the war).   Some are accessible to the public, but it takes a bit of searching.

Lunch - on the rocks

 An addendum to the post on café sitting.

Back to Nice again on a bright sunny day.  We got off the bus somewhere before the Negresco so that we could walk up the Promenade des Anglais with a good view.  

We learned on a previous visit that going the other direction in the afternoon means you're looking into the low-slanted sun and all you see is glare and silhouettes.

What we found was that the restaurants had moved outside and set up directly on the beach, which in Nice is mostly composed of pebbles.  

 Tables, tablecloths, chairs, and waiters carefully de-boning the fish on silver platters.

 They even brought out comfortable seating to watch people playing by the water.

One restaurant followed another, five or six of them, leading up to where the beach got too steep and too narrow.

 

January - Riviera style

The Fine Art of Café Sitting

Happy New Year!

Or as the French say, meilleurs voeux pour le nouvel an!

It’s the pleasures of the day-to-day that this stay in France is about, and café sitting is one we never tire of.   No matter that it’s winter and that, even in the south, mornings are nippy and later the air cools with the setting sun.   The café terrace remains center stage.

In Paris and other northern cities, cafés are glassed in for the winter with portable walls, but here those are a lot fewer.   People may be bundled in jackets and scarves, huddled under the heat lamps, but sit outside they will.   Some cafés have a partial awning in deference to the occasional shower, some don’t.  Doesn't matter - outside is where everyone wants to be.

 Café-sitting requires that you take your time.  It’s all about NOT rushing.   It’s true that you can sit for a long time for the price of one cup of coffee, though doing this through the lunch hour is not appreicated.    

 Once the tablecloths and silverware are set out, you’ll be told politely (or maybe not so politely) that the tables are reserved for those who order food.

If you don’t want to eat much, morning – sometime between 9 and noon, and afternoon, from about 3 till 6 or 7, are prime times for just sitting and watching the world go by.

You must, of course, choose a seat looking out on the passing scene.    

You can shift the chairs around to share one of the tiny tables, or take up two tables if it’s not a busy day.  But sitting with your back to the passing crowd misses the point.

The café of course is only partly about the coffee or the wine or the food – it’s about surveying the passing scene, while you yourself become part of it.   

Some café  sitters are solitary, some hang out with a friend or two, of whatever species.

Alas, café-sitting is no longer an inexpensive tourist activity.  Still, it’s true that the croissant always taste better with a café wrapped around them.