Fiddleheads and The Last Two Feet of Snow

On Friday our good neighbor Pease brought us over a bag of fiddleheads he had picked that day. They made a great veggie dish to go with the delicious soup Lauren had created Saturday night. Fiddleheads are another sure sign of Spring and as I was surveying the back yard this morning with Dusty I admired the last two feet of snow. There’s a warm breeze blowing today and my guess is that by 8:00 AM tomorrow that snow will be history.

So good-bye snow

You’ve been nice to know

Bringing pleasure to the skiers

Aiding the economic flow

See you next season

When the cold winds blow

Cooking with Gas

Amber and Tommie bought us a very nice Anniversary/Birthday gift in the form of an Amana gas cook stove. What a pleasure it is…not that I do the cooking, but it is just nice to see Lauren using a real cook stove instead of what she referred to as the “Easy-bake” oven she’s been working with for the last year.

Once the realization set in that we were not going to be able to “remodel the whole kitchen” worthy of a photo shoot in Better Homes and Gardens we’ve begun to make the kitchen “workable” and this cook stove takes it to a new level. It’s a funky kitchen to be sure but with this new addition it seems…well, wicked nice. Thanks Amber and Tommie.

Tommie helped me get the stove surround started. Our buddy Dennis from Community Energy installed the gas line and got the stove working. A few weekends later we have a finished product. What’s really nice about this design is that I can stand on the back side of the stove and very comfortably rest my arms on that shelf and watch Lauren cook. I used 2” x 6” framing for the surround which allowed for the built in shelving you see in the photos. Do you like the two little shelf brackets near the top? I thought it needed this finishing touch so I drew and cut them out on a piece of pine. The bead board wainscoting on the back side is actually solid pine tongue and groove plank paneling. The pieces are about 3 ½” wide but they are only ¼” thick. I had a plywood backing behind it to add strength and stability to the half wall so I just nailed the bead board to the plywood but if you’re going against sheetrock you will want to use something like “Liquid Nails” to install it. The plank paneling is easy to work with but because it is so thin you may find that at some of the knots you have a see-through hole. Because we were painting this I just filled the few holes with latex caulking but if you were going to stain or clear finish it you would want to use wood putty.

Leave a comment telling me what you would love to see Lauren cooking on the stove when you come for a visit. I’ll be providing the wine and a cheese ball.

TURBULENT WATER

Most of our friends and family know by now that on March 17^th Lauren had her left kidney removed after a trip to the emergency room and a CT scan showed a tumor growth in the kidney. The bad news was it was cancerous but the good news is it appears that it was limited just to the kidney. All the lymph nodes around it came back negative. A follow up visit we had with an oncologist last Friday was good. No further treatment such as chemotherapy was recommended, just follow up CT scans in the months to come to see if there have been any changes.

This was turbulent water that we had not expected and like many unexpected things it was scary. Would everything be okay once the kidney was removed? Three weeks later and looking back it seems so far, so good. We were both impressed by the quality of care, the professionalism, and the kindness Lauren received from the nurses and doctors at Stephen’s Memorial Hospital in Norway and at Maine Medical Center in Portland.

Family and friends rallied around us although it happened so fast we didn’t have a chance to get the word out to everyone. It turned out to be another family event however and some were able to visit while Lauren was recovering at the hospital. I know this pleased her a lot and made the healing process all the more easier. Lauren is doing great right now. Thanks to everyone for your love and support.

Peter

We Are Wabi-Sabi

Thanks to my brother Erik and the subscription he gave me to the Mother Earth News I have just discovered something that makes me enjoy life even more. I can now find contentment and peace in everything I have and everything that surrounds me by engaging in Wabi-Sabi. What is Wabi-Sabi? I had never heard of this until I read an article in the current issue of the Mother Earth News last night written by Robyn Griggs Lawrence titled Wabi-Sabi: Finding the Beauty and Peace in Ordinary Things. To quote from the article “Wabi-Sabi is the Japanese philosophy of appreciating things that are imperfect, primitive and incomplete.” “It’s slow and uncluttered and regards authenticity above all.” “It finds beauty in cracks and crevices and all the marks that time, weather and use leave behind.” Well if that is the definition then I live in a Wabi-Sabi Mansion and the photos you see here may make you extremely envious.

Think for a moment of one of your favorite objects, a well worn but oh so comfortable sweater with holes, a piece of pottery or drawing your child gave you long ago, or a piece of furniture passed down from your grandparents with a few ding s and a knob or two missing. Dwell on it. It’s comfortable, it was made by someone you love, or it has history told by the scratches, water marks and a missing knob. You probably will never get this same feeling of appreciation by going to Wal-Mart or Target or wherever and buying a mass produced product fresh out of the perfectly packaged cardboard box. Wabi-Sabi is about appreciating old and used items, appreciating hand-made items, appreciating the imperfections that are life.

If you read the article on Wabi-Sabi in the Mother Earth News you’ll find a list of 12 Ways to Wabi-Sabi. It’s all good in my book and I do encourage you to read it because then you may find that you can accept things as-is, as good, just as they are right now and feel content about it.

Sure…I have plaster missing from my walls and ceiling…but it looks kind of neat and it has a certain warmth to it….and it makes me think of who actually did that work….and what it was like back then. I can get lost in the beauty of the imperfection and I believe that is what Wabi-Sabi is trying to say. Now I just have to convince Lauren.

I Got Lucky

When I was young the term “I got lucky” had a whole different connotation and now when I say “I got lucky” I mean something like …I just won a pair of free tickets to see and hear some cool music in a really neat place…which is exactly what happened to me last week. You see I entered this contest on a radio station I like here in Maine known as WCLZ and about a week later they emailed me to say I had won a pair of tickets to see Carol Noonan at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, Maine for January 20th. This really was a prize because Lauren and I have been talking about going to this place for the past 12 months. If you check out their website you will see why http://www.stonemountainartscenter.com/ArtsCenter/ .
What they do is they bring in amazing musicians and entertainers with some pretty well known names like Joan Baez, Robert Cray, and The Indigo Girls to a “beautiful- new” post and beam barn structure located out in the middle of nowhere to entertain you, me, and the locals. There was such a nice vibe at this place that words cannot explain it. The box office lobby is a “beautiful-old” post and beam barn that they had moved just a short distance on the site and rebuilt. The bartender was one of the people who helped to rebuild the lobby barn which brings me to another point. You really sense “community and love” here, from the people who work at multiple tasks, to the songs you hear, and from Carol’s desire to give back to the community. In fact this event was labeled as The Album Release for Waltzing’s for Dreamers by Carol Noonan who notes that the sale proceeds will be used to “To put on some free shows for our recession hard-hit community…”

Before I end let me say you can eat here before the show at the same table where you will then experience the show and the food is good and plenty. We had a delicious large salad with fruits, nuts, and cheese which we split and still brought home half. I then had the salmon chowder loaded with chunks of fish and other goodies which came in a bowl the size of a small bathtub. Okay I exaggerated here but not by much, you’ll see and yes I took at least half of that home too.

Carol Noonan and the Stone Mountain Band is so worth seeing if you can create the opportunity and I think you will feel lucky when you arrive at the Stone Mountain Arts Center even if you have to pay for the tickets

January Update

It is 2:45 now on a lazy Saturday afternoon and it looks like it may snow soon. Lauren and I just came back from the Transfer Station where we actually came back with nothing extra this time. Earlier today we took down our Christmas Trees, yes trees, we had two of them. Why, because….well why not? We certainly have enough decorations for two. Lauren deserves the credit for decorating them. My job was installation, keeping them watered, and then removal. I did enjoy them because they added a nice festive light and feeling to the home.

In other news, we had seen a raccoon at the side of barn the other day so I set the Hav-a-Hart trap inside the barn and on Thursday thought I had caught it when I saw the trap closed. But instead I had caught the neighbor’s cat that was very happy to be released. We haven’t heard the ruckus lately that we had been hearing under our kitchen floor which is a crawlspace that allows access and shelter for the raccoons, porcupines, and woodchucks. When these guys get going it can sound somewhere between a party and soccer match. They chatter loudly, run back and forth, bang into the floor, and chew the bottom of the floor joists. Because “we” don’t have access to this space our only solution currently is to take a block of wood, place it on the kitchen floor directly over where we hear the noise and then proceed to bang the daylights out of the wood with a hammer to try and scare them off. It seems to work but sometimes only temporarily. Recently someone told us to put a rag soaked with ammonia down there. I remembered this worked well when we were having raccoons get into our garbage barrels in Massachusetts years ago. The problem with this is our limited access to get the rag under there and then do we really want the aroma of ammonia wafting up through the kitchen floor? I don’t think so.

Thanks to this last snowstorm on Wednesday all the bare spots which were on the ground are now covered. Hopefully it will stay like this until spring so we can do more cross country skiing. We did our first cross country ski of the season a couple of weeks ago after the first big snow. It felt great to ski, yes and fall, along the trails at the Bethel Inn and at the end of a good workout I was able to take my skis off and walk 100 yards to my house. On Thursday I walked up to Suds Pub for Hoot Night and met up with our long time good neighbor from Magnolia, John O’Hara. We caught up in conversation while the local musicians played. I Love Hoot Nite at Suds. Tomorrow we’re going to watch the Patriots game with Matt and Sari Rochford who are other long time Magnolia neighbors of ours. They apparently come up with their kids most weekends now to go skiing at Sunday River. It’s uncanny just how many people from Gloucester and Cape Ann we keep bumping into here and how many have bought homes up here. Enjoy the cold…it was zero here last night. Hey, it’s snowing now.

Once in a while you’ve got to look back.

Once in a while you’ve got to look back.

This is the time where we want to look back and review the year because tomorrow starts the New Year even though millions of us will continue to write 2010 on our checks well into March. This has been a dynamic year for me and Lauren mostly because I like saying the word, Dynamic. It was just over a year ago we had bought this house (12/11/2009) and it was just 11 months ago when Dusty the Cat and I hit the road to drive across country with our worldly possessions and then rolled into Bethel on January 17, 2010. We had to wait until our new heating system was installed on February 19th to actually move in. From that point on it has been weekends full of house projects and/or company. We’ve actually had more visits than I expected this year which has been really nice. I’ve actually completed less house projects than I had hoped to this year which is life but I can point to three big items accomplished; a new heating system, a new 200 amp electrical service, and a new washer and dryer. Then I can point to a bunch of smaller items accomplished; painting, plaster repair, weather stripping, insulation here and there, tree cutting and fighting bamboo, cutting the lawn, raking leaves etc.

In no particular order here are some things we’ve have done:
We joined the Bethel Historical Society. http://www.bethelhistorical.org/
We joined the Bethel Inn Country Club. http://www.bethelinn.com/
I’m a member of the Suds’ Pub Mug Club and Dart Team. http://www.sudburyinn.com/
We’re members of Western Maine Senior College. http://sad44.maineadulted.org/western_mountains_senior_college
We’re members of the Mahoosuc Land Trust. http://www.mahoosuc.org/
We’re member of the Bethel Outing Club. http://www.wix.com/kirksmegalinknet/boc
I’m a member of the Old Speckled Hen Appreciation Society at the Jolly Drayman English Pub. http://www.briarleainn.com/

We’ve discovered a number of swimming holes and lakes we like. We had a bunch of campfires in the yard this summer. We went hiking and kayaking. We’ve discovered that woodchucks, porcupines, raccoons, mice, deer, and black bears like our home also. We’ve attended the various festivals/fairs, wine tastings, free music events and free talks they have had around here. These are the things we enjoy when we aren’t looking backard or looking forward. We continue to make new friends and acquaintances which is so much of what being part of a community is about. Happy New Year!