Maine 2011: The Gardens

Gene's parents rented this gorgeous house in Castine. It was built in 1810, has eight bedrooms and is full of history.My favorite part of the house was not the old house itself but the massive vegetable garden out back. It was full of cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, lettuces, raspberries, blueberries, green beans, sugar snap peas, potatoes, rhubarb, celery and more and we were allowed to go out and pick to our hearts' content.
And if you know me, you know I like my veggies. I loved being able to go out and pick my own lunch. Delish!
Big fat sweet sugar snap peas.
We had to work hard for the raspberries but they were worth it. Henry and the Maine blueberries.
Happiness in the garden.
Behind the garden was even an apple tree. The apples were edible, but a bit on the tart side. The boys preferred climbing in the tree, of course. I wasn't the only one interested in the garden. We saw deer on several occasions.
After we left Castine, we stopped at the Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay. We had visited two years ago on a drizzly day, and since then, they have added a Children's Garden that gets rave reviews. We had to check it out. And Henry had to write his name in water on the edge of a water feature. This stone is at the entrance to the Children's Garden. The quote is from one of my favorite books, Miss Rumphius by Barbara Cooney: "You must do something to make the world more beautiful." Will stopped to read a sign. We found a mazeand Mr. MacGregor's garden. We looked and looked for Peter Rabbit but we couldn't find him. Perhaps he was safely home in his burrow! We stopped to ogle some enormous sunflowersand pump some waterand smell a scratch-and-sniff scarecrow, who was stuffed with lavender and other herbs,and hop into a canoe. We found the reading room and read Miss Rumphius and thought about how we can help the earth and make it a more beautiful place. And while we were reading, the beautiful clear blue skies turned gray and thunder rumbled in the distance. We cut our visit to the Botanical Gardens short and made a wild dash back to the car and didn't quite make it in time. As Henry and I were running through the rain, he paused to look at me and say, "I don't think we're doing so good, Mommy." Maybe we didn't make it safely through the rain, but we did come back to Houston with hopes of carving out a space in our backyard for a little vegetable garden next year, and doing our own small part to make the world more beautiful. I think Miss Rumphius would approve.

Maine 2011: The Beach

You can go to Maine and not visit a single beach. I know this because I'm pretty sure I'd never been to a Maine beach before this summer. However, with two rambunctious, water-loving little boys, you can't not spend at least some time at a beach, and I'm so glad we did because we all loved it!

Our first trip to the beach was in Castine. We found this rocky beach below Fort Madison. It was perfect for skipping stones, or just throwing them as hard as you could into the water. It was also the perfect place to take some family photos. We found a big piece of driftwood with stones placed on it by others who had walked on the beach. We each chose a stone and placed our pile with all the others. Here is the same beach a few day later, shrouded in a thick cover of fog. Our next beach was Wadsworth Cove in Castine. We spent two glorious afternoons there. This is also not a typical sandy beach. Water shoes were definitely necessary as the beach was made of rocks, snails and mussel shells!The boys ran and splashed in the water. We found crabs, mussels, and sea snails (also known as periwinkles or whelks). Henry was on a mission to save the snails. Unfortunately, he did this by ripping them off the rock they were happily attached to and flinging them into the water. Poor snails. They worked for over an hour to build this amazing dam.
It was just beautiful. Back in Portland, we found a sandy beach at Fort Preble, but we didn't come prepared with swimsuits, so we just walked on the beach. Henry learned to write his name on the Maine trip, so everywhere we went, he left his mark -- in the sand, on chalkboards, in water on the sides of fountains. He's a three-year-old graffiti artist! Even though I would never plan a vacation around the beach, I do love the water and the beautiful Maine shoreline. So you can bet the next time we visit Maine, we'll be prepared to spend at least a few days at the beach.

Maine 2011: The Cousins

One of the best parts of our Maine trip was spending time with Amber and Tom and their kids. We got to finally meet our new niece, Ella, aged 7 months.
Isn't she a little red-haired cutie?
Here are Ella and my sister, Amber, or as the boys have taken to calling her, "Aunt Ambah." Where do they think they live, the Northeast??
Ella and Tom.
We played a lot at Aunt Amber's house, both inside, where the boys dressed up as Vikings,
and outdoors, where the boys played with a huge dump truck
and a bubble-blowing lawnmower. Gramma and Grampa set up the sprinkler in their backyard for the boys to run through.

Leo came along on lots of our adventures too. Here are the boys at the Maine Wildlife Park and on the train in Portlandand at Bug Light, on our last day in Maine. The boys love their cousins. Now if we could only manage to see them more often!