Eagles Over the Kennebec

...that I did work today, which is notable, and now it is noted.

The work consisted of digging three holes, which isn't as easy as you might think, those of you who unaccountably do not live on two acres of glacial moraine, or at the very least two acres of shale thinly covered with what we'll call soil.

Why, you ask, was I moved to do work on a fine Maine morning when I ought to have been, um, writing?

Well, I'm glad you asked that question. Alert readers will recall that several days ago I acquired, in defiance of both the Lawn Guy's Assistant, and the neighbor's road-crossing, if not actually free-ranging chickens, plants for the Cat Garden, which has, through the direct intervention of said Forces of Nature more or less become a Weed Garden.

It had been hot and humid the last few days, not at all the sort of weather to encourage a sedentary and overweight author of more than middle years to go outside and dig holes in the garden.   So, I left the plants, in their pots, in approximately the locations I had chosen for their eventual homes.  I watered them each day, but they were looking sort of droopy and sad by this morning, so it was just very fortunate that today was gorgeously blue, and breezy, and dry, and of a temperature that someone who lives in Maine would find reasonable for July.

So! Three holes.  Not exactly in the locations previously chosen -- did I mention we live on shale?  Also there are trees, and trees have roots.  Lots of roots.  No, really; look it up.

In between the rocks and roots, then -- three holes.

One hole for the Cherry Pops Bee Balm which replaces the Murdered Bee Balm of yesteryear.  Bee balm attracts butterflies, hummingbirds, and, well, bees.  This particular sort claims to be deer and mildew resistant.

One hole for the Wishing Well Plantain Lily, aka Hosta Wishing Well.  This plant attracts hummingbirds and has a mounding habit, so I envision a Mountain of Hosta in my future.

The third and final hole -- actually the first dug -- was for the White Frost Hemerocallis -- aka a day lily with a curly yellow trumpet not only bigger than my head, but damn' near bigger than Trooper.  It is two feet high.  Who can say no to a two-foot-high day lily that has flowers the size of a coon cat?  It's big enough to be sentient.  Indeed, I have some hope that it will be writing next year's book.

I will also mention here that I have received and have been testing various bug repellents.  It is in my mind to go with the least application that is still effective.  To that end, I began today with the bug repellent bracelet, fully expecting that I would need to come inside and upgrade.

In this, I was disappointed.  I did hear one rather insistent buzz, but closer inspection revealed the author to be a hummingbird, who was apparently under the impression that he was paying me for these plantings, and I could pick the pace up a bit, if I didn't mind.  Or, given hummingbirds, even if I did mind.

So, having now made the record complete, I believe I'll. . .

. . .do some work.

So this morning, Madame Belle went to the vet for her three-year rabies shot and her chip.  She has gained about a pound since last year; retirement agrees with her.  The mail was in the box when we came home, and I regret to report that the check still wanders the postal pathways between New York and Maine.  *pats checkbook reassuringly*

In other news, I seem to have caught a cold, which is. . .not perfect timing.  Am drinking tea with honey and will shortly take a nap, following Belle's example.  She's currently resting her nerves on the bookshelf next to my desk.

In other news, below are two shots of Mount Washington from the parking lot at Pine Point, yesterday, right around one o'clock.

This was not the day I had planned.

I had planned to do some business emails, then get with the manuscript, and finish the squaring up of the Big Narrative Lump, and indeed, the day went agreeably in that direction for about two hours.  Then, I noticed that Belle's back foot was bleeding.  Steve and I did an examination, and determined that, yes, this was a matter for the vet, so we called, and achieved an appointment for 2:30 today.

After that, it was my turn to call The Guy From Dead River (for those coming in late, the whole house generator was installed yesterday, so yay!  However, the generator needs propane to operate, and, as reported earlier, siting the propane tanks was apparently going to be A Big Problem).  This would have been, you understand, on the order of the sixth phone call we'd made to the office since the site visit.

I actually reached someone who could help me.  She informed me that this project was going to be Very, Very Difficult, involving two guys for six hours and a ditch witch, it was going to cost A Bundle of Money, and! -- insult to injury -- the work can't be done until November 16.  At 8 a.m., naturally enough.

This is the point where you'd walk away and call the next vendor on the list. Sadly, there is no next vendor, so I agreed to Terms, and ask you please to all join me in hoping that the damned ground doesn't freeze before November 16.

Grr.

I did a little more work, Steve made us a lemon and chicken soup for lunch, and at precisely 2:30, we were at the vet's, who was saying, "Good grief, what happened?"

As near as we can figure, Belle tried to get into the drop ceiling in the basement -- a favorite hangout for Cat Farm Coon Cats, though they really are Far Too Big to get into the drop ceiling in the basement -- missed her jump -- or insisted that she had so made the jump -- and in the process ripped a claw out of her back right foot.

The vet cleaned the wound, prescribed antibiotics (because Belle weighs very nearly 17 pounds, Belle gets to take Dog Drugs, which is to say 1/4 of a dog-sized antibiotic), and sent us on our way with instructions to watch the foot, and Belle's behavior, and call if anything changed for the worst.

I will note that Belle was a perfect lady on the ride to and from, and at the vet's.  Though her foot must have hurt a lot, she didn't utter a single curse, nor tried to discipline the doctor or her assistant.  I expect Maine coons to be mellow, but this was really above and beyond.

Home again, I did the dishes, and got back to work for another hour.  My concentration, however, is not what it ought to be going into this section, which needs a bunch of description, and is also somewhat scrambled on the Who Said What To Whom front.  Which is to say, the kind of stuff you need to bear down and micro-concentrate on.

So! That will be Saturday's job, since tomorrow, day-time, is filled with appointments, and that evening with the Rocky Horror Show.

* * *

In other news, I have been remiss in reporting the anniversary of our 27th year in Maine.  We crossed the border on, I believe, October 3, 1988, and commenced an exciting day, indeed, in which we found in short order that we had no place to live (because the daughter of the owner of the house in Skowhegan we had rented long-distance, had left her husband in the time it had taken us to drive from Maryland to Maine, and moved into "our" house); Steve's job, also arranged long-distance, had evaporated; that the Skowhegan library had on its bookshelves in 1988, SFBC editions of books that hadn't gone out since 1977, and the librarian of same advised me, earnestly, that, if I was a reader, I should go to the high school library to borrow books.

Yes, it was epic, that day; one of the Great Ones that you look back upon in calmer times and wonder how you had held your hand from murder and mayhem.

Still on topic -- in another three weeks, Steve and I will be celebrating the 35th anniversary of our marriage.  We moved to Maine together, where we knew no one, save Tom Easton and Barry Longyear, through SFWA, when we had been married less than eight years.  In retrospect, I'm not sure if that was heroic or stupid.

Whichever, it turned out all right in the end.

* * *

Yesterday, I did go elsewhere to work, and got a bunch of redlining done on the threads which are not the Big Narrative Piece.  In the morning, since it was sunny, and windless, I went out to Oakland, and worked at a picnic bench at the Messalonskee Lake Public Boat Landing.  I was wearing good Maine layers -- long-sleeve tshirt, long-sleeve denim shirt, long-sleeve fleece hoodie, jeans, and wool socks -- and it was actually quite pleasant for a couple hours, until the wind picked up.  Later in the afternoon, I moved my base of operations to China Lake, where I lunched, and worked in the car.

* * *

Today's blog post is brought to you by Bob Dylan by way of Tom Russell, "Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts."  Here's your link.

* * *

Here's a shot of yesterday's temp office at Messalonskee Lake:

. . .or, as we say around here, Winter is coming.

Not even six o'clock and it's already getting dark.  Well, at least we went out and played in the sunshine.  Took a ride in the brisk and breezy autumn day, through China, and Windsor, and so to Augusta -- as one does -- where we took a break at Barnes and Noble, and came home with -- Anyone care to hazard a guess?

. . .

You guys are too good.

Yeah, we came home with books, including Anne Leckie's second book, Ancillary Sword; Paragon Walk, Anne Perry; Why Mermaids Sing, CS Harris; Third Circle, Amanda Quick.  So, thank ghod, I won't run out of anything to read soon.

*cough*

We stopped for ice cream on the way home from the bookstore, and so we were sitting to the mid-day meal rather later than usual.  We had just finished up when we heard -- and felt! -- a sort of THUD-thud.  I looked out the front window (which is accessible to me from my usual seat at the kitchen table) and saw our neighbor's truck going slllllloooooowwwwly up his drive, dragging a trailer full of Big Freaking Chunks of Wood.

"It's them going up the drive across the street," I said to Steve, but Steve was already out on the deck, and he was saying, "That's not what we heard."

I got up and went outside to look, and, by golly, this is what we heard, falling out of the trailer:

"Wow," I said.  "I'm glad it didn't roll," and I continued off the deck to the mailbox, because I had some letters to mail.

As I crossed the road, I looked down the street and discovered that, no, there wasn't a log in the road.

Whereupon I started to laugh.  I was still laughing, bent over, letters in hand, when our next door neighbor -- you can see his drive, right where the farthest log is -- drove carefully up the road and said to me, "Did you see who lost 'em?"

I nodded and pointed up the drive.

"Him?  Does he know?"

"I don't think so."

"He must know. . . You think he doesn't know?"

"I'll go up and tell him, just in case," I said.  "Since you're already driving, maybe you ought to check down the main road to make sure they didn't lose any more."

"Oh! Good idea!"

And off he went.

I put my letters in the box, and walked up the neighbor's drive; and was about half-way to the house when the door opened and out came Himself.

"You lost some logs in the road," I said.

"Yeah," he said a little sheepishly, "we just now noticed they was gone and wondered where we lost them."

"Our other neighbor went out on the road to make sure you didn't lose any more," I said.  Himself winced slightly.

"Great," he said.  "Thanks."

* * *

In other news, I turned in "The Night Don't Seem so Lonely," an Archers Beach short story which will appear on the Baen website in mid-December to whet everybody's appetite for Carousel Seas.

And, now, I do believe I'll go do the dishes and then repair to the couch to perhaps finish reading Good Omens.

Maine's tag-line is: Maine: The way life should be

In case you didn't know that.

As I may have mentioned here once or twice, I like living in Maine, and anticipate no necessity in future to shift to, say, Florida. Or Arizona.  Or any of those other Warm Places with Interesting Weather of their own.

Maine's Interesting Weather usually happens in the winter. I think this is a serious error in planning.  Maine should schedule its Interesting Weather in the summer time, when the tourists can enjoy it, and when the Interesting Results of the Interesting Weather can be contained by Seasonal Weather.

An ice storm in July would be just the thing, providing welcome relief from what we like to call "heat"; a deftly timed power outage would impart the thrill of being alone in the achingly cold dark, tempered by the knowledge that the next day would dawn bright and hot, melting the ice in time for everyone to enjoy a noon swim.

I appeal to the Maine Department of Tourism to look into this slight change of schedule.  It could bring Million$ into the state's tourism efforts.

Back here at the Old Schedule, we had an ice storm Saturday through Sunday and into Monday afternoon.  We briefly lost power on Monday morning, but it came back, lulling us into a sense of false security, until it went out with a vengeance in the small hours of Tuesday morning.

And it remained out.

After a breakfast of tuna fish on rolls, with hot tea (eating off the shelves, you know), we went outside, where it was 23F-feels-like-16F, and worked up a sweat chipping the cars free of their icy sarcophagi.

We came back inside, had another cup of hot tea, and a cookie and discussed whether we should start the wood stove.  The problem being that the woodstove and the oil furnace share the same flue.  Meaning that, if the power came back on soon -- as was our devout wish -- we'd need to turn it off until the woodstove had finished its burn. We have an 18-hour woodstove.

In the end, we decided to play the old Who Cares About The House, We're Going To Town card, and see if that brought the power back.

So, we went to town and picked up the mail (Christmas cards! A check for our share of an anthology sale to Audible! My limited edition Major Arcana deck of the Tarot of the Zirkus created and produced by Waterville's own Doug Thornsjo!) hit the various hardware stores to replace the snowmelt we'd used up, and to buy birdseed, then had dinner at the Weathervane before heading home, where we found that!

The power was still out.

It was now approaching 4:30 pm, and I was beginning to fear for the items in the fridge.

We lit the woodstove, with much help from the cats, took one of the back-up batteries down to the basement to power a light and recharge the cellphones, and sat by the side of the woodstove, reading.

Until the power came back on, around...7:30?

Steve took advice on the internet, but it was as we had supposed; we turned off the furnace and repaired upstairs to have dinner and, eventually, to bed.  With extra blankets.  And coon cats.

It was Quite Chilly this morning when we got up.  The fire had burned down to a nice even ash, and the furnace has been brought back into play.

I've downloaded the Federal Government's lists of what food items are safe to keep after an extended time without power, and which must be thrown away, and after breakfast -- I'm thinking grilled cheese sandwiches, here, since the eggs are unsafe -- I'll spend some time cleaning out the fridge.  On the one hand, it's good we weren't planning a Feast and lost a families-worth of holiday dinner.  On the other hand, the fridge wasn't exactly empty.

Today, it's bright and sunny, though very, very cold (8F/-13C feels-like-minus 6F/minus 21C).  And I am extremely happy to have the furnace running, and the lights on.

To those who celebrate:  Merry Christmas.