Turkey Tracks: Wild Turkeys in the Spring

Turkey Tracks: November 4, 2013

Wild Turkeys in the Spring

So, many of you know by now that I love to put something on the blog from the opposite season of the year. Since this is fall, that would mean something from spring.

Here’s a picture of two of the wild male turkeys that stay around the house all winter–roosting in the trees at night–they look like black garbage bags way, way up in the tops of the firs–and eating food the chickens discard into their bedding and which gets thrown out as I clean out the coop.

In the spring, they start courting the many hens that hang with them all winter. And, as they fluff out their feathers and drag their wings on the ground, their heads turn cobalt blue. See?

It’s not a great picture, but you can see their heads starting to turn blue.

Turkeys are very social. Even wild ones.

It is routine for me to call “goodnight” to them as I lock up the coop at dusk and put my chickens to bed. And these greetings start in late winter and go well into the spring.

After the spring courting–when the turkeys break into smaller bands of hens with one or two males–the hens nest and break away to raise their babies. It is not unusual to see a hen with a dozen little ones following after her across a ditch or the road.

At this point I imagine that they are all fox food. I can’t imagine how they survive the spring, hungry foxes, who are also raising babies.

Turkey Tracks: Fall Foliage in Mid-Coast Maine

Turkey Tracks: November 4, 2013

Fall Foliage in Mid-Coast Maine

This has been one of the prettiest falls I ever remember in my ten years in Maine.

Perhaps it’s been the relatively dry Indian Summer?

The hillsides are literally orange–and when the sun hits them–Oh MY! I find myself just wanting to drive around and capture the orange.

Two weeks ago, I took this video on a cloudy Sunday–so the hillsides don’t have sunlight firing them up. Since then, the color has deepened and become even richer.

Here are two stills from that same day. Remember, no sunshine…

And, you can see how what Sarah Orne Jewett called “the pointed firs” occupy the tops of our hills. It’s colder up there, and with global warming, they are retreating up the hillsides.

Here are some views around the house, starting with a video taken from the upper porch, which looks out to a ridge and into our woods:

And looking into the path into our woods:

Turkey Tracks: Friendship Samplers Quilt Show, Belfast, Maine

Turkey Tracks: November 1, 2013

Friendship Samplers Quilt Show

Belfast, Maine

Friendship Samplers is the Pine Tree Quilting Guild chapter located to Camden’s north, in Belfast, Maine.

(We are the Coastal Quilters here in Camden.)

The Friendship Samplers quilters are strong, competent, wonderful quilters. There is just so much talent in that group.

They do a quilt show every other year, and this year was the year.

And this year, their show was as wonderful as ever.

I did not begin to take pictures of everything–or even of some of the most amazing quilts–and there were many. I took pictures of work that stimulated my own creativity. And do remember that the quilts I love best are scrappy quilts that are functional.

First, my most favorite quilt was my friend Joan Herrick’s “Logs and Ladders”–where she has combined a log cabin block with a Jacob’s Ladder block–and took advantage of their strong directional orientations. There’s one of these in my future!

I was intrigued by the quilting in this quilt–and later realized it’s called “McTavishing,” after Karen McTavish, who invented it. You can see how to do it on Leah Day’s web site, along with at least 400 other free-motion quilting designs she has put onto utube videos.

Don’t you love this modern “take” on the log cabin block?

I love the work of Alice Parsons. And she had a hand in this quilt below:

It’s stitched with bright orange thread in squiggly lines up and down the quilt. And look at the use of purple for the sashing. That purple is making the yellow leap out of the quilt!

Look at how the center square is varied–and the use of the adorable funky bird–and the use of rows of the squares…

I want to make a quilt with birds at the center of some kind of block. And I love what these quilters have done here. It’s just so much fun!

Here’s another creative idea for making use of a central square with something (birds!) fussy cut inside it. Surround the square with flying geese and corner blocks:

The flying geese and their backgrounds can vary in color choice. What’s uniting the quilt here is the sashing/border fabric–in this case black and white and the use of the center square with a border around it.

The Friendship Samplers always have a “quilt alley” where you buy chances (25 for $2!!!) and put your chances in the can/s of the quilt/s number you like.

All these quilts were to be “won” on Friday. Another set went up on Saturday.

I found many little quilts I liked on this wall. But this one was my favorite:

Here’s a close-up of the blocks:

The Friendship Samplers always have goodies to eat–and they COVER FOOD TABLES WITH QUILTS–which fascinated Giovann McCarthy–on her first outing to a Frienship Samplers Quilt Show:

I really loved some of these “table cloth” quilts. I cringed at using a quilt for a table cloth, but their use does remind one that quilts are made to be used and loved:

Here’s a close-up of a table cloth quilt. I’ve never found a squared square form that I didn’t like:

Here’s a close-up:

I was most intrigued with this pattern as well:

Here below you can see the two blocks that make the pattern together: 4 half-square triangles with the colors to the inside making a square AND a sixteen patch with four red blocks making the center. I’d cut the block to combine two of the white squares into a rectangle though

This quilt was HAND STITCHED!!!

Imagine it made in any number of colors–as long as you keep the light and dark values: blue, yellow, orange, brown, etc.

SO, our group really enjoyed the Friendship Samplers Quilt Show 2013 and look forward to attending in 2015!

Thanks Friendship Samplers!

After the show we had lunch at Chase’s Daily–which specializes in local foods mostly from (in season) their farm. And we visited Nancy’s Quilt Shop on Route 3 just outside Belfast to pick up more of a fabric that two of our quilters wanted to buy more of than Nancy had at the show.

Turkey Tracks: Fall Hydrangeas

Turkey Tracks: October 27, 2013

Fall Hydrangeas

Before the first freeze I cut as many of the hydrangeas in my yard as I deem necessary for the house. Once the winter weather hits them, the blooms are ruined.

I strip the leaves off the canes and just stick them into a dry vase. Most of them dry just fine. Some will shrivel up almost right away, and that’s just the breaks of this endeavor. (This year none of the lime green Annabelles dried for me.)

For the ones who dry nicely, the brilliant colors stay true for months and months. Often, I stick blooms into the fir Christmas Wreath I hang at the front door–and they are gorgeous there.

Here’s a lot I put into the kitchen. The pinkish lavender blooms came from a plant that JoAnn O’Callaghan Gladbach gave me on one of her visits before John died. It survived the winter beautifully–and one transplant this spring–and bloomed all summer.

I’ve often thought I’d love a house where the rooms were painted the shades in one of these fall hydrangeas: lime green, deep blues, aquas, deep purples, magenta pinks. Such a color scheme would not go with a thing in my house though.

JoAnn carried hydrangeas in her wedding bouquet–as did Tamara Kelly Enright. Tami’s blooms came from my Virginia garden. I made JoAnn and John a wedding quilt using hydrangea fabrics, called “Delectable Mountains” after the traditional block name and because JoAnn and John live in Denver, Colorado. Here it is being held by my sister-in-law Maryann Enright and me before I mailed it to Joann and John.

Local quilter Joan Herrick quilted this quilt using the Celtic New Grange symbol that JoAnn used in her wedding invitations. New Grange in Ireland is the site of one of the oldest and most amazing solstice sites.

Here’s another block:

And a close-up of a corner:

I love life circles like this one. I mean the giving and receiving of items that signal you love someone.

Here’s a picture of the counter about three weeks later. You can see the pink hydrangeas did not dry well, but the others are going strong. One never knows.

Melody Pendleton brought me this gorgeous pumpkin from her garden–and a Butternut squash which I cooked that night for dinner–on the day she finished painting the stairwell. Melody is a meticulous painter and a delightful person.

I have a jar of Sparky’s Honey (wild, unheated, local) for her.

And that’s how these things roll…

Turkey Tracks: Endless Flower Farm, Camden, Maine

Turkey Tracks: October 24, 2013

Endless Flower Farm

Camden, Maine

Their colors take your breath away.

Dahlias.

And at Endless Flower Farm in Camden, Maine (on East Fork Road) there are thousands and thousands of these dahlia’s–in every color imaginable.

This farm is within walking distance of my house–and I took Susan there on our way home from our trip up north.

Every fall, each dahlia tuber has to be dug up and stored and each spring each one has to be replanted. Keeping track of all these tubers–and knowing where to plant them next year–is mindboggling.

Here’s Sue, who was amazed.

Here’s a view of one of the gardens:

And here’s Susan in that garden:

Many of these dahlias are way taller than a person. All have lavish, glorious blooms.

We also liked this building design on the outside of the house!

Turkey Tracks: Gallery On The Lake, Greenville, Maine

Turkey Tracks: October 24, 2013

Gallery On The Lake, Greenville, Maine

One of the stores in Greenville, Maine, is Gallery On The Lake, run by Becky Morse.

Susan and I both bought multiple items for gifts in the store.

I bought my granddaughter who will be three in late November a special present. I’ll put up a pic of that after she has the gift.

And, I bought several handbags made by Anne H. Doody.

Now, I don’t buy handbags. I make them myself.

But, Anne’s workmanship was so excellent and her fabric combinations so terrific that I bought two bags–both destined as gifts. I am telling myself that I am supporting a fellow fiber artist and saving myself some time to work on the many quilts I have planned for the winter.

Here’s a bag of Anne’s I bought:

Here’s the backside:

I love the jean pocket. And here’s the inside which has a zipper pocket and other pockets too:

I also bought a diaper bag–and sure enough, I just heard of a new family baby coming in May. (Not one of my sons.)

Here’s the side view of a bottle pocket:

And there are lots of pockets on the inside:

ANNIEUPNORTH takes custom orders, and if you want something special for someone special, you would not go wrong with her work.

Anne H. Doody

PO Box 87

Sinclair, Maine 04779

207-543-7382, or adoody1@hotmail.com

And Becky Morse of Gallery On The Lake can be reached at bgmorse@myfairpoint.net

Turkey Tracks: Fall Foliage

Turkey Tracks: October 22, 2013

Fall Foliage

These trees are on Sarah Rheault’s land, and they were so pretty one day last week that I turned the car around, went back, and took this picture.

The green tree is an apple tree, and it’s got lots of deep red apples that are not really showing up in this picture.

This view is the kind of fall foliage I wanted to show to my sister when she came for the week of Oct. 6th. But, the trees up north had lost their leaves in a storm, and our trees had not yet turned.

The fall foliage here on the MId-Coast seems late this year. We have had a long dry spell. That’s probably a factor. But they sure are pretty now. One just wants to ride around in the orange and gold light.

Turkey Tracks: Bryan, Corinne, Ailey, and Cyanna’s Visit

Turkey Tracks: September 24, 2013

Bryan, Corinne, Ailey, and Cyanna’s Visit

Family members are asking for pictures of Bryan, Corinne, and the girls during their recent visit to Maine.

We had a lovely time, and were able to do something fun with Ailey every morning of their visit. Ailey will be three in late November (Thanksgiving baby), and Cyanna is entering her sixth month. At the end of their week here, when her parents were packing up suitcases, Ailey wanted to know where Lovey’s suitcase was. And all the way to the airport, she announced occasionally that she wanted to stay in Maine.

By showing you their pictures, I am also showing you some places along beautiful Mid-Coast Maine.

I picked them up at the Portland airport, and we stopped at LLBean to eat lunch, shop, and take pictures around the boot. Ailey got a new pair of boots–which she loves and used every day.

We’ve had a lot of fog this year, and Ailey had read all about lighthouses and pea-soup fog. So, we headed off to Owl’s Head Lighthouse, where obligingly, the fog bank rolled right in, setting off the fog horn. Ailey talked about lighthouses and fog horns for the rest of the week.

At the top:

Here’s the fog bank starting to roll in–the view is from the lighthouse steps:

So, we walked down to the pebble beach at Owl’s Head–following a path through the woods.

The pebble beach. Ailey loves to pick flowers.

On another day, we walked the Rockland Breakwater out to the lighthouse that sits at the end. The breakwater was built in 1899 and is a mile out and a mile back–or so I’ve been told. The granite rocks have big cracks between them–so someone needed to hold Ailey’s hand. But, it was a beautiful morning–we saw dolphins, all kinds of sea birds, a lobsterman working his tracks right next to the breakwater, and lots of happy people.

See the lighthouse all the way at the end? Ha! You barely can…

Almost there…

One morning Bryan and Corinne took the girls to the carriage trail that is the back way up to Mount Battie. A creek crosses the trail about a half-mile in, and Ailey had a great lot of fun wading through it in her boots. (I was at our monthly quilt meeting.)

We took some bread to Camden Harbor to feed the ducks one morning–and to let Ailey throw rocks into the water–an occupation of which her Enright boy cousins seem to never tire.

Mommy found some boots she liked as well in Maine!

Cyanna is always happy in her baby carrier–and she is “Daddy’s Girl.”

Here’s a harbor view:

And I’ll print this shot to make the house photos current. And the first one of Cyanna with Bryan.

It was a lovely visit!

Turkey Tracks: Fifty-year Friendships

Turkey Tracks: August 27, 2013

Fifty-year Friendships

For an Air Force Brat whose family moved around a lot, old friendships go back to either my mother’s home town, Reynolds, Georgia, or to high school.

I went to about 14 different schools over the course of my education. So I can’t remember who my teachers were or, in a lot of cases, who my friends were. Something about that kind of transient life just whisked away memories other people hold very dear.

The closest I can come to these old memories is high school. We were stationed in Omaha, Nebraska, home of Strategic Air Command (SAC) headquarters. I think this posting was the longest we ever had–and I still went to three different schools. I arrived at Bellevue High School in Bellevue, Nebraska, which was adjacent to Offutt Air Force Base, in my sophomore year. (I went to Central HIgh School in Omaha my freshman year, and made a long bus ride to get there. I didn’t know a single soul and could not break into cliques of students who had known each other from pre-school.

But a lot of Air Force Brats attended Bellevue High School–and I knew Becky Reavis (now Meyer) from Barksdale Air Force Base in Shreveport, Louisiana. After Barksdale, we went to Tampa, Florida. I don’t know where Becky went, if anywhere, before Bellevue. But she was there, and she took me under her wing immediately. She is a year older, class of 1962.

I had many friends in the class of 1962. Among them is Carroll Risk Rhodes, who called me out of the blue the other day. And guess what? She’s a passionate quilter too and still makes a lot of her clothes.

Here are some pictures of her beautiful quilts:

Like me, she loves using squares. This one is all batiks. Isn’t it lovely? It reminds me a bit of the “La La Log Cabin” quilt that Rhea from Alewives Quilting here in Damariscotta Mills taught local quilters to do. There’s one of mine on this blog elsewhere called “Sun, Sea, Sand.”

Here’s a stunning, contemporary “rail fence” idea. I love Carroll’s use of color here. Isn’t the border fabric wonderful? I wonder if she chose the block colors using the border fabric or chose the border using the block fabrics? This idea would be a fun way to use stash fabrics, too.

Here’s another contemporary quilt, and again, I love the way Carroll uses color. This one hangs in her sewing room.

And, finally, how fun is this quilt which Carroll has back of a grey couch. Love the contemporary way she has used the bar form, and the piano key border with random widths is terrific.

I’m trying to talk Carroll into coming to Maine to visit and quilt with me. But she lives in Florida with a water view, so I know it’s going to be tough!

It would be so fun for our Coastal Quilters group to meet her and see her quilts.

Thanks for calling me, Carroll!

And, my own 1963 Bellevue High School class is having its 50th reunion this September in Omaha. I have reconnected with so many of my classmates recently, and that has been wonderful, too.

Books, Documentaries, Reviews: Don McLean: American Troubadour

Books, Documentaries, Reviews: August 26, 2013

Don McLean : American Troubadour

A remarkable new documentary about the Don McLean story produced by multi Emmy-award winning film director Jim Brown due to air across the PBS network in March 2012.

* * *

A few months back, the Strand theater in Rockland, Maine, screened the new documentary about Don McLean, AMERICAN TROUBADOUR. Both Don and Patrisha were present and hosted a question and answer session. Both are treasured members of our community–they do so much really good work here.

I missed this event at the time and was sad to do so as Patrisha McClean is a friend. Barb Melchisky went and told me that she really enjoyed the film and the time with Don and Patrisha. “It was,” said Barb, “a lovely and interesting evening.”

So, I treated myself. I ordered the DVD, and one night when Mike and the boys were here, we watched it. And we had a “lovely and interesting evening, too.”

Don McClean’s music was iconic for my teenage and young adult years. (Who in my generation could forget the plane crash that took the life of Buddy Holly?) Don’s music was apparently iconic for my son Michael as well. As we watched, and smiled, and laughed, and said “oh, I didn’t know that,” we began to realize that ten-year old Bo was fully engaged with the film as well. And, indeed, Bo went around for days afterwards singing the refrain to “Bye Bye MIss American Pie” and kept asking “well what do those lines mean?” And, it turned out that Michael had done a paper on this very famous song in college and had never forgotten it.

Perhaps more importantly, Bo could see that he could learn to play the guitar well and could do that own his own if he wanted to badly enough. He also took home the idea that he could write songs for himself. And, others. Important songs that capture an era. It will be fun to see how all the tropes in Don’s life percolates in Bo’s head.

I plan to watch the film again this winter–and to maybe will invite some friends to watch it with me. Maybe we will do that even sooner as other visitors and family are coming who would be interested in this man and his music.

In any case, I recommend this documentary to you. And I thank Don for being who he is and for all the gifts of his music.

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