A Day at Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Yesterday was a beautiful, clear-blue-sky and warm, late summer day, so we took a drive up Maine's coast to Boothbay, met my sister, a niece, and her husband, and visited the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens. This was our first visit there, and we weren't disappointed. The gardens are fairly new, but they have the appearance of having been lovingly cared for for many years. We were especially impressed with the meticulous landscaping which allows the natural habitat to be relatively undisturbed.

The Great Lawn and Ledge Garden, to the left here, is the first view visitors see after leaving the  Visitor Center to explore the 128-acre  area.

This is a typical bed of flowers, scaevola in this case, but we also saw sumptuous beds of Russian sage (one of my favorites),  coreopsis, rudbeckia, daylilies, spirea, roses, and lavender, to name only a few.

The Gardens also contains hundreds of intriguing trees, mosses, plus stone sculptures and stone benches.

We spent a lot of time in the Fairy Village, checking out the dozens and dozens of little fairy houses built by visiting children. Each house is unique and provides the woodland fairies with a comfortable home.

The Vayo Meditation Garden, on the banks of the river, contains an amazing huge stone basin, which you can perhaps see here in the center of the photo. The stone used to make it appears to be marble; the top edges have been ground and polished to a beautiful, smooth finish. 

We also enjoyed lunch at the Visitors' Center Kitchen Garden Café.

Martha Stewart herself recently visited the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, and she gave the place an enthusiastic stamp of approval. I can see why. This is a place we'll want to return to often and see in all of its seasons. 

Saw It with My Own Eyes

This morning I had to make a quick trip into town. Along the way I saw something I'd only heard exists. Now I know it's true: I saw a woman driver, in a car approaching me, text-messaging as she was driving. She had the phone propped on the top of her steering wheel, and she was madly texting while doing some so-called driving.

Scared the wits out of me. What are these people thinking?? I thought it was scary to encounter a driver on his cell phone while trying to maneuver a heavy piece of steel going 50 m.p.h., but this was even worse.

Is there something I'm not understanding? Is it really possible to drive a car and carry on a telephone conversation or text-message at the same time?

Gettin' Ready for My Gal Oprah

If you read my niece Heather's blog regularly, then you know that she, my sister Roberta, Heather's friend Jen, and I are takin' a little trip to Chicago next week. We're going to be audience members in a taping of Oprah's show.

I'm so excited. My niece deserves all of the credit for snagging four tickets to the show. I guess some guest wannabees actually try a year or more before getting tickets. Heather set her sights on four tickets one day about two weeks ago, and when that girl sets her sights on something, ain't no holding her back. So four tickets she got, and three invitations she extended to her mother, her beloved Auntie J :•)(me), and her friend.

We're lucky indeed that Heather did the grunt work and the three of us get to share the glory and excitement.

The big question for me at the moment is: Can I actually fit two days' worth of traveling clothes in this little carry-on? Surely I can, right? We'll be spending two nights in Chicago. We four "girls" are currently trying to color coordinate our wardrobes for the cameras. I guess we expect the cameras to focus on us during the entire taping. Probably that won't be happening.

I was thinking a little while ago how, if Oprah were coming to visit me (which isn't likely to happen in this lifetime, but let's just pretend for a minute, OK?) can you imagine the number of suitcases and staff members she'd be bringing with her? She'd need her hair stylist, her make-up artist, for sure, her manicurist, her secretary, her other secretary, her assistant, her assistant's assistant, her chef, her wardrobe manager, her three dogs, her dog handlers, her dogs' veterinarian, Gayle, maybe Stedman,...mercy, the list goes on and on. Where would I put them all!!!??? And here I'm going to see my gal Oprah with this dinky little suitcase and a few dinky little possessions. (The Thorn Birds will not be traveling with me. I put the book inside the suitcase to give you some idea of the carry-on's size.)

I think I can do it. I think I can take a sufficient amount of stuff, and probably a few unneeded things, if I know me when I travel, in this one little carry-on and have myself a good visit with my gal Oprah.

Dog Biscuits and Meatballs

First, if you have a dog and time on your hands, how about making him/her some dog biscuits? Our Molly loves these biscuits.

Mix together:

3 1/2 cups unbleached flour

2 cups whole wheat flour

1 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup skim milk powder

1 T. (or one pkg.) dry yeast

3 1/2 cups lukewarm chicken or meat broth

1-2 T. dried parsley flakes

1-2 t. garlic powder

Dissolve yeast in the lukewarm broth. The richer this broth is, the tastier your dog will find them. Let yeast-broth mixture stand 10 minutes. Stir in flour mixture. Divide dough into four "globs," since the entire thing is too much to work with by itself. Roll out each glob 1/4" thick. Cut dog biscuit shapes from dough. Brush biscuits with egg wash (Beat one egg, add a little water, beat to combine). Bake on greased cookie sheets at 300° for 45 minutes, then turn off oven and leave in overnight to finish hardening. Makes 60 medium-sized biscuits. (Recipe, with modifications, from a newsgroup post by Jill Faerber.)

Now something for humans. I used to hate making meatballs: the fry pan, the clean-up, everything about it seemed a chore. Then I found this recipe in Taste of Home for "Make-ahead Meatballs." It has given me a new lease on life, I swear.

Make-ahead Meatballs

4 eggs

2 c. dry bread crumbs

1/2 c. finely chopped onion

1 T. salt

2 t. Worcestershire sauce

1/2 t. pepper

4 lbs. lean ground hamburg

Beat eggs. Add next five ingredients. Shape into 1-inch balls, about 12 dozen.

Bake at 400° for 10-15 minutes, turning often. Drain. Cool. Place into freezer containers. May be frozen up to three months.

I love having prepared meatballs in the freezer. When I make a big batch of spaghetti sauce, I had a bag of meatballs; ditto for when I make dynamites or hot meatball sandwiches.  

Dress-ups

One of my goals this summer has been to clean out the clutter in the upstairs walk-in closet behind the bathroom. A walk-in closet is just asking for trouble, because it holds way more than it should.

Stored in this closet are Christmas decorations, old letters, lesson plans from 36 years of teaching, boxes and boxes (all of them empty), craft supplies, and things I've yet to discover.

Two days ago I realized summer is on its way out, and if I truly intended to clean that closet, I'd best get to it. 

Trouble is, I keep coming across things I'd forgotten about. I'm doing well in parting with the teaching stuff. When I first retired, I filled four storage bins with mementoes from my career, because I was too close to them, emotionally, to part with them. No longer am I emotionally attached! Oh, I've saved the occasional note from a student or parent, and I can't bear to part with my tattered copies of To Kill a Mockingbird, The Grapes of Wrath, Crime and Punishment, Ellen Foster, because I loved teaching those novels. But I've dumped out pounds and pounds of papers, lesson plan books, attendance books, students' projects, and video tapes.

Then there are the photos from my childhood. Those I cannot part with, under any circumstances. Take the photo here, for instance. The three elegant ladies are, left to right, our neighbor Connie, me, and my sister Roberta. Apparently we'd been having a good time with "dress-ups," as we called it, that day, and someone snapped our picture. I think the photo must've been taken around 1950, because I look to be about five.

Connie looks her usual demure self, complete with hat, gloves, and purse; Roberta looks very stylish with her clutch purse and hat; and I look, well, I look just darned happy to have been included, because usually I was too young or too much of an irritation to be included in their games.

What scares me is those games of dress-ups seem, in my memory, to have taken place only a few years ago, not over 55 years ago. Yikes.

Ballerina Dreamin'

I know a little girl who dreams of becoming a ballerina. She's not yet three, but she has her dance paraphernalia ready, and she wears her tutu  every chance she gets.

She starts dance lessons in a few weeks. Meanwhile, she's been "reading" her ballerina books and taking note of poses, so she has several of them down pat.

Meanwhile, she's happy to skip on stepping stones and collect acorns from my garden.

Ode to My Beloved White Vinegar

Today's Maine Sunday Telegram contains an article extolling the virtues of white vinegar. My heart swelled with pride as I read it. It was if one of my own had been noticed, finally, for all of its goodness.

I've used white vinegar for various cleaning jobs for many years. It was when we bought a new car last year, however, that I totally fell in love with white vinegar. Now we're joined at the hip.

I'd tried everything to get the film off the inside of the new car's windows: store-bought window cleaners, even baking soda (what a mess that made!), but nothing would do the trick.

Then I consulted my trusty Talking Dirty with the Queen of Clean, and she suggested a mixture of white vinegar, water, and a tad of isopropyl alcohol. Voila! Finally, finally, I had clean, unstreaked, un-filmy car windows.

So now there is no stopping me: I keep the spray bottle handy, and I use it to clean nearly everything: the bathroom mirror (It no longer clouds up when I take a shower), the microwave, the stove top, the door of the dishwasher, the t.v. screen, you name it. I even wash the kitchen floor with water and a glug of white vinegar.

Another thing I've added to my housecleaning arsenal is six large, white, all-cotton cloths. I bought these for little or nothing at a discount store (Marden's, for you Mainers), and I use and reuse them constantly. I toss them in the washer after each use, whether I've been washing windows or dusting or cleaning the bathroom, and I have supply on hand at all times for the next cleaning gig. Sure saves on paper towels, and they do a better job than paper towels.

These are my cleaning tips for today. Try white vinegar, folks. You won't look back.