All The Pretty Buoys

Earlier this summer, while out in the boat, I began to notice, really notice~pay attention to the lobster buoys scattered all around the bay. Of course you always see them: there are lots, and they are always there (in summer, anyway, not so much as it becomes winter). But, this time I began to look a little more closely, noticing particular colors/patterns that I liked.

Each lobsterman creates their own color scheme and paints all their buoys in that color scheme. No two lobstermen can have the same color scheme; this is how they identify their buoys and more importantly, their traps.

This one is a lovely purple and white; I have always wondered if it belonged not to a lobsterman, but to a lobsterwoman....

My noticing sort of began as I kept seeing a red, yellow and orange buoy. They were all over the area we were out in, and I thought they were especially nice.

I then got the idea of documenting a bunch of buoys, because some of them are so very pretty.

So, a few nights ago, Ray and Milo and I headed out around 6:00. Alden was off with his friend Charlotte, at Tunk Lake. It was not necessarily the best buoy-photography conditions: setting sun and slight chop to the water.

Note the brushstrokes you can see on this one.

Nevertheless, we had a great little boat ride. For me, fun to do more noticing and try to get decent shots; for Ray, it was a good boat handling project, trying to get me positioned just right to take the pictures I wanted.




These ones are all tangled together. I suppose someone will need to come along and untangle them before pulling up the attached trap(s).

I got more decent shots than I wanted to post here, so, some more pics from our little buoy tour are up at flickr.

My mom's garden: Currants

Currants. Another one of my mom’s slightly crazy fruit-growing projects. Like the gooseberries. Only, really, I think, way prettier. I think the colors on these are just fantastic.


Note: these pictures were taken, and these berries were harvested, several weeks back, around July 24th. I’m just only now getting to posting about them.

They are over in the corner of the garden, netted in in the same protective enclosure as the strawberries. Milo quickly figured out where the strawberries were, and would head over there and start ferreting around, trying to find a few ripe ones, slipping his little hands under the net (sadly, I don’t think I ever really managed to get any good strawberry pics). Interestingly, he also quickly seemed to know that the currants were not at all something he wanted. “Those are not yummy to me.”

What exactly you do with currants, I am not sure. I have a feeling that even mom is a bit at loose ends with them, not quite sure what to do.

There was some sort of a fruit dessert, I think, a reddish purplish mush which I believe I tasted on night #2. It was okay, I guess, but did not exactly knock my socks off, but you know me, not a fruit dessert person. I think there may also have been some jam produced from these berries. We’ll have to see what Anne says.

Around the Place

Just a few pictures from around the place, while I get my feet on the ground (we are recently back from a nearly a week away, at 31-Mile Lake for Matt’s wedding. Pics on flickr, if you are interested).

Some of the library signs. The children love the open/closed sign. Competition sometimes arises over who is going to get to “flip the sign” when it is time to open or close the library. Even Milo wants to get in on the action, although really, he is not yet quite capable of managing it. Not without help, anyway.

The new green and white paint. It looks just great. Coming to consensus about exactly what color green it was going to be was no small task. Luckily, I was not involved. The library has a board of directors, and they duked it out last year. We just got to watch, as they painted a bunch of different patches on the back of the building, just outside our kitchen~back door, and then mulled around, in small groups, considering the merits of each color combination (they were working with the green and white both, although it was the green that was the real issue).

note Milo's feet, reflected in the left hand pane.

The andiron owls. Two of them, at the end of the two fireplace andirons. Ray hates them, and hucked them out back during our first summer here. Hucked is probably not the right word, as they weigh about 50 pounds each. Dragged them out back, I suppose. Then, someone wanted them, and my mom, who was dealing with things after we left, had to go thrashing around the back yard/underbrush looking for them. Now, we leave them in the fireplace, even though they don’t fit with Ray’s fire-building aesthetic.