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Remember those $50 blueberry bushes we bought at the nursery?
Turns out they had the same ones at the grocery store for $25.
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The husband couldn’t resist.
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There are days when I prefer to soak myself in alcohol, but apples and watermelons work too.
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I passed on the meatloaf mountain. Bread and potatoes? That’s a bit much.
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Here’s the Junior chuck, just chillin’ on the deck landing.
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Probably still full from all those flowers he devoured.
😖
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Mr. Fox brought his significant other last night for a nosh.
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See the stalks by the fox on the left? Husband found some wild asparagus in the field and thought the woodchucks would eat it. Sadly, they prefer my flowers and didn’t touch it.
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We love our foxes.
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They’re such graceful, beautiful creatures.
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If only they’d develop a taste for red squirrel.
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Surely they have hungry pups who need a snack.
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😉
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Remember the perennials I bought for the stone bordered garden bed out back?
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There was a big beautiful purple and white lupine ready to go.
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They’re iconic in Maine and I’ve always loved them.
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But apparently so did the woodchucks.
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Goodbye bloom.
Goodbye leaves.
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This is what’s left of the lupine and what used to be a lovely pink phlox.
Grrr….
😡
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Come on.
You know you want to….
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I have to be honest here and say I can’t think of one.
I was one of those weird kids who loved to turn out the lights and watch horror flicks. Alone, in the dark.
Nothing freaked me out. Nothing scared me. I never thought there were boogie men under my bed or monsters in my closet.
I was the kid who laughed when Linda Blair’s head started spinning in the Exorcist.
I happily went swimming after seeing Jaws.
The mad slasher films of the 80’s? Pfft. They made me laugh .
If forced to choose one, I guess I’d have to say the old Rosemary’s Baby. It didn’t scare me per se… but i remember it being creepy and atmospheric.
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How about you.
What movie scared the bejesus out of your childish self?
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The husband had to move my car, set up the ladder and climb into the garage crawl space to reach the leftover vinyl siding recently.
When he got up there? A surprise.
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There was a suspicious hole in the siding box.
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And nesting material strewn around the opening.
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See all the insulation and stuffing to the left?, in between the rungs of the ladder?
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You know what means.
🐿
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The frost danger has probably but who the hell knows because it’s Maine passed and now it’s time to fill that beautiful raised stone bed my husband built last year.
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My first trip to the nursery made me realize another trip is in order. Such a hardship.
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But look at our little crabapple tree.
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Finally in full bloom.
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So far… this is what will be living in the garden.
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I realized I chose too much pink and purple so the next trip will be for peach, red and maybe white to round it out.
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Remember when my husband tore holes in the garage siding with his new and apparently quite powerful weed whacker?
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It was the first thing you see when you step out the kitchen door …
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And yesterday, he’d had enough.
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I know nothing about vinyl siding installation but was assured you had to start in the middle in order to remove the bottom piece.
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It seemed like an awful lot of work just to replace one section.
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But after a few hours the damaged section was removed…
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And everything was back to normal.
Until the next time…
😉
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When we moved to our house in 2002 most of the back yard was waist high fields. Over the years my husband… aka the Lawn Ranger… turned the fields into lawn. And in the middle of that lawn?
Nine high blueberry bushes. (So named because the famously sweet low bush Maine blueberries are literally ankle high.)
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We’ve had good years and bad as far as harvesting goes. Sometimes the birds eat them all, sometimes we have a late frost and they never grow properly.
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Pruning is important but sadly this year we lost two bushes.
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The blossoms smell divine and everywhere there’s a bloom?
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There will be a berry…
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Like this in mid to late August.
Not wanting to miss out on summer pie, the husband and I went to a large nursery and purchased two replacement bushes.
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I was a bit shocked at the sticker price of $49.99 each, but fresh blueberry lemon pound cake with lemon glaze can not be denied.
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Fingers crossed they fruit this year.
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My husband has taken up a cause. He’s printing fliers, setting up forums and talking to any one who will listen.
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It’s an initiative that’s going to be on our state ballot come November and is in direct response to our electric company literally doubling their rates at the beginning of this year.
In January our monthly power bill went from $160 to $310. And we weren’t the only ones. The man who owns the local store saw his increase from $2,500 a month to nearly $6,000. It’s been crazy. Central Maine Power has the monopoly in this area and they’re choking us.
If this was a Maine owned company it would be bad enough, but this corporation is owned by an entity in Spain with its major stockholder being Qatar. Why is a middle eastern oil rich country interested in little old Maine? Because we’re a cash cow.
Enter an ex state representative who’s been working tirelessly to oust foreign investment in our power grid and turn it over to the people.
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The man is also a neighbor which is how my other half got involved. We attended a presentation he gave last weekend on consumer owned utilities and it was eye opening.
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There are currently 10 consumer owned utilities (COU’s) in our state. They’re non profit and provide more reliable power at a lower rate. Hard to argue with that.
The ballot in November will question if we should oust CMP completely, take over the grid and start our own cooperative called Pine Tree Power.
Sadly in this era of partisan politics it’s become a sticking point for a lot of voters because a Democrat is leading the charge. But COU’s are most prevalent in red states and actually originated in the farm belt at the turn of the last century.
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CMP has deep pockets so they’re flooding the airwaves and our mailboxes with millions of dollars in false advertising to sway the vote. Our side? It’s run by donations.
David vs a multi nation conglomerate.
Maine has the 7th highest rates in the nation and are number 1 in outages. It’s time for a change.
Wish us luck.
If you’re interested how this all works….
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Woke up this morning to this….
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On further inspection it looks like the raccoon has been washing up again.
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Though it could be a Pterodactyl, you never know.
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River's world..... 