First Beach Bonfire of 2008

It’s been a beautiful week…if I could have put a special order into the Gods of Spring I would never have received more amazing weather…warm and dry. Steven’s on vacation from school this week so like every other Mainer who needs to accomplish work outside, we’ve been rejoicing at our good luck…my world is perfect for yet another few days!

With 40 acres to prepare in that short window between the snow melting and the guests arriving, there’s always a bit of a panic about having everything ready in time. Some years we stress and it doesn’t make a bit of difference because of the rain, snow and fog. We seem to exhaust ourselves without accomplishing anything…not the issue of 2008.

Bob, Scott, Ernie, Kevin and Dan have joined forces with us to clear the brush (winter pruning), stack the rocks, rake the leaves and prep the annual gardens.

Assunta from across the street has graciously been helping me with the painting and more “artsy” work that I hoped we’d accomplish. We all console ourselves that our sore muscles have nothing to do with getting older but I’m not so sure…I think age is a definite factor in the way we sink into our chairs at night and moan a bit each morning that we’re getting back into “campground shape“. Luckily, everyone in the crew is cheerful by nature so we just console our little aches and pains and then dig deeper to get things accomplished.

After a good Clean Up Weekend May 9-11, the annual work will be done and we’ll be ready to tackle the more permanent tasks like insulating the new goat chateau and designing the tree house…it’ll be fun, but I’m getting ahead of myself...first we need to find all of the sprouting lupines and remove their winter mulching, fertilize the ornamental and fruit trees, prune the rose bushes back and add a heavy layer of compost/manure to the flower beds.

Today we celebrated a great week’s work with a brush bonfire and pizza party on the beach. The water sparkled, the breeze was warm and the seagulls were screaming with delight…if you’d have been here we’d have given you a rake and a slice of pizza too!