With the beginning of summer and the return of hot weather, my thoughts turn to the place where I spent so many summers with my kids. I have the urge to jump in the car and head north as I did most years as soon as school got out and sometimes a day or two before. How lucky were we to spend so many beautiful days on an island in Maine surrounded by mountains, lakes, woods and the ocean. But my favorite place was probably the meadow.
The sound of the wind traveling through the tall grasses, the buzzing of insects, the wildflowers, the birds. I loved the hum of activity, the sunshine, the many little worlds contained in the expanse of the field. Sending the kids out to pick wildflowers for the dinner table. Sitting on the deck and listening to the hum of activity. It was mesmerizing and calming at the same time. (Maine summer 1997 above).
Life got pretty complicated for my kids and me about ten years ago and summers in Maine became a thing of the past, but I have so many happy memories of those times.
This weekend, I drove the familiar route on my way to help my daughter move her things back home for the summer break. As I drove up the Maine Turnpike, I saw swaths of purple along the side of the road. It was lupine season. I had forgotten! So unexpected and so beautiful. 
One of the best children’s books ever is this one about the lupine lady. One of our family favorites.
I didn’t have much time during this visit to do much more than spend a few minutes at a couple of old haunts. The roads where our old house used to be has one of the biggest fields of lupines on the island, but I just couldn’t bring myself to drive down it. So I went instead to a spot where the kids and I used to go to watch the sun set over Blueberry Hill.
And to the lake where I used to love to swim (still do but too cold this trip).
So peaceful. There is a big rock that we used to swim out to but I just liked being able to swim and swim without chlorine or line lanes or bumping into other people.
Lily pads below.
There were were wisps of fog shrouding the tops of some of the mountains.
Fog, sky and the shadows of trees forming a pattern on the field.
The harbor is just starting to have boats on moorings. In a few weeks, it will be full of boats. The day was mostly gray with bits of sunlight poking through. It matched my mood.
Not so much sad but thoughtful. I don’t wish my children young again. I am not interested in turning back time, even if I could, but those summers were precious. Every life is filled with befores and afters. This time when my children were little and we spent summers in Maine was ironically both an after-after some tough times that I never expected to come again and then turned out to be a before-before a big challenging shift that I didn’t see coming. I had planned on spending the rest of my summers in Maine but things turned out differently as they often do. This weekend in Maine, thoughts of those happy times swirled around me like friendly spirits. (Maine summer of 2002 below with our dog Sam, a gentle soul, much missed)
I ended up at the lake where we would take long walks as a family on a path along the shore to another rock where we would swim. This year I didn’t have time to do the walk so I just sat on a rock in the sun and took in the beauty. 
A peek at the Western Mountains and a favorite hiking trail.
Rocks line the shore.
The surface of the pond like a path spread out before me.
Beautiful beyond words. 
On April 11th, my husband and I celebrated 7 years of marriage and he brought me these beautiful flowers. I especially loved these two peonies which were so lush and beautiful.
Each day over the last week, I noticed that the flowers were slowly changing color. They were just as beautiful but each day they took on new dimensions. Day 3 below. These pictures are untouched and this is what the flowers really looked like. I have never experienced this before, a flower slowly changing color.
From deep red-pink to pink to peach.
As the days and went by, the colors faded and the petals took on a range of shades that gave even more depth to their beauty. Day 4 above and below.
As they became more pale and fragile, they became even more beautiful because the light was now able to shine through the petals. Day 6 below:
As the end of the week neared, the petals became a bit more ruffled giving the flower the appearance of turning inward. Day 7:
Just before it started to lose its petals, the second more full peony appeared to reach upward.
Even after its petals began to fall it was still beautiful, looking like one of the flower fairy illustrations from one of my children’s picture books.
I so enjoyed watching their evolution this week and will miss them. I think they taught me something about aging and beauty because they were no less beautiful at the end of the week than the beginning. Time revealed so many different aspects of their beauty that wasn’t apparent on day 1.
I perhaps owe having become a painter to flowers. ~Claude Monet
This route was so imprinted on me, it felt as though no time had passed at all. 
When we got our one offer, we jumped on it but decided to rent for the spring so the kids could finish the school year with their friends. I was at the time 9 months pregnant. 3 weeks after she was born, we moved all of our things into storage and moved our three kids and ourselves into this brownstone (below) on 1st Street between 7th and 8th Avenue. A professor was spending a semester as a visiting professor in Boston so it worked out for both of us. I am not sure how we did it. It was also right after Christmas. She was born December 23rd. I went back to work when she was 6 weeks old so that we would be approved for the mortgage on the new house in Connecticut and then stopped working two and a half months later. The two months that I spent in the Slope being a stay at home mom were very happy. I had always been a little sad that I couldn’t pick my kids up from school. Living in the city had meant me working full time. Trade-offs! It was really nice to have that time. It made it even harder to leave. That spring our 8 year old son wanted to walk to school alone. It terrified me but it was really only a couple of blocks down the main drag of 7th Avenue. I gave him a quarter each day and he had to call when he got there. Cell phones didn’t exist. He loved the independence. Our older kids had their own rooms for the first time in this house. They had always shared a room and had bunk beds. They missed each other but Stephen’s room was on the third floor and he had a view out the back of the house of lights and cars from 7th Avenue which was new for him. We had always had apartments where the windows faced into the deep middle part of the block since our other houses were all on the Avenues in the middle of the block. This made the rooms much quieter, something I hadn’t appreciated until we rented this house much closer to the commercial area. He liked looking out his window at the lights.
It was fun to see that some of the stores we used to go to are still there. Many $$ were spent here.
We loved the local book store. This was before the days of Barnes and Noble and Amazon.
Here is what they are reading in Brooklyn. I was surprised to see a book that I am currently reading: Lab Girl. Quite good so far. 
The Clay Pot was where the kids would go with their dad to pick out birthday or mother’s day gifts for me. Great earrings! Everything there is beautiful and one of a kind.
I was telling a friend at work about my day and she wondered aloud if it had been really emotional for me. Surprisingly it didn’t make me sad. I loved that I had so many happy memories of this place and those times and it made me realize that it really isn’t that far or hard to go to. I just need to have an afternoon and subway fare. Til the next time!
Today I found myself with free time on a beautiful day in NYC after getting a clean bill of health from my cardiologist. First I went to Mood, a well-known fabric store near the doctor’s office, where I looked at zippers. After deciding that I was not up for spending $14 on a zipper, even a really pretty zipper, I thought for a moment about going to a museum but then, because it was a beautiful spring day and because I had enough leftover credit on a Metrocard to get me there and back on the subway, I hopped on a number 2 train and went back to my old neighborhood, the place where all of my kids came home as new babies (after being born in hospitals in Manhattan) and where I lived for 11 years as a newly married wife, a new mom, a full time banker and a runner, reader, quilter and sewer. This is the first place I really chose as a home and it was home in my heart and mind for many years after leaving to move to the suburbs. It was a beautiful unplugged day. (3rd street walking toward the park, above and below)
Note the new bike lane! My son, who lived in this neighborhood until age 8 is a biker and would appreciate this.
We spent so many hours in this park. Right across the street from our building was a playground where I pushed all three children in bucket swings and spent many happy hours watching my kids play with whomever they met that day in the sandbox. We usually brought toys and ended up sharing them widely. One day, we started to round them up and I wasn’t able to find all of the plastic dinosaurs we had brought. I asked some of the other kids to help look for them. Ten children started eagerly digging. It turned into a game. One mom asked me if we really had lost one. She thought I had made it up to keep the kids occupied. Every time we went to the park, we made friends. That was the kind of neighborhood it was. I walked on through the park.
The field in the park where I would take my very active toddler and let him run around. 
Most weekends, we would start in the park and walk through the park to the library and the botanic gardens stopping on the way back at Grand Army Plaza to go to the farmer’s market that would be there each Saturday. I would have a child in a snuggli or a stroller or both. It never got old.
And on to Grand Army Plaza.
Then to the library.
Or swimming lessons which took place in a pool on one of the top floors of this building (note the big windows). Two of my children learned to swim here.
Then, most weekends, we went to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. There was always something new in bloom and it was just the right size for small children. It was beautiful today. Everything is budding and green and on the verge of blooming. 
The trees look almost human. 
Rose garden sleeping. In June it will all be in bloom.
Cherry Esplanade. It will be blooming in two weeks and will be crowded with people but quiet today. I remember chasing children along a field of pink petals.
The pond and Japanese garden.
Turtles in the sun.
The Oaks.
Rose garden waking up.
I loved all the crazy new growth at the base of this tree. #metaphor
And this one looks like a ballerina with arms raised.
So much beauty. After walking though the gardens, I went back through my old neighborhood and walked by the other buildings we lived in and visited some of our old haunts. To be continued.
During the last week, I had an unexpected break from work and sewing. The first few days I was in two different hospitals far from home and having tests to find out if there was anything seriously wrong with me (there wasn’t) and worrying about the implications if there was (quite scary thoughts running through my head) and I couldn’t focus enough to read anything. By the way, being a nurse does not necessarily mean being less stressed when you are in the hospital. If anything, it may make you more stressed because you know too much; but I will say that on the whole, I got really attentive, excellent care and was especially grateful that my overnight nurse the night I was most worried, after getting a bad result on a diagnostic imaging test and having to wait until the next day for the next test that would show that there was nothing to worry about, had 20 years experience as an air force nurse and had flown on helicopters and run 3 emergency departments in the military. Talk about feeling safe in someone’s care. Phew! Now, home, I am trying to make the best of having a few unexpected days off and have been doing a lot of reading.
I started reading these mysteries when my daughter moved to Florida and have really enjoyed the character and the descriptions of Key West. Fun for all you foodies out there. The protagonist is a restaurant critic who lives on a boat in Key West. Dream job in a dream location and totally escapist, fast reads. Good for an airplane.
I started my unplugged Sundays the second Sunday in January because on the first weekend of the year, I was driving my daughter back to school in Maine. But what a beautiful place to start the new year.
View of Somes Sound, Mt Desert Island, January 3, 2016
Church on week 4; a sunny day for youth Sunday in all its noisy, loving chaos.
Sunset, week 5. Thought for the week: Your life is your message.
Week 6. Sunrise through the living room window. Reading in the early morning is a weekly treat.
Week 7 thought for the week: you are the light of the world.
New Growth week 8. Thought for the week: What is the song of your life?
Still Life with Feather, Burying Hill Beach Week 9. Thought for the week: Exodus 20: “Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy.”
Week 10. Taking time to sit on the rocks and watch the birds swimming near the beach.
The view out the window of my sewing room on a recent unplugged Sunday.
I also made 3 dresses that were fails- all of which were for other people. I find it a challenge to sew for people other than myself and the one daughter who is close to my size. Two of my fails were made of knit fabric-I need to work on my sewing with knits skills- and one dress made of a somewhat stiff satiny party dress material that is hard to work with. I also sewed 2 felted wool sweater quilts that were not fails! These were inspired by a beautiful blanket I purchased over ten years ago in the Berkshires from 
As were the recipients.
I used the leftover plaid flannel for facings on a Pearl Shift. 
I finished these two early this week so technically first garments of the new year! They have already been worn to work. I bought some heavy cotton flannel on sale at Joanne’s before Christmas. I am so happy with my first Pearl and I know these will get worn all the time too. Great for those snowy cold days with leggings or skinny jeans and boots. 
So all in all 35 successful garments, 3 learning experiences and the 2 afghans. I am going to be honest and say that I am not sure how I did this but many of the suggestions that Christine Haynes makes in her 
nursebeansews 