Maine Event: Day 28

It was a busy day at work and we didn't get out much. It was a beautiful day with blue skies and overall in the high 60s and low 70s. We have been discussing the fire hydrants for a while here because they have these strange iron lollipop sticks around them. Our best guess is to mark their location for when there is snow so they don't get accidentally run over or something. I never found out but looking for that discovered that different colored fire hydrants mean they have different gallons per minute of water. 

This also lead me to the fact that there were three fires that happened on Peaks Island in the past year. One of the issues is that there is spotty cellular service so in one case someone saw the fire but had to hike back to his car and drive home to use the landline. The population is aging on the island and so that is even riskier. They also have long distances between fire hydrants because it is a largely rural area and it is costly to put in more hydrants. They are organizing to put pressure on the city for more hydrants (remember that Peaks is part of Portland). To the fire department's credit, there is a special truck that lives there that can hold far more water than those used in the city because of the lack of hydrants. Here is the article where most of this came from.

Peaks Island in many ways is a commuter island due to its proximity to Portland. It is kind of working class and also hosts a lot of weddings. It also has a handful of retirees that had vacation homes there and then retired there and several artists. 

Here is yet another highly similar picture of the Clark St. Community Garden. We go every morning at about 7 am to drop off our compost.

Just another beautiful blue day with gorgeous brick buildings.

The tree in the far right of the frame is my friend the red oak. This picture is taken from a block away but you can see how much taller he is than the large three-story house he is next to. I've been thinking about red oak, in general, it is what the furniture I grew up with was made from the floors in the house here and in California are made from. It's all around us. What a wildly useful and beautiful plant! The Natural Resources Council of Maine shared this cool PDF called the "Forest Trees of Maine"

Here are a couple shots of our strange posts on the fire hydrants. You can see one in the image above also the red and white stick in the lower right-hand image is one also.

This is an extraordinarily beautiful place and it is so quiet and clean especially at night. There are stars everywhere and satellites zipping dimly across the sky. I'm not set up to do night photography here but I love the fact that you are all under the same set of stars that we are. Sending you a beam of love.

Sending love, Tawnia

p.s. Here is the fireplug color map I found online.