Maine Event: Day 52
On this day, October 7, in 1923 the first part of the Appalachian Trail opened in upstate New York, about 40 miles north of New York City. It grew to be over 2000 miles long starting in Georgia and ending at its northern destination at Maine's highest mountain, Mount Katahdin.
Today really had a fall feeling and the air was cool, especially in the shade, and the sun was still warm. The high was 70° and the low 50°, however humidity has dropped into the low 60s during the day. It makes for nice walking weather. We went to the garden as usual early. The shadows are very long and after work, we made a nice dinner and then went for a walk. Pretty simple and perfect.
One thing that I have noticed is there is a kind of competitive niceness that is prevalent here. You can tell who is from Maine vs an outsider by this quality. It happens in lots of situations but I feel it most when a car approaches an intersection and there are pedestrians. I don't mean waving people on or anything like that but simply stopping 20-30 feet away as soon as they see the person. There is no way they will get into a discussion about this – they are going to win. They will be the most polite. If they are already there and the pedestrian walks up they will wait and wait or turn the other way even though it is pretty obvious they want to go straight, but you must go first or they will drive around the block to avoid you. Of course, kindness as a core value as a competitive edge has been written about for getting ahead so...
Last night was the welcome meeting for my Tuesday evening cooking class and I'm super excited. Our homework was learning how to hold and use a chef knife so your arm doesn't get tired as well as how to use a Japanese knife. There are two teachers, one is focused more on wellness specifically through diet and the other is a professional chef who works for USF.
In each class, we will cook something together and have lectures, and also have cooking homework.
The first assignment is making vegetarian stock so we can practice our knife skills. This is going to be so much fun. I promise to report out what I learn and give you recipes if anything strikes me as particularly good. If nothing else the chef Jean-Marc Fullsack has a strong French accent which adds flair to his intensity about "bad, toxic food that leaves you hungry" - providing me with much entertainment.
In other news, the trees are changing colors and the smell of the leaves is like a wonderful nostalgic nose candy.
It was a blue-blue day even early. You can see our long shadows and yes it is (finally) cool enough I'm back in my hat.
The Ash trees are all lit up beautifully.
More golden Ash trees around town.
This street is special because there are leaves everywhere so you can walk through them crunching and smelling the wonderful scent of fall.
Strawberry plants in the garden. It finally dawned on me that strawberries are only seasonally available here in the springtime. I also learned that thyme overwinters here. I'm surprised by that, as it doesn't in Colorado (or should I say didn't).
The sky is really a remarkable shade of blue. This is a young Red oak.
I want to encourage you all to take extra care of yourself and give yourself a hug.
Sending you oodles of love, Tawnia