The Trail is on the move!

We’d love to post photos of where you have taken your copy of The Trail!

I now feel qualified to answer the deeply significant question: If I could have only one or the other, which appliance I would keep, my stove or my refrigerator? No hesitation here. I would give up my refrigerator first. Cooking for a baker’s dozen last summer without a stove was way more challenging than working around no refrigerator.

This is not to say that I won’t be thrilled when Sears appears with the new refrigerator. Having to fruitlessly rifle through “Porn Star” then walk to Ben’s house for mayonnaise has probably been good for the health, but it gets old fast.

On the garden front, storms and cold rainy days have left the perennials leggy and drooping. I carry twine, stakes and scissors with me on my travels, trying to try up all the Roses and also retrieve the Peonies from their determined flumps onto the ground. The only saving grace of the nose dives is that they give me an excuse for cutting big bouquets of flumping Flowers for the house.

One plant in particular looks done in my the weather and doesn’t look any better when plucked for a vase. I speak here of the Irises. I am a bit of a nut about Bearded Iris, but I wonder if this is a Flower I should stop pursuing. They are easily damaged by storms and once again this June they have been knocked around in spite of careful staking.

If it’s not wind and rain that get them, it’s the dogs. Perhaps because of where I have placed the Iris along the edges of garden paths, the dogs frequently break off their Flower stalks. It is always a dramatic moment when I realize there will be virtually no Flowers on the Iris because MayMay wanted to beat Riley from the front yard to the back.

One patch did look glorious this year and was spared by MayMay, Riley, and Reina, earning an awful lot of Iris in the gardens a reprieve.

A fifth grade teacher friend in Ottawa asked her students to write the story of this photo.

No, it is not me after the Sears man tells me that Sears will replace our dead refrigerator…. though it does represent (in a rather epic way) the pleasure I felt knowing that my acquaintance with “Porn Star” was going to end after only a few weeks of stuffing 8 cubic feet of food in a 2 cubic foot space.

If you want to know what this moment really represents….Lizzy’s book fills in all the detail!

May was cool until the last few days so the Tulips stayed sassy for weeks.

Our Honeybees did a great job pollinating our Apple trees. Gorgeous blossoms are now tiny apples.

My fixation with Purple Sensation Allium left the gardens awash in these stunners.

Over Memorial Day weekend, we dashed up to Maine to see Emily graduate from college. A friend lent us his darling house in Damariscotta for the occasion. The house is the one that Jim and Ben re-roofed a few years back. It proved a lovely place to celebrate between official events. Hooray for Emily (who found herself hard at work at the farm a few short hours after graduation) !

We returned to gardens flooded in Tree Peonies. A brief heat wave had brought them all to flower overnight.

As we went to get the last of the gardens planted, the dogs remained in the thick of all planting activities.

For those of you who read my posts last summer about the little bit of insanity I like to call, “Twelve Hungry Farm Workers and a Toaster Oven,” you will appreciate the rich layered ironies of our discovery, just two days ago, that our refrigerator had died.

Yes, just as the summer staff is returning like swallows to Capistrano, our refrigerator unexpectedly bit the dust. Should I post on Facebook for the staff that have not yet arrived, “Good news! THE STOVE IS WORKING! No need to sharpen your elbows to push your way to the electric fry pan!” Or is that a bit disingenuous? Do they deserve the post, “Hope you like warm milk and have a stomach that can handle refreshing snacks like lukewarm potato salad?”

No, I think I will surprise them! After all, I need them to show up, and it may be just a bit too soon to tell them that yet another major appliance has turned up her heels chez Sheehan. They are still probably binge eating snacks cooked on a real live stove after what turned out to be several MONTHS without one last summer!

And when I tell them the good news in person, I will tell them to look forward to all the memories we will be making together! Tossing back the warm beverages after a hot couple of hours with a hoe! Enjoying the crunch of warm pickles! Savoring whatever I throw at them as needing to be eaten RIGHT NOW. It’s going to be magic!

And some things actually will be cold, a few choice items (my choice by the way). We have dragged out Ben’s college fridge, something the size of a postage stamp and decorated with an lovely sticker that says, “Porn Star.” It’s on back porch right now, and the fight for space within its walls has already begun.

In fact, when Jim got the word from Sears that the first appointment for a repairman was fourteen days out……I got a game plan for today. Grab The Trail for another read through and sit tight by Porn Star. Some people may not fully understand yet that the cold food in her depths is for supper, not for random snacks. Some people may not believe that keeping the mayo cold takes priority over chilling their Peach Snapple Ice Tea. Some people may not believe that warm meats taste just as good as chilled meats, especially when they need to be eaten STAT.

I can see already that by day’s end, I will already have so many special new memories, and thanks to Sears I may get months of memory making!