Communal Living

Hello faithful readers... I'm interested to hear your thoughts and impressions of communal living whether it is a total group democratic living environment, or if it is more autocratic with transient and semi-residential members living with a core residential group... The old hippie days of the 70's are inspirational in a sense, but there is also the Nearing's experiment which was a little different http://www.afsc.org/pwork/0202/020219.htm... Let me know what you think! Peace to all...

Richard Green Surveying His World

Okay, so he's not looking at me... But, he is looking out over the Sprague River Salt Marsh on a fabulously sunny Sunday afternoon, shortly before the weather decided to take a turn for the dark side... We had a great walk... Have I mentioned that I am married to this fabulous man? We are indeed a match made in heaven...

Moose Mobile

Katie has a new veehickle, a nice Taurus station wagon complete with the ultimate Moose Paint Package... The sides are a nice mountain/ lake/ evergreen tree scene and the front hood is a moonlit version of the same... The side mirror cowls have moose constellations painted on them... The artist is Phyllis Hewitt Parker, or some other composition of those names and I have to say 'Great Job Phyllis' because it is truly a work of art... Katie is heading south to Plymouth to work at Pinewoods for the summer... We look forward to visiting her...

Salt Marsh from Morse Mountain Overlook

Sunday started out to be a great day with blue skies and warm temperatures. Though we originally planned to do chores, we changed our minds and decided to visit Morse Mountain and have a picnic lunch on the beach after visiting the scenic overlook. Richard had been there before, but it would be my first time. The walk started out really nice, we had a wonderful view of the Sprague River salt marsh that you can see here. In colonial days they actually dug some of the ditches by hand to facilitate harvesting of the salt hay (seems like a lot of work!). The area is managed by the Bates-Morse Mountain Conservancy http://www.mainenaturalareas.org/docs/program_activities/links/Landtrust/MorseMountain.pdf#search= and they are doing a lot of research of the animal and plant life as well as gathering information on tides, salinity, temperature etc in the marsh itself. It's a pretty comfortable walk on mostly paved roads/trails if anyone is interested. The walk goes up to the scenic overlook and then drops down to the beach~ I think about 2 miles total each way according to the guide stationed at the trail head. No dogs allowed and there are no facilities available, but a very nice place to hear a lot of birds. We heard yellow warblers, black & white warblers, woodpeckers, chickadees to name a few. When we reached the beach, we noticed the sky was really dark and Richard suggested we might want to leave. That was the best advice of the day. We hiked a good pace out and barely reached the car before it started to rain. By the time we got into the car and out of the parking lot it started pouring. Yikes! That was good timing. Let us know if anyone reads this and decides to do this nice, easy walk. We are interested in learning more about salt marshes and the ditching that they've done in the past.

DECTAH! aka Richard's Retirement Begins

Crawling was the name of the game on Friday. Richard's co-workers and friends from DEP organized a tavern crawl through Augusta and Hallowell to celebrate his upcoming retirement. The festivities started early. Richard and I met up with everyone at Pat's Pizza for beer and pizza, then continued on to the Wharf where this picture was taken, then on to the Liberal Cup. It was a fun evening for all. Retirement officially begins on June 1st, though Richard has been practicing and getting in shape for the real thing! Congratulations Richard!

The Kitchen Girl

Katie takes charge of making breakfast~ mmmmm... bacon, eggs, toast and coffee! She really will be the Kitchen Girl at her summer job at Pinewood starting June 1st. To see the tune and read more about it, goto http://www.thesession.org/tunes/display.php/603 . To find out more about Pinewoods, visit http://www.pinewoods.org/

Rockin' On Wheelden Heights

Avery is becoming more sociable each time I see him... Today he was really cuddly, and I enjoyed singing him songs about his world... He likes the flashing lights and hanging creatures in his little rocking chair...

Fraser & McManus

Richard and I went to Wolfeboro, NH last night to hear Alasdair Fraser and Tony McManus in concert at the Wolfeboro Inn... A long drive, but worth it to hear such amazing fiddle and guitar playing... We have 2 CD's, The Road North and Return to Kintail, and it was really great to hear so many of the tunes on those discs... We picked up more CD's to add to our collection and are newly inspired to pick up our fiddles and practice, practice, practice! Anyone else out there fans of these two artists?
http://www.culburnie.com/artists/AlasdairFraser/profile.htm
http://www.tonymcmanus.com/

Fiddlers Three

Richard, Katie and Pam atop Cadillac Mountain on Patriot's Day weekend. We're not playing music in this photo, but we did take our fiddles out and play some tunes in the parking lot after our hike was over.

We Really Are Fiddle Heads...

How fun... We spent Tuesday late afternoon and evening with Kathie and David gathering fiddle heads and listening for birds... Then we had a really nice dinner out on the screen porch at the Granary in Farmington... We'll be eating fiddle head salad tonight (Wednesday) as we listen to the Fiddle Camp CD we got in the mail today... So, as you can see we really are FIDDLE HEADS, haha...

Fiddling Around

Anyone out there into old time music or contra dancing? Richard and I are both committing to fiddling more... We have been doing some nice melody/harmony mixes at home and have been practicing with Fiddle-icious, a group of fiddlers and other musicians that meet in Falmouth a couple times a month... There's also a Celtic jam that meets here in Augusta monthly, and we are on the lookout for other local opportunities to play music with small or large groups... Fiddle Camp in Montville is happening again this year over Father's Day weekend this year and we're planing to attend... Oh, just for the record, I'm not sure how many of you may know that Richard and I actually got to know each other at Fiddle Camp in 1999... We had met and danced at contradances before that but it was really at Fiddle Camp that we established a friendship... Let us know if you are interested in this type of music or in contradancing/ square dancing/ folk dancing at all... There are lots of exciting opportunities to experience all this and more!

how YOU doin'?

Mother's Day 2005. Avery looks over uncle Toby's shoulder to see what else is going on...

Here we are in Acadia at Otter Cliffs over Patriot's Day weekend. For more photos and details, see mainelife.com which is the Davis family web site.  

Richard and Pam marry at the Liberal Cup in Hallowell on April 21, 2005. It was a great place to celebrate and enjoy the evening with friends and family.  

Welcome

Avery's blog is so much fun to visit, I thought I'd like to blog too... Seems pretty easy to set up, and it looks like it will be easy to add photos and journal entries... I'll continue to submit for the family web site, but this may be a faster way to share stories...