Surprises, good and not-so-good

So it's hard not to be enamored (charmed? very grateful?) when the morning greets you with the view to the left. We're still without any furnishings except for our air mattress, though my brilliant consort suggested buying a memory foam topper that resulted in the first full night of sleep I've had in years. Yay.

Our first days were greeted with sweet hikes, a very acceptable outdoor dinner in downtown Waterville, along with a stroll in the vicinity that yielded 2 bakery possibilities (my elder daughter's first question. . ."Have you found a bakery?"), one for bread, one for sweets. Also found on that walk was the 2-Cent bridge (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two_Cent_Bridge). 

Front of the house, entering from the drive

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I promised images of the yard, and so shall it be!

Not exactly in order, but close enough.

The driveway with Jasper ahead of me

Rhododendron is Queen

Rhododendrons are queen, here, just like in Pennsylvania, though I haven't seen the abundance of Mountain Laurel that you see in PA. Nonetheless. These are plants from the Ericacea (like blueberries), and hence host and are hosted by Ericoid mycorrhizae, which was my research darling. So understudied. Loves acid soil. One of my favorite lines from a proposal was that Ericoid mycorrhizae allowed ericaceous plants to thrive in soils where other species could not survive. Something like that. 

Anyway, after living in the wild wild west, I will be happy to get away from those alkaline soils, and back to acid soils where most plants are happier. Oh. And water. I'll be happy to get back to that too. A horticulturalist heart is a hard one to ignore.

And Jasper is Laird

And of course, where the Ericacea is Queen, Jasper is Lord. John suggested we change his title from Sir Jasper of Rockridge to Laird Jasper of Highland. What do you think?

Side yard with stone steps

Below (or somewhere. . . blogger makes this hard to place) is the side yard which leads up to the man door of the garage. This is first time we've had any natural light in a garage. It's good sized. . . not huge like the Harmony Street garage was, but also not stingy.

Weeds in the raised bed, untended fruit trees

Only fair to show the bad with the good. Fruit trees and plants were planted and beds established and all was then ignored. The grapes are so overgrown that they'll have to be cut back to the trunks, and of course you can imagine what will happen to the veg bed on the left. Roundup, you are my friend. Let's see what my back has to say about all of this.

Studio entrance

 

 

 

And this is the small patio and yard just outside of my soon-to-be studio. There is not as much natural light as I would like, but we will amend it with unnatural light! Thank goodness LED's are so cheap now. And I love the notion that I can bring the wheel out onto the patio in good weather.

Ferns!

 

Ferns abound, of course. They are the natural order of low understory here.

Deciduous forest

But it is the deciduous forest that makes my hear sing. What a place. It's not all deciduous, of course. . .there's a lot of pine (mostly Eastern White) and Hemlock. . .which doesn't seem to be infected (yet) with the disease that my New Hampshire friend described. Things will change and evolve with climate change. It breaks my heart to think that we might lose Hemlocks altogether. . . or pines for that matter. . . but we may also lose civilization as we know it. I am odd, I expect, but I see the loss of these trees as a far greater one. They did nothing to bring this on themselves, after all.