in Provincetown

Snapshots from my trip to Provincetown. A magical place--I've fallen under the spell...

Will write more about it soon.

Thanks to Steve from An Urban Cottage for tips on the many art galleries.

flowers make everything better

The cure for a gloomy mood? A trip to the nursery. There's a fine one close to my house.

  I filled a green wagon with plants for my garden and deck.

 Pansies are the garden memory of my childhood--I always planted them around the birdbath.

They come in so many colors these days--it's hard to choose.

The Boston Marathon route is close to my house, so after the nursery I walked down for a look. Schools are closed today--it's Patriot's Day in Massachusetts; Revolutionary War reenactments and such abound. The Marathon is very festive. The little boys in the picture above are holding out cups of water for the runners.

 It's at least 80 degrees--crazy hot for a marathon. These girls are handing out ice pops.

They have a cooler full, and cut them in half. People also bring orange and banana slices for the runners. They set up their camp chairs and picnic and clap and cheer. All kinds of people run the marathon, not just the fast and fit.

 As I walked home buds blossomed and leaves unfurled before my eyes. It is finally spring in New England.

My viburnum is blooming and I brought a bit in to fill the kitchen with its glorious scent. Flowers make everything better.

Reef of Norman's Woe, part 2

I'm not happy with one of the mixed media pieces I showed you here--the one with the postcard Reef of Norman's Woe, Gloucester, Massachusetts. As I looked through papers, postcards, and tattered books for inspiration I came upon a 1931 world atlas. A map, I thought, might be what's needed. I then remembered some old nautical maps that I got at an auction last year, in the garage. I pulled them out--there were four rolled up in a barrel--and one is Ipswich Bay to Gloucester Harbor.

 It was published by the U.S Coast and Geodetic Survey in Washington D.C. in 1920.

Next to the words "Lights, Beacons, Buoys and Dangers Corrected

For Information Received to Date of Issue." 

it is stamped June 26, 1923.

I looked for Norman's Woe.

There it is.

It was time to do some research. 

In January 1839, a great blizzard struck the northeast, destroying many ships, including the schooner Favorite out of Maine, bound for England. Twenty bodies washed ashore including a woman lashed to a piece of the ship. This was not the first shipwreck on Norman's Woe. In 1823 all crew members of the Rebecca Ann were lost. However it is the wreck of the Favorite that inspired Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to write The Wreck of the Hesperus. The last verse:

Such was the wreck of the Hesperus,

In the midnight and the snow!

Christ save us all from a death like this,

On the reef of the Norman's Woe!

This map, and the others, feel loaded with history and I cannot bear the idea of cutting it up. Therefore, my search for ephemera for Norman's Woe continues, and I hope to find a way to incorporate the history of this bit of reef into my little project.

sauntering and rambling

 

Thoreau's cabin on Walden Pond measured 10' x 15' and cost $28.12 to build. He lived there for two years, two weeks, and two days. 

It was furnished with a bed, a table, a small desk and lamp, and three chairs — “one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.”

The above are reproductions of the cabin that you can visit. The original was moved to a farm, used to store grain and gradually destroyed as its parts were used for other buildings. 

This is a picture of the original desk where he wrote Walden. It's at the Concord Museum where you aren't supposed to take pictures but I snuck this one with my camera phone. It's a wonderful shade of green.

I was thinking about Thoreau today when I went for a good walk for the first time in ages because it's been snowy and icy for months. In the essay Walking, Thoreau wrote : "I have met but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks,--who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering..." I love the word saunter. And also ramble.