It's rain...not snow!! The snow is melting...the rain is raw and cold! Is there a silver lining in this anywhere? Yes! There is!! We drove down to Camden yesterday...and drove back home at night in sheets of pouring rain. But as we meandered along the coast to Rockport and then Rockland yesterday afternoon, we chanced to pass a quintessentially quaint little store called none other than

Fresh Off The Farm Store

Despite the rain and drizzle, we promptly pulled a U-ey to check out this winsome little place with birch-branch wreaths hung across its porch posts and bushel baskets of large yellow daffodils peeking at us from under the awning porch. And not only bushel baskets of daffodils, but pots upon pots of promising blooms of tulips and hyacinths ready to burst open at any moment!

My flower starved eyes were feasting on all of this...and I hadn't even made it past the front porch! Once inside, we were greeted with local vegetables nestled in baskets overhung with pots of fresh herbs clustered across the top of the center table, handmade candles, deliciously fragrant homemade soaps...some in the shapes of eggs...every organic concoction known to this region and beyond, mismatched glass jars of dried herbs with handwritten labels and wooden scoops. My senses were reeling, of course. How does one imbibe such verdant wonder all at once..??

We eventually pulled away and then found ourselves on a great little street in Rockland...in a used bookstore serving perfect piping hot coffee and an array of organic loose leaf teas. Andrew picked up a book on woodstoves and I landed a gardening tome to beat ALL gardening tomes...and written by a family right in here Maine!

We then drove down by the ferry just in time to see the cars loading up... and a few passengers hurrying down the ramp...bags in hand, hoods pulled tightly down against the rain...ready to make their 10 mile trek to North Haven Island.

They were loaded in no time...then the small ferry pulled away quickly... disappearing into the mist and fog.

We could still see its small light rolling and rocking its way to an island life I long to discover. Oh how we wanted to board that ferry and be whisked off to some rocky distant island shore...despite the eerie mist and rain!

However, we had to suffice just listening to Captain Jim regale Anne and Gilbert with another tale from the sea as we listened to Anne's House of Dreams on the way back home. It's all part of our life now...in the cold, raw rainy romance of Maine in early Spring!

"Anne gave herself up to the eerie charm of the night....and the late afternoon had been very foggy; but a full moon had in part lessened the fog and transformed the harbour and the gulf and the surrounding shores into a strange, fantastic, unreal world of pale silver mist,...Anne pleased herself with a hundred fancies as she wandered through the mist. It was delightful--romantic--mysterious to be roaming here alone on this enchanted shore."

From Anne's House of Dreams (Ch.27 On the Sand-bar)

Leave a Reply