– The iris are blooming, and the lupine too. When we first visited Maine almost six years ago, it was in early June, and the lupine were blooming everywhere. Where I grew up in Pennsylvania, it’s tiger lilies that border the roads and streams. Somehow the rich purple lupine seemed like a much more romantic wildflower than tiger lilies, but I kind of miss the flashes of orange now.

– Black flies. How did I not know about the black flies before we moved here? They’re positively dreadful. Unless there’s a stiff and constant breeze, we have not been able to go outside. My girls have nickel-sized welts along their hairlines and behind their ears from the bites. After just a few minutes in the yard, I’m wiping away blood and hustling them inside. I attempted a homemade bug spray, and while the flies don’t seem to care for it, it doesn’t stop them from swarming you, and any unprotected inch of skin gets bitten anyway. I think we will have to wait them out, indoors. (Spray: 1/4C each water and witch hazel; 20 drops each tea tree and citronella; 10 drops rosemary; a couple drops eucalyptus to temper the citronella)

– We celebrated a first birthday yesterday. Baby Bean is walking everywhere, and devoured her very first cupcake. I copped out and used a boxed mix, but whipped up some homemade buttercream icing. Swee was mistress of the sprinkles. It was a lovely day, with that perfect stiff breeze to banish the black flies. We walked over to the lake and went wading. Beansie floated around and splashed. She went to bed tired and happy, and J and I were able to sit outside for a drink.

Tomorrow: water testing report!

J is a veteran, and the week leading up to Memorial Day always weighs a little more in our house. Ike and Kenny gave their lives during J’s second deployment, just three days apart, and while the mood is a little more somber, we try to fully live this weekend of remembrance in their honor.

We spent time as a family – grocery shopping together, mowing the lawn, building a raised garden bed, cooking and enjoying meals together.

We also spent time in our new community. It was a fun little parade, though a bit different than some. The announcement in the paper said that anyone who wanted to participate could just show up at the starting point. There were decorated four-wheelers and huge farm tractors along with your typical Boy and Girl Scout troops. No marching bands, but plenty of candy tossed to the kids.

Everyone congregated at the town beach following the parade for food, music, and swimming. I had a lovely slice of strawberry rhubarb pie from Hello, Good Pie, and Beans helped me enjoy it.

This duo set up near the picnic table and burst into bluegrass, which Beansie just loved!

We didn’t stay too long since little moods began to deteriorate, but it was so nice to be out among friendly faces!

– J’s coworker sent him home with a dozen eggs from her chickens. Such a treat! They were enormous, and the yolks were big and vibrant. We finished all twelve this weekend, and can’t wait til we have our own flock.

– We spent most of the weekend exploring our new yard. The homeowner we’re renting from seems to have been an avid gardener, and there are mature plants tucked into every corner of the yard. I’ve spotted hydrangea and poppies, and there’s an iris that’s about to bloom. Wild violets carpet one section of the front yard. I’m not familiar with these white flowers however – they line the neighbor’s driveway on our side. Does anyone know what they are?

– J dragged this beautiful glider out of the brambles. It needs some attention, but we might be able to have it working again. Wouldn’t it be a nice place to sit and watch the lake?

– Several loads of laundry dried on the line. We have such a wonderful breeze off the water. It’s only long enough for one load at a time, and the pulley system is taking some getting used to, but it’s so nice to sleep in sun-dried sheets! I’ve already noticed many houses with clotheslines in use, which I never saw in our old neighborhood.

Hope you all had a lovely weekend as well!

The sun is out today, and we’re all feeling a little more positive. It is still far quieter in this little village than I thought possible, but I think that means I need to learn to quiet myself and my thoughts, and just focus on shaping our life into the one we’ve imagined.

Mother Nature in Maine is about a month behind where she was in Maryland. The lilacs here are just blooming, and there are still some daffodils left. There’s something sweet about experiencing spring twice in one year. We brought some inside to enjoy. The green glass vase is a gift from my Pup, and the salt and pepper shakers belonged to J’s gram. The homeowner left oodles of books here, and I’ve decided to page through them one at a time. Last night was Salads (The Good Cook) in preparation for the fresh greens we will soon have. J’s coworkers brought seeds in to share, and he brought some home for me to plant.

My kitchen is slowly coming together. I’ve packed away my Blue Danube and basic white Crate and Barrel dishes in favor of the Corelle my family used growing up. I felt that they would be easier for Swee and her almost-three-year-old hands to manage, and they are less likely to shatter when dropped.

The front room in this house has amazing light, and I’ve been able to create a space of my own there. I had some company this morning, and think it will be one of our favorite places to spend time. Tomorrow, we are going to venture into Farmington for preschool Story Hour. The map looks like it’s more of a town than Mount Vernon, so I’m interested to see what is there.

 

I’m a little overwhelmed. And to be truthful, even that’s an understatement.

I have lived my entire life on a public water system, in areas that have streetlights and sidewalks and your choice of three or four grocery stores within a ten minute drive. I now find myself in a town with no stoplight, half an hour away from a shopping center. We have a well whose water we’re not sure we can drink (more on that another day). There is no trash or recycling pickup. I left my LG digital front-loading washer and dryer in Baltimore and am now using a standard washer in my kitchen. The dryer? Three rooms away in what my husband refers to as “The Shop.” When we sat in the yard the other night, all we could hear were peepers and birds, not even the hum of highway traffic. That freaked me out.

Yes, this is what we wanted. It was a conscious decision to simplify like this. But holy moly, I didn’t anticipate the adjustment to be quite so rough, especially since we’re still just dipping our toes in the shallow end.

I haven’t left the house alone yet, except to walk about the new neighborhood. My first excursion took me down the driveway and across the street to the country store for coffee before I found my own coffeemaker amid the boxes. With one baby strapped to my chest, and the other firmly in hand, I set my Styrofoam cup on the counter to pay. The girl at the register immediately smiled and said, “Are you J’s wife? I’m so glad you’re finally here! He’s really missed you guys. Oh wow! She looks just like him!” Small town.

Tuesday morning, I walked to the post office in the rain. We don’t have a mailbox yet since there’s some confusion as to where it should be placed, so they hold our mail in a bin for us. The post office is a cute little place, with a community bulletin board in the lobby.

I’m hoping to check out the community center later this week. It’s housed in an old green and white church, right next to the town beach. I’m not sure what kinds of activities they hold besides a Tuesday morning breakfast advertised on their sign.

I’ve been longing for a simpler life almost since we moved to Baltimore eight years ago, right around the time that I discovered these wonderful things called blogs – little windows into other lives, other options for living. I wondered then if I was just looking for a way out, since I didn’t seem to have any real professional ambition. I worked hard enough to do well, to promote, but it never seemed to get me what I wanted, though I couldn’t have put into words then what that really was. The people around me, the friends from college, the new connections we made in the city – they all seemed to have this drive to achieve the next big thing, position, idea – and I didn’t know where to find that feeling. It certainly wasn’t finding me.

And so while I worked and waited and stressed and tried, I learned. I devoured everything I could find about people living the life I so desperately wanted for my own. I spent eight years reading about other people living my dream, spent hours poring over seed catalogs I never ordered from. Hours surfing Pinterest for patterns and hording fabric for clothing I never sat down to sew.

In ten days, I’m doing it. I’m packing what things have survived multiple purges. I am putting my children in the car. I’m moving 500 miles from everywhere I’ve ever known to follow my own brand of ambition, and kicking others’ ambitions to the curb because I’ve finally realized that having a different dream from everyone around you doesn’t make you wrong.

In ten days, my family is reuniting in Maine to set out on our own little journey. I am excited and terrified, and I feel so lost for where to start. Dreaming is so very different than doing, but I have to stop chasing that elusive sense of professional ambition. It doesn’t exist for me in that form. I never felt that drive because I wasn’t supposed to.

Does the world need yet another blog about simple living? The story of the city girl taking her master’s and “throwing it all away” to plant potatoes and knit dishcloths – is it spun out? I hope not, because I still need to write it. And I’m going to hazard a guess that there are still people who will read it, because for all the multitude of stories I’ve read, I still don’t know anyone personally who has actually gone out and done it.

So here we go. Ten days. We’re doing it.