Ground wars

To look at the lawn from a ways away, especially in this wet and humid summer, is to pretend it's a real lawn, green and quiet. Up close, however, there's an awakening. It's green, but it's not quiet. That is, there's a war of weeds going on. The tangle and jangle amongst the puny tufts of grass is deafening.

Actually, I don't mind this war. In normal summers, most of the grass is browned by now and the various dandelions and worts provide some illusion. This year, it's almost lush. Nor do I care to have the kind of trophy lawn prized in certain sections of certain suburbs: far too much work, far too comfortable. And the kicker: I like to weed.

Well, let me qualify. I don't particularly like to weed gardens, for that keeps the mind too active thinking about past failures and future fixes. The point of lawn weeding is not to think. Also, you can't really sit in a garden.

So the proper technique for lawn weeding is as follows: each day, go around and behead the tall stems of dandelions, or if you're feeling ambitious, pry the enemy combatants out of the ground. This postpones the task of mowing; if you can sit on the deck and see that no stem or flower exceeds, say, six inches, you're OK at tomorrow at least. Then, as a reward, sit on a suitable section of lawn, sunny if it's cool, shady if it's hot, and engage in battle. I recommend sitting with your back to the bay. It's far too easy to get distracted from the task of mindless reverie if you're always looking out at things of beauty and thinking about how your initials could stand for John Keats. Use your dominant hand, please. The other one is awkward and gets in the way of smooth nothingness. Every once in a while close your eyes and murder by touch. You can easily discover those little weed nodules, above which leaves sprout and below which roots debouch, without the use of radar such as eyes. This is important for appreciating that weeding is an endless, dark and hopeless task, especially in a lawn like this one. Stop after half an hour, in the interests of mental health.

There. You've satisfied your blood lust, made a square foot of yard safe for suburbia, and composed your next blog post.

Air wars

The fog and rain of the past day and a half lifted this morning and the temperature immediately jumped 15 degrees in sympathy with the rest of the East Coast this hot and muggy July. I was grateful to the fog not only for Saturday's cool but also for cancelling Day 1 of the "Wings and Wheels Spectacular," an annual event now 35 years running at the Owls Head Transportation Museum that I look forward to with some dismay. Various vintage aircraft strut on the tarmac and circle and buzz in the air and manage to be louder two miles away than your average lawnmower is next door. This year war materiel were to be featured, biplanes from World War I, a WW2 German bomber scale replica, an Air Tanker, and a Black Hawk Helicopter. The usual air show of loops and dupes was scheduled each afternoon.

Today the morning started promisingly with heavy rain accompanying the fog but deteriorated into blue sky. At 1:30, the time set for the air show, beautiful heavy black clouds started to roll in and I was momentarily happy. Alas, they cleared too quickly and the familiar buzz, like a dentist's drill, commenced in the distance. I gave up on my nap, I mean, my hour of afternoon novel reading, and went out to weed the gardens, an activity not unlike sitting in the dentist's chair. If you're going to suffer, suffer doubly.

A chunk of this fascination with old airplanes must have to do with war (as witnessed by the pedestrian inclusion in this year's show of a plane that performs that exciting task of refueling in the sky). Another part concerns birds, of course, and our desire to slip the surly bonds of earth. The merging of the two tropes gives us the eagle clutching its arrows, the symbols of our country and its deadly ambitions. Count me out; give me instead the hummingbird darting into the campanula, the robin strutting peacefully on the lawn, the sparrow drinking or bathing or fishing(?) in our gutters after a rain; the lovable American goldfinch swooping and tweeting along the shore. Birds don't do war as we do.

This summer even the air is warring. We struggle in a constant stream of humidity; the rains come but unlike normal years, in which cool air follows, the heat just stays. At the edges, where cold fronts try to mount the ramparts, even a violent storm like the one on Wednesday night (more than two hours of thunder and lightning and rain, just sitting on the coast like a curse) produces no salvation from Canada, just fog and more moisture. Maybe if we get all the war planes together to make their own thunder....

Tomorrow: Ground wars

Beach town

"Beach, n., the shore of a body of water, esp. when sandy or pebbly," says my dictionary. So you would think that when Travel and Leisure magazine picks the best small beach towns in the US, they'd feature lots of Florida and California and Carolina expanses of sand. And they did, for the most part. So what's Lubec doing at number 3 on the list?

Now Lubec is a wonderful place. But as far as I know, there's no sand, no honky-tonk, no babes, no hunks, no mai tais, no surfing, actually no swimming at all considering the cold Atlantic. If T&L gave an award for best small rocks-rockweed-high tides-nice people-amazing bay and island views-fresh food-quiet-cultured town, then Lubec wins. But please don't put her in with hot, placid, boring towns in Texas; she's not their type.

The Man, in Maine

Maine hasn't been this much in the national news for a long time. The President arrived in Bar Harbor at noon today with the financial reform package securely in hand, thanks to three Republican senators, one from Massachusetts and two from Maine. The welcoming party featured a bunch of Democrats, including Governor Baldacci, who presented the Obamas with Maine-made gifts, and one of Maine's US Reps, Mike Michaud (the other, Chellie Pingree, was fogged in on North Haven, which sounds good to me). Senators Snowe and Collins were not there, having already delivered their Washington-made gift. Let's not go overboard with this bipartisan stuff, after all.

The Prez must be feeling pretty good this weekend. The BP well is even temporarily capped. And of course he's in Maine, or at least I think Bar Harbor qualifies as Maine. In summer it's debatable. I grant that Bar Harbor sports at least a couple of differences from the scenes of his recent battles: temperature at 70 (DC 94, Baton Rouge 95); water and skies that are clear and blue and untainted by petroleum or invective; friendly people, not adversaries or the despairing. As long as the First Family experiences Acadia's hiking trails and pink granite ledges, carriage paths and wildlife, I'll forgive them their rebuff of the real Maine. It's only two days, I know, not enough time for a canoe trip on the Allagash or a sail on Penobscot Bay or blueberry picking on the barrens of Washington County, out of the glare of the cameras. In the real Maine you could thank Olympia and Susan in person, over a Whoopie Pie and a Moxie.