First post of a Maine Diary
I really wanted to throw my neighbor down and pull her hair tonight. Granted, this was after she gave me three beers (admittedly, they were double bag) and we had smoked enough cigarettes to have her leprauchan redneck boyfriend hacking like a TB patient.
IN my own defense, I took 4 hours to drink three beers so I technically wouldn't have qualified as intoxicated as far as Maine DWI rules apply. I didn't have to drive home at any rate. My place is downhill about 200 yards flanked by century old white pine sentinels and footed by a bubbling brook. Or stream, depending on what part of the world you hail from.
So what had me so agitated, you might ask? In my latter years I have become a rather intense wildlife environment advocate, and I have never been known for my ability to keep my mouth shut when I see BS happeneing.
I live pretty much in the middle of 12,000 undelveloped acres, with a mile long pond and stream running North to South, an a pothole ridden passable only at certaintimes of the year dirt road running east to west. our little neighborhoold runs along the road frontage-most of the houses clearly visible on google earth and their associated fieds and lawns and pastures.
Mine has one of the furthest setbacks- a literal bitch in the winter when I have to clear 300 feet of driveway while my neighbors are parked feet from the road and just have to clear the snowbank-if we are lucky enough to have been remembered by the town snowplow.
Those 12,000 acres have almost entirely been partially cut or logged in the last 20 years. As far as mature pines go, I am one of the last holdouts, and I don't have many. There were giant 36" diamter mossy stumps scattered throughout when I purchased this piece 20 years ago-and they are still there. A handful of white pine and eastern hemlock giants remain-most likely they weren't that impressive compared to the big monsters decades ago.
In twenty years, these giants have not gained more than an inch or two in girth. It takes a long long time to make a 30" plus pine or hemlock.
I could go on to describe the land that has been logged off all around me in twenty years, but that's a topic for another post. Why I got frustrated with my neighbor is that she started along the line of "once firs get a certain age they blow down", and then she can't walk on her proerty, which she admitted she does about once a year. I can testify that this time of year it's tick city, because I had walked down to the pond across hers with her permission to check on some chainsaw and tree crashing noise coming from what sounded like her backyard.
I came out with at least a half dozen deer ticks on me *shudders*
Fortuneately for the migrating warblers, I have let my firs along the stream alone, along with what I call "hemlock lane". The warblers, perhaps concentrated by loss of surrounding habitat, filled the firs a few weeks ago. It wa a mixed flock: yellow rumped, black and white, worm eating, yellow throats-
SO I get a bit aggravated when a landowner thinks that neat open woods and perfectly manicured lawns are their right, especially during nesting season. The birds are going to have a bad year-this spring has been abnormally cold wet and windy out of the north. It has even slowed the black flies down a bit. But the bird population is going to miss an entire breeding cycle.
IN my own defense, I took 4 hours to drink three beers so I technically wouldn't have qualified as intoxicated as far as Maine DWI rules apply. I didn't have to drive home at any rate. My place is downhill about 200 yards flanked by century old white pine sentinels and footed by a bubbling brook. Or stream, depending on what part of the world you hail from.
So what had me so agitated, you might ask? In my latter years I have become a rather intense wildlife environment advocate, and I have never been known for my ability to keep my mouth shut when I see BS happeneing.
I live pretty much in the middle of 12,000 undelveloped acres, with a mile long pond and stream running North to South, an a pothole ridden passable only at certaintimes of the year dirt road running east to west. our little neighborhoold runs along the road frontage-most of the houses clearly visible on google earth and their associated fieds and lawns and pastures.
Mine has one of the furthest setbacks- a literal bitch in the winter when I have to clear 300 feet of driveway while my neighbors are parked feet from the road and just have to clear the snowbank-if we are lucky enough to have been remembered by the town snowplow.
Those 12,000 acres have almost entirely been partially cut or logged in the last 20 years. As far as mature pines go, I am one of the last holdouts, and I don't have many. There were giant 36" diamter mossy stumps scattered throughout when I purchased this piece 20 years ago-and they are still there. A handful of white pine and eastern hemlock giants remain-most likely they weren't that impressive compared to the big monsters decades ago.
In twenty years, these giants have not gained more than an inch or two in girth. It takes a long long time to make a 30" plus pine or hemlock.
I could go on to describe the land that has been logged off all around me in twenty years, but that's a topic for another post. Why I got frustrated with my neighbor is that she started along the line of "once firs get a certain age they blow down", and then she can't walk on her proerty, which she admitted she does about once a year. I can testify that this time of year it's tick city, because I had walked down to the pond across hers with her permission to check on some chainsaw and tree crashing noise coming from what sounded like her backyard.
I came out with at least a half dozen deer ticks on me *shudders*
Fortuneately for the migrating warblers, I have let my firs along the stream alone, along with what I call "hemlock lane". The warblers, perhaps concentrated by loss of surrounding habitat, filled the firs a few weeks ago. It wa a mixed flock: yellow rumped, black and white, worm eating, yellow throats-
SO I get a bit aggravated when a landowner thinks that neat open woods and perfectly manicured lawns are their right, especially during nesting season. The birds are going to have a bad year-this spring has been abnormally cold wet and windy out of the north. It has even slowed the black flies down a bit. But the bird population is going to miss an entire breeding cycle.
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