June 16, 2023: On top of Flying Mountain and in site of our lodgings.

 

Greening Bay, June 10, 2023 — Morning Fog

 

June 10, 2023 — Early morning. a river of fog moving up the coast hangs on the mountains as it crosses the mouth of Somes Sound.

Lobster Docks in Mid-June, Bernard, ME

Cleaned, repaired and neatly stacked, soon to be loaded aboard a lobster boat and carefully set, marked with a buoy for a season of regular emptying and re-baiting until the lobsters' retreat to deeper waters in the fall.

Across Greening Bay toward Flying Mt. & Somes Sound

A short walk along the rocky shore from the house we recently stayed in is a point of land dividing Greening Bay from Southwest Harbor. Seated on a rock above the point I can look left across Greening Bay to the deep cleft where Acadian mountains divide, and water flows into the glacial loch that is Somes Sound. We climbed the mountains along the left edge of the opening and hiked along the ridge above Somes Sound. Looking right from my seat at the point the view is across the mouth Southwest Harbor and between islands to the open sea. It is still June and there is little traffic in or out of the harbor. The docks are loaded with lobster traps soon to be set.

 

Fleur-de-lis Swamp

Less than a week ago a few yellow irises began their annual show, poking pointed tips, like candle flames, up through the water. Like most of us, they are invaders in America from Europe, Asia and Africa, but they feel very much at home in the swamps around Little Pond in Litchfield, CT. , and, in any case, once established they are difficult to eradicate. The irises are, in fact, beneficial to the water quality and are used sometimes as water treatment to remove excess nitrogen and phosphorus. 

 

Today the flowers were in full blossom and the shallower areas of the swamp had become fields of yellow irises.