The Essence of Living Locally

Stone wall, Peaks Island, Maine 

Just touching base today to wish a warm and happy Thanksgiving to American readers of The Magpie's Fancy!  

I also wanted to let you know that I have two stories in the newest issue of t.e.l.l. New England Magazine.  I'm thrilled to have my writing and photographs in t.e.l.l.  It is a beautiful publication that celebrates the local people, places, and traditions of New England.  The editors are creating a unique place for writers and photographers from the region to showcase their work, and I'm honored to be a part of it.  I was also pleased as punch to discover that my friend Laurie Wheeler has two photos in this issue as well.  

Click here to see the magazine.  You can adjust it to fit your screen size, and you can zoom in for easier reading.  My pieces, "Peaks Island Homecoming" and "Conjuring Autumn," are on pages 20 and 116, respectively.  I wrote the text and took the photos for the first story.  Jenn Bakos took the wonderful pumpkin pictures that accompany the second one.  You'll find gorgeous articles and photos throughout the magazine, plus some tempting autumnal recipes.  

Stone tower on the Back Shore, Peaks Island, Maine

I can't think of a better time than Thanksgiving to celebrate all things local.  As the big box stores seek to destroy the last vestiges of what is special about the holiday this year by opening their doors on Thanksgiving day itself, I am happy to ignore them.  I'll shop at local stores on Small Business Saturday, and I'll stop for a coffee at a favorite local cafe.  I know that I am fortunate to live in a city brimming with incredible shops and restaurants, but even here the chain stores are starting to encroach upon the local shopping district, and we now have not one but two Starbucks in our beautiful Old Port.

We have a choice.  We don't have to shop and eat and do all our daily business at chains.  In Portland we have more outstanding local coffee shops than I can count on two hands . . . and hundreds of restaurants . . . and many, many incredible bakeries . . . and dozens of specialty boutiques . . . and that Maine Adventure known as Reny's Department Store.  We can completely and utterly ignore the chains this Christmas . . . if we want to.  

I want to.  I love living locally.  I love thinking locally.  I love that other folks do, too.  And I love that my city doesn't look or feel or smell quite like any other city I've ever been to.  I love that the shopkeepers in all my favorite stores know me by name, and vice versa.  I can't say the same for the mall just over the city line.  If you've seen one mall, you've seen them all.  

Chickens in Autumn, Peaks Island, Maine

I am sending much joy to you and yours as the holiday season kicks into high gear.  May you be surrounded by those you love, and as the torrential rains pour down here in New England, may you all stay warm and dry.

xo Gigi

The Whirl

Summer has spun ever faster this year, but suddenly we are nearing the moment when the merry-go-round man flips the switch, slowing us down, easing us--whether we want it or not--into that last turn towards Fall. 

August in Maine is always spectacular, and this one especially so, which we needed after a winter of record-breaking snows, a spring of bitter rains, and a July that was either light-the-fire cold or run-to-Walmart-for-a-window-AC hot.  The last two weeks have been blissful, sunshiny warm.  The coneflowers and brown-eyed Susans have thrived, the dahlias have exploded like fireworks, and the roses have bloomed, bloomed, and bloomed some more.

I am working on a garden post to show you how much the new beds have grown.  Summer in Maine is short.  Gardening's a challenge, especially since we are under snow so much of the year, but those months of bloom that we do get are all the more special for it.  And for me, September just might be the best of them all, so I will have much to show you.  

In the meantime, I wanted to share a few links to special places in our area.  If you live here or are planning a trip to Maine soon, here's a very short list of summer/early fall love:

Dining Fancies

The Well at Jordan's Farm (dine by candlelight in a field of flowers)

Kettle Cove Creamery (dessert after the The Well perhaps :)--take it to the beach to watch sunset)

Five Islands Lobster Company (Real Maine food in a stunning location)

Adventure Fancies

Casco Bay Lines Sunrise Cruise (leaves at 5 a.m.--absolutely beautiful tour of the bay)

Portland Trails (walk or bike for miles on beautiful trails)

Coastal Maine Botanical Garden (an award-winning garden right on the coast--loads of walking trails)

I'll have more links soon!

For now, I hope all of you in this hemisphere are soaking up every last bit of summer beauty you can.  

xo Gigi  

The Way Life Should Be, or, How to Think Like a Mainer

If you've ever driven into Maine, my home state, you know the sign: Welcome to Maine: The Way Life Should Be.  Mainers (pronounced Mainahs) take this slogan very much to heart.  It's true that our state is unique.  Time and space are different here.  Where else can you go upta camp (If you click on this link, audio about camp starts at 3:50) and downda wharf all in the same afternoon?     

If you're from away, I'll tell you that in order to travel up the coast in Maine, you've gotta go Down East.  And if you don't know where Down East is, then I'm sorry, but you can't get there from here.

Mainers are proud of many things about our state: our wild forests, our rocky coastline, our blueberries (the wild, low-bush ones), our potatoes, our lobstahs. I have the distinction of being the only person I know from Maine who doesn't like lobster.  I mean, I'll eat it, but give me a basket of fried clams or a bucket of mussels steamed in white wine and garlic, and I'm a happy camper (especially if I'm upta camp).

Mr. Magpie and I live in southern coastal Maine, which is wicked good, but we love the whole friggin' state.  I shot these photos last weekend when we were visiting friends on Mount Desert Island, which isn't a desert at all, and which most Mainers I know pronounce Mount Dessert (a lot of us are of French origins, so we tend to pronounce things kinda funny up here).

But thinking like a Mainer has less to do with how we talk, and more to do with this place itself.  

It gets under your skin.  I've lived in many states over the past couple of decades, and I've loved so much about each one of them, but I always longed to come back to Maine.  Life is a little slower up here in the most Northeastern state.  Even in the age of the interwebs, it's easy to unplug and unwind here.  I know when a patch of wild blueberries is near just by the scent of lichen-covered rocks baking in the sun in a clearing in the woods.  

And then there's the fog.  Sit by the ocean on a driftwood log and let it roll in.  If there's a foghorn in the distance, all the better.  It doesn't matter if you're from here or from away.  Pick up a sea-polished stone, breathe in.  Salt and pine and beach rose.  You can barely see beyond the end of your nose, but you can hear the waves and the sand is cool beneath your toes.  This is home.

Chip Tease: On Paint Colors and the Coast

Note: Buckle up, my friends.  We're in for a long one.  I've been away for ages, I know, but mostly because we've been painting.  And painting.  And painting.  If you're as crazy about paint and colors as I am, or if you want some interesting links to things paint- or Maine-related, then read the text.  If you just want to see colors and pretty pictures, please feel free to skip my ramblings!

I have a longstanding obsession love affair with paint, as does Mr. Magpie, and we have been talking nonstop about colors for the cottage ever since the day we stood in its kitchen with our realtor and emailed in our offer.

Ultimately, I think every color we've chosen has been inspired by one thing: the coast.  More specifically, we've been inspired by two coasts, one we live on and one we've never even seen in person before.

Photo I took on the island three years ago.  On the right are mason jars filled with the sea glass we gathered that fall.

Ever since those four months that we spent on Peaks Island here in southern Maine three years ago, I have dreamed of a room painted the color of my favorite pieces of sea glass.  Benjamin Moore's Palladian Blue is just that color.  As soon as it went up on the walls of our living room, I knew it was right.  It shifts all day long in the changing light, from blue to green to both, combined with a touch of soft gray.  Sometimes it feels like the sky, other times like the shallows of a sandy beach.

Benjamin Moore Palladian Blue

Oh, I should mention that we've done all our walls, including the kitchen, in a matte finish using Benjamin Moore's Regal Select paints.  This paint is very durable and washable.  Yes, we've already had to wash some spots--moving is dirty business!  This paint is also incredibly easy to work with.

If you're a local reader, you might be interested to know that we've bought all our paint at Maine Paint Co. on Forest Avenue in Portland.  Working with a local store has been wonderful.  Folks there knew us by name after just a couple of visits, and they have been helpful with every question we've had, whether practical (Q: "When is that floor paint ever going to cure?"  A: "Fifteen days.  Be patient." And they were right.  It did take exactly fifteen days.) or aesthetic (Q: "Should we dare to paint our dining room a very dark and dramatic color?"  A: "Yes."  Emphatically.  And they were right.  Or more precisely, she was right.  Tanasia at Maine Paint has been a color consultant extraordinaire).  And this dining room color question leads me to the next chip: Newburg Green.

Benjamin Moore Newburg Green

There is a story behind this beautiful color, which, on our dining room walls reads sometimes as navy, sometimes as deep teal, and sometimes as nearly black.  Gasp.  Serious drama.  I am in love. Remember how I mentioned a coast we've never seen in person?  Over the summer, the Portland Museum of Art hosted an exhibition called The Draw of the Normandy Coast, featuring French and American artists of the 19th and 20th centuries who were inspired by the cliffs and ports of Normandy.  What impressed us upon first arriving at the show were the walls of the gallery themselves, which some brilliant people at the museum had painted a very deep marine blue.  Against this backdrop the Monets, Whistlers, and Dufys were stunning.  Again and again we found this blue in the paintings themselves--sometimes darker, sometimes lighter, but variations on deep, briny blue with hints of green.  Wouldn't we love a room in a color like this, we wondered.  Well, yes, but we hadn't found a house yet.  We were putting the cart well ahead of the horse.  In fact, the horse was still nowhere in sight.  

And then we found the house.  And then we thought, it's a little cottage.  It should be all light-filled rooms and whitewash and sea glass.  We forgot all about the Normandy coast.

But there sat our dining room in the darkest corner of the house with two windows, one of which lets in little light at the moment due to an overgrown (not for long) viburnum rubbing against its panes.  A dark room, indeed.  We decided to fight the darkness.  We talked with Tanasia.  She sent us home with lots of wonderful samples in light and bright colors.  None of them worked in the room.  We went back to the store.  We talked some more, and the ever-patient woman asked us questions, offered ideas, and listened to our color woes.       

And then it happened.  There on the table in the paint store was a copy of Maine Magazine.  I absentmindedly flipped through it while we chatted, and I was about to set it aside when it fell open to a page advertising the upcoming Winslow Homer exhibition at the Portland Museum of Art.  It's difficult to describe the buzz surrounding this exhibition.  Pretty much everyone I know can't wait to go; nor can we wait for the tours of his famous studio at Prout's Neck.

Winslow Homer, Eight Bells, 1886

But that's not what I was thinking about at the moment.  All I could see was blue.  That spot of blue in the break in the clouds.  And suddenly the Normandy coast was back.  And the Maine coast.  And I showed it to Todd, and we both knew.

So the color we chose is called Newburg Green, and there is green in there, but only to serve the blue, and like the ocean and sky along a northern coast, that blue is ever-shifting and changing with the day and the whims of the weather.  I can't wait to show you our dark dining room.

Benjamin Moore Mountain Peak White

Now onto trim and ceilings and doors and even the brick fireplace.  I love white for trim and doors, especially in a cottage, but I know how hard it can be to choose.  Too much yellow in it and it can feel dirty; too much blue and it feels cold, etc.  I think we simply must test it at various times of day against the other colors we plan to use in a room.  A white can look hideous at the store under their fluorescent lights but be a stunner in sunlight or under incandescents.  The opposite can be true, as well.  I've fallen in love at the store only to find once I get it home that the crisp white I thought was the color of sun-bleached seashells is actually the yellow of a chain smoker's fingernails.  

I wasn't expecting to like Mountain Peak White, but its sample was the one color that matched the bead board cupboards (be still my heart) in our kitchen, and I knew I wanted to paint the kitchen walls the same color as the cupboards to make the whole room light and bright and airy, so I went with it, and guess what?  In our house it looks clean and fresh without being blinding.  And it may have an alpine name, but it feels wonderfully seaside cottage-y, so it soon spread to the living room and beyond, until before we knew it, we were using it on trim (in semigloss) and ceilings (in pearl--after reading this post over at For the Love of a House, I don't think I will ever paint a ceiling with flat paint again) throughout the house to unify all the various colors.  In fact, we worked hard to find colors that we loved and that also resonated with the white as well as all the other colors in the house.  Against the Palladian Blue, Mountain Peak White feels soothing and creamy.

Dream Beach, Reid State Park, Gigi Thibodeau 2010

Have you ever been to a beach in Maine?  The sand here varies from beach to beach, depending, of course on the rocks found surrounding the beach.  We don't really have white sandy beaches; they tend more towards pale grays and grieges.  One of my favorite beaches is Reid State Park, where I spent countless hours in the waves as a kid.  I took a series of photos there a couple of years ago, and I find myself thinking often of the color of the sand at Reid.

 

Benjamin Moore Pashmina

And so, my study is in Pashmina, also by Benjamin Moore.  It's a warm greige that sometimes feels much grayer, depending on the time of day.  And it always reminds me of the beaches along this part of the Maine coast.

Farrow and Ball French Gray

And for his study, Todd (aka Mr. Magpie) choose Farrow and Ball's French Gray--another very Maine coast color with a touch of green in it.  In his study it is warm and rich like moss, and just perfect for a reading room.  I promise to give you a peek soon!  

I haven't mentioned yet that we've turned our entire upstairs into a sort of work/sleep/hangout space for the two of us.  When you climb the stairs, you enter a large room with skylights, which is paneled entirely in bead board that we've painted with the Mountain Peak White.  That's our bedroom.  Love. Serious love.  

The floors in there are hardwood, but the boards were in rough shape, and we have a limited budget, so we decided to paint them.  And what cottage is complete without at least one painted floor?  With the white walls and the navy blue bead board bed we're soon to have--after 22 years we have bought our first new bed--we decided to go with a beautiful neutral floor color: Thundercloud Gray.

Benjamin Moor Thundercloud Gray

On our floors it is even softer and lighter than this sample.  And while that Mountain Peak White sample looks very cream against the white of my blog, it looks much whiter and crisper beside this gray.  Have I ever told you that as much as I love a sunny day by the water, by far my favorite days along the coast of Maine look like this:

Thus Thundercloud Gray and also a lighter, even softer grey with a touch of violet:

Benjamin Moore Bunny Gray

Bunny Gray is in our front foyer downstairs, which is a very small, but light-filled space with arches leading into the dining and living rooms.  We knew we needed a very neutral color here to allow the eye to move comfortably from one room to the next, and Bunny Gray did the trick. We tried it in an interior hall as well, but without much natural light, it actually read as violet rather than gray.  In a room with lots of sunlight, it reads as a beautiful driftwood color that connects with all the other ocean colors.

Last but not least is the room we are finishing later today--the guest room.  When we moved in, this room was painted a deep burgundy red on the walls with a very orangey-gold ceiling.  Not at all cottage-y.  Not at all coastal.  Not at all us.  This room was the hardest for us to re-imagine.  It is on the first floor overlooking the garden, so we knew we wanted to connect it to all the beautiful greens right outside the windows.  The winner was a green that Benjamin Moore calls Spring Meadow, but it reminds me of the lichen that grows on the rocks near the ocean here in Maine.  

Benjamin Moore Spring Meadow

Hmm . . . I'm not happy with this sample.  It's nowhere near as lovely as the actual color, which is greener and richer than this.  One more reason I can't wait to show you the actual rooms, but I wanted to share some of our inspirations first.  I promise before and after photos (one room per post) soon!

No Man is an Island . . . Except when the Internet is on the Fritz

Hello, lovelies!  Please forgive my long absence.  My hiatus from blogging was completely unexpected.  Actually, it was a hiatus from all things online.  Mr. Magpie and I were staying over on the island with friends, and we'd been assured that our rental cottage would have internet access.   When we arrived, however, we discovered that it didn't.  Not one single bar.  Not a wee bit of the World-Wide Interweb.

Ah, the mixed blessings of no internet.  Yes, it was lovely to be completely cut off from email and Facebook, and we would have relished it were we there on a straight-up holiday, but it was a working-vacation for most of us, so the lack of access to the outside world proved to be a challenge.  In fact, Mr. Magpie ended up coming back to the mainland to work quite often, and I simply postponed all internet-related tasks.  

That, combined with one non-functioning shower, a busted DVD remote, a chair held together with cardboard and contact paper (I'm not kidding), and a toilet that ran until you lifted the lid and adjusted the ball cock, made for much improvising all week.  In fact, we've changed the name of the cottage from "Beach House" to "Make Do."

On the other hand, the lack of amenities made for much hilarity as we discovered each new broken item in the house, and we cared very little about showers or sitting down when we were just a few yards from a sandy beach and a sky full of stars.  Mostly, the holiday was about reconnecting with dear friends during long walks and bike rides around the island, afternoons of beach combing, ferry rides at sunset, and food--pots of steamed mussels, bowls of fiddleheads, plates heaped high with fresh local greens.

And did I mention writing?  There was writing, indeed.  Loads of it.  With no interruptions from the online world, we wrote our hearts out.  And truly, what could be better than that?

Hoping you are well and flourishing.  Looking forward to catching up with you.  xo Gigi

     

Why I Live Here #1: Sunrise

The colors in these shots are not augmented or exaggerated, I promise.  Coastal Maine is simply a beautiful place to watch the sun come up.  That first shot was taken this morning on the Eastern Promenade in Portland, looking out towards Peaks Island (where we lived in the Fall of 2009).   The rest of the shots are of Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth.  I have lived many, many places, and there's nowhere else that makes me feel the joy that I do when I sit on a big, craggy rock by the sea, watching the sun take its sweet time to rise over Casco Bay.  

  

Wishful Thinking and a Giveaway

I'm engaging in a little Wishful Thinking at Reverie-Daydream today.  Please come visit me there!

Also, if you haven't registered for my giveaway, you can do it here. 

 The prize is a $75 gift certificate to Novica--

a truly beautiful online catalog full of handmade beauty from all over the world.

Deadline for registering is this coming Friday at noon EST.

I hope you're having a beautiful week.  

Welcome to new followers and subscribers!

I've Been Missing You

It has been ages since my last post.  Please forgive my long absence.  Mr. Magpie and I have been housesitting for friends back on the island where we lived last year.  We haven't had regular internet access while we've been there, which has made me realize just how much I depend on it every single day for both work and pleasure.  I have also been very busy with several writing and photography projects.  Many wonderful things have been happening on the photography front--things that I can't talk about yet, but that I will sometime later this year.  How's that for a tease?

I have also had a terrible cold, which I'm only now emerging from.  Being bedridden and sans internet left me feeling quite sorry for myself for a couple of days.  A few very brisk island walks cured me of most of my self pity, though, and they also rewarded me with several marvelous bird sightings, including my first great blue heron of the year as well as multitudes of cardinals, robins, chickadees, and crazy starlings.  So spring must be here even if it still feels like winter.  At least there are a few hardy flowers braving the cold, including an elegant hellebore that I will share just as soon as I have time to process some photos.

Please come back and visit me on Friday when I will be hosting a most special giveaway.  I can't wait to tell you all about it.  In the meantime, here's a lovely Kate Rusby video just for you.

   

All for Fun and Fun for All

Our youngest niece came to visit this past weekend.  Here's a partial list of what we did: 

played board games, including The Scrambled States of America, Headbands, and Double Shutter; rode the ferry to the islands; gobbled gelatos at Gorgeous Gelato; giggled; built fairy houses in the woods on Mackworth Island; attended a Sea Dogs minor league game along with our nephews; giggled; went bike riding and walking on the East End Trail, where we explored the trains at the Narrow Gauge Rail Museum, climbed on old cannons, and played in the playground at the park; watched movies; told knock-knock jokes; gigggled; drew pictures with glittery fairy pens; and last, but definitely not least, constructed paper monsters--loads and loads of paper monsters.  

The photo above shows just a few of the army of monsters we built.  Everything we did was fun, but I cannot begin to tell you what a hit the paper monsters were--for all three of us!  We bought the book on a whim at the comic book store and then we couldn't stop making them.  

If you click on the link above you'll find the book/kit we used, but it will also show you several other books.  This one has fifty monsters, plus extra blank templates that you can color in yourself.  All of the monster patterns are perforated, so you just punch them out, fold them, and then glue them together.  We found that adhesive glue dots worked best for us--no sticky fingers!  There are three levels of difficulty.  The advanced patterns are quite challenging, but do-able, and all three of us found the easy and intermediate ones fun to do.

And now I am playing catch up on deadlines and loads of work, but it was good to have a weekend of giggles and glitter and monsters named things like Nom Nom, Zombunny, and Grumpy Gramps.       

The Fairy Village of Mackworth Island

To find it you must travel toward the far side of the island 

where the trees grow denser, casting long shadows across your path.

The fairies of Mackworth like the shelter of towering trees, 

but they also love clearings where the sun shines golden--

--all the better for seeking and finding building supplies for the village.

The most elegant homes are deeper in the forest, 

where the fairies have lived for generations.

But closer to the water's edge, young fairies 

have tossed up McMansions

twice the size of their parents' well-built abodes.

Some are cute, but shoddily built;

others use age-old techniques,

built to weather the island's storms.

While most fairies prefer homes on the ground, 

some have built penthouses 

with glorious ocean views,

or sweet efficiencies

with room for just one or two.

They don't mind if we visit,

but they'll roll out a glittering carpet of frost for our departure,

always anxious to see the back of humans,

who, though well meaning,

are rather bumbling

and not quite clever enough

to understand the plans and schemes

and dreams of the Mackworth fairy folk. 

Happy Fourth of July!

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, 

that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, 

that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Thomas Jefferson wrote a brilliant document.  I mean it is rhetorically brilliant, full of powerful  repetition, variation, and meter.  And more importantly, this brilliant form embodies a message that is clear 

and audacious 

and profound.  

To break free from an oppressive government and start anew, to know that life can be better and to fight to make it so, to be willing to risk everything to ensure that the rights of all citizens are protected--well, I feel grateful every day that our forefathers had such vision and strength.  As I read through the Declaration of Independence, I cannot imagine a world without this document.  These were not perfect people, and while their vision did not include blacks or women, it laid the foundation for the development of a nation and a constitution that would come to recognize that all people must be afforded these same unalienable rights.  Have we accomplished this yet in the United States of America?   Certainly not.  In fact, since 9/11, we have seen the erosion of many basic rights in this country in the name of protecting our borders, but as Benjamin Franklin wrote, "He who sacrifices freedom for security deserves neither."    

Today I am thankful for our founding fathers and mothers; I am thankful for the men and women who serve in the military; I am thankful for those who fight against tyranny of thought and action; I am thankful for the teachers who serve our nation by educating its youth; I am thankful to people who fight to ensure fundamental intellectual freedoms, including the freedom to dissent.  Often in America we conflate democracy and capitalism, as if our form of government and our economic system are one and the same concept.  But democracy isn't about the freedom to buy cheap towels at Walmart or to have 75 different scents to choose from at Yankee Candle.  Democracy needs an active and educated citizenry.  Literacy is on the decline in the U.S. (and throughout much of the world).  I know this not only because I read dire statistics and articles about this fact on a regular basis, but because I have taught for many years and because I have worked as an adult literacy tutor.  The less literate we are, the less capable we are of participating in our democratic system at the local, state, or national level.  Education is not  only about training for a job.  Jobs come and go.  These days, they seem to go more than they come.  There is something more essential that education offers us.  It is about becoming empowered to think and act for ourselves.  It is about asking questions, arguing, recognizing injustice and speaking out against it.  It is about the joy of learning and of being a strong individual as well as an active citizen.  A strong democracy depends upon it.

The signers of the Declaration of Independence were smart and brave; the militiamen who fought one year earlier in the Battles of Lexington and Concord on April 19, 1775 were smart and brave; the suffragists who fought to win women the right to vote were smart and brave; the civil rights leaders of the 1960's were smart and brave.  We, too, need to be smart and brave. Jefferson knew it was not enough to believe that the rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness were inalienable; we must assert that they are, again and again, and we must actively ensure that these rights of our fellow citizens and ourselves are protected.  If we think of democracy as a living thing and not a static concept, then it becomes easier to understand that, like a garden, democracy must be tended and nurtured.  I, for one, hope that over time I can become a better gardener.   

  

To my US friends, here's hoping you have a beautiful July Fourth.  Oh, and speaking of capitalism, while I know the above photo that I took last night just before sunset looks suspiciously like a Chevy commercial, I couldn't resist it.  As I said in yesterday's post,  we're back on the island this week, and the mood here is decidedly laid back and celebratory.  These folks were having a great time riding around the island.  That light alternating with long shadows across the road and illuminating the tree trunks just called out for a photo.  

    

Paella on Peaks Island, Posies, and a Peek

There is much to tell.  Some of it will have to wait, even though I am bursting at the seams.  First, let me say how much I miss you.  Soon I will be free to come for visits and reads and chats.  For now, I'm keeping up when and where I can.  

One nice piece of good fortune is that we are back on the island where we lived for four months last fall.  We're just here for a week, but a blissful one spent at the home of friends.  The paella above was made by our friend Ed the first night we were here.  It was the best paella I've ever tasted.  I suspect that part of the pleasure stemmed from Ed's considerable culinary skills and part from the fact that we were eating it here on the island.  I would be sad that we are only staying here for a week were it not for the fact that . . .

. . . soon we will be living just a 15-minute ferry ride from here.  Very soon.  More details on that coming shortly, but for now, a peek above at some lovely posies I picked today while gardening at our friends' home, and a peek below at our new neighborhood.  Yes, that's Mr. Magpie looking in the windows.  

And finally, a quote that has been our guiding force of late: 

Risk! Risk anything! Care no more for the opinion of others, for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth.

~Katherine Mansfield

Hope you are well.  Island photos to come in the next day or so!  To my US friends, have a happy and safe 4th of July!