My day began and ended with roses. And vetch, and milkweed, and a number of other flowers up in the bluffs above Crescent Beach. The smell was absolutely amazing. The roses already produce my favorite scent in all the world (rose + salt spray = heaven), but it was extra flowery good today.
The milkweed was blooming all over the place, and there were bees galore. I even saw one monarch butterfly, who was dancing all over the place, looking like he absolutely couldn’t decide where to land amongst all that food. There were birds out too, and since I was there fairly late in the day on a holiday, I had the field all to myself. It was completely amazing.
The other really cool thing was that I managed to arrive at a very low tide. So low that everything in the picture below is normally covered with water when I visit.
The water was only a few inches deep on the land side of the breakwater, so it was incredibly easy to stride in, stand still for a few minutes, and watch the hermit crabs and snails wander around. (When I arrived, a group of kids were in absolute heaven a little further down the shore. They’d stumbled upon a shelly area that’s underwater 9/10ths of the year, where if you grabbed a handful of shells, there was at least one hermit crab among them. It was clearly the coolest thing they’d ever seen.) I flipped over a rocks, and found tons of little green crabs. One particular rock had something hiding under it that looked like a spotted three-inch flatworm. I think. The little bugger was damn fast, and did not want to stay and let me look at it.
It was just a lovely way to end the day. It was beautifully quiet, and the absolute perfect temperature, with only a hint of a sea breeze. Have I mentioned this is one of my favorite places on earth?
On the way home, I stopped at Red’s Dairy in South Portland and got myself a nor’easter. I got a small, but that thing had to have been the equivalent of a DQ large blizzard. It’s an hour later, and I still feel stuffed. Yep, it was a good day.