We can’t wait for summer!!!

And even though the Red Sox are playing and Opening Day at Fenway (a holiday here in Maine, though for Patriot reasons – think Concord and Lexington, not Foxboro) is just weeks away, it feels like winter is really overstaying his welcome this year.

Even Yankee Magazine is in Summer-Now mode, with an email this week suggesting beaches for enjoying ‘these last warm days…. But actually, the ‘secret beaches of New England’ they suggest are exactly attuned to what we call “Secret Season” here in Boothbay. The places for discovery when you have them alone at the end of the season are even more sublime at the start.

That’s why we suggest that Spring, counting down to Spruce Point Inn’s opening day on May 17^th is a time for “Boothbay Gardens Aglow” – with full homage to Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens  that has so successfully extended ‘the season’ here in Boothbay with “Gardens Aglow” into December.

What glows in April in Boothbay Harbor? The sun on the white clapboards, for starters. That iconic New England look of seemingly conservative design, without or without the spruce-green shutters, makes a wonderful passive solar array. Positively toasty as a break against the last March blow. And the spring-rising fish, right off our dock, named “poissons d’Avril” in France for their foolish frolicking.

And where are the lambs? Actually you can find them tucked in Down East barns, the bunnies in their dens, secure in the knowledge that the Spring Full moon will rise before they have to put their Easter bonnets on. That April “Sugar Maker Moon”– glowing with silver moonbeams on the bay – is another indication the season will arrive in all good time. Sugarmaking in the maple groves requires warm days and chilly nights to cause the sap to flow – without bringing out too soon the buds that turn the sugar. The soft green glow of spring foliage spreads the story across the hillsides that in those “last warm days” will glow as if aflame.

The same soft green will begin to tint the lawns here on Spruce Point; and then the crocuses will glow with gold and royal purple the shade of the quahog shells the First Nations honed to wampum. Fit for carrying a tale like spring through the woodlands, along paths aglow with pale wildflowers like trillium and white violets. Brides and their bouquets, aglow. 

“Boothbay Aglow” reflects the burnishing of welcome signs, fresh paint and polished window glass, hulls newly gleaming in historic boatyards as we locals throw off the tarps to be sure all things are ‘shipshape and Bristol-fashion’ in time to greet the Windjammers and all who follow their wake.

Yes, it’s still chilly here. But like the floral arrangements and hors d’oeuvres, sometime you need a bit of refrigeration to make the best impressions. The “oceanside memories made in Maine” that come when the sun is high. We’ll be waiting, all aglow.