These couple of acres at the top of Sleepy Hollow (our deed says one and three fourths more or less) have been my home for 50 years (two weeks shy of our July 2, 1970 closing). To say I know every inch would be an exaggeration of course, because there are always surprises, even if only a new rock that’s worked its way to the surface since last fall. I find myself giving little history lessons to my family, the ones who share it with me now.

That woodshed we just tore down? The cement pad we found underneath it was the base of the maple syrup cooker we’d built there … years ago, long before the woodshed.

The rock garden and grape arbor? The precursor of the woodshed we just tore down used to stand there, remember, Woodshed Number One we’ll call it? Yes, my son says, “we liked climbing on the roof.”

The garden beds that stretch back from the road? That was a tangle of alders and wild raspberries when we came; remember the goats that cleared it, the pigs that tossed up the roots? Oh right. No one remembers that but me.

When my son drove in a cedar post to repair the dog yard fence the other day, and I held it steady as he pounded, suddenly it was his father who materialized, real in a way to me that he’s hardly been since the day he died. Putting in posts, repairing fence was spring work, just as planting peas and getting hay was summer work. I see him, shirtless and tan, though the boys remember the tiger stripes he got on his belly from afternoons reading in the sun.

Ghosts have always stalked this place. Of course, they weren’t ours, not those early ones. There were very real manifestations: the sound of the shed door sliding open, the rocker that rocked itself, the piano that played, the cellar door that opened. “Old Man Clayter,” we told each other, and later told our children, he being the guy the former owners invoked, and so we did too. He died here, they said.

And then our very own joined the troop that went before. My dad and nearly 40 years later, Wally, each in the front room. There’ve been no hauntings, just sweet reminders now and then, like the fence posts.

The gardens, and there are several, morph in and out as the years go by. The vegetable garden has pretty much stayed put where we first dug it in some four or five years after moving here. The first, earliest garden we struggled with down in the field was too far from the house and barn, the soil too heavy with clay, the sod too thick with deep-rooted weeds. We gave it up early on. Today I’m the only one who can point out the faint furrows Bud Feener’s tractor cut through that heavy sod.

Once woodshed number one came down, the one Ed and his older brother used to sit atop, I started dreaming of a rock garden there. A nice outcropping halfway down the slope was the perfect spot. It wanted a gateway, some sort of entrance to the young vegetable garden, and over the years various slapdash attempts came and went. Then, just a few years ago, perhaps the summer or two before Wally got sick, a real grape arbor took shape. Andy, who is too young to have climbed the original woodshed, dug the holes and helped me pour cement. Zack Thomas built it, and I planted Hoppi Graham’s Elizabeth grapes, the ones we dug after she died at her soon-to-be-demolished house, torn down to make way for Point Lookout.

The grape vines form a nice shady cover to the entrance to the vegetables, and a rock path meanders through the little garden that is finally taking shape. After all the years of envisioning it, carrying it in my mind, picturing it, this summer I’m actually seeing it.

Now what’s this Garden Porn I speak of? Do you look at garden magazines? Fine Gardening, Better Homes and Gardens, the ones you leaf through in the doctor’s waiting room? Or perhaps you go on the Camden Garden Tour every summer. Or walk around town admiring the perfect gardens surrounding many homes, grand or simple?

Perfect gardens, with every plant in perfect bloom, color coordinated, weed free, neatly mulched. Does it remind you of Cooking Porn, those unlikely plates of perfectly prepared foods, glistening under the photographer’s lights? Or of actual porn, set up to appear astonishingly real, but totally unlikely?

My envious self thinks “Hmph. Professional gardeners at work here.” My better self imagines the human being in love with his/her garden, out there every day, pulling the weeds, trimming the grass edges, deadheading.

The gardeners in love with their gardens are everywhere. Amy’s streetside Rockport garden; Janet’s Pearl Street garden; Nelle’s purple and blue irises that spill down the slope to Atlantic Highway near Dot’s; Marge’s dooryard Beach Road garden; Janis Kay’s little red house plantings in the Center.

Lincolnville has several public spaces tended by dedicated volunteer gardeners: the Beach flower beds that stretch along the road, over Frohock Bridge and in front of the Post Office; Petunia Pump, tended by various volunteers; the gardens surrounding the Library, featuring native plants and traditional perennial flowers and maintained by the Library’s grounds committee; the Veterans Park.

By the way, though the Library is closed these Corona days, the gardens are open to all. Take a sandwich and have lunch on the patio, stroll around and admire the plantings, and while you’re at it, take a look at the Jackie Young Watts Open Air Museum. The newly surfaced parking lot is the work of Todd Young; it ought to drain better, and looks good too.

My own efforts are mixed at best, little corners or groups of plants that, for a few days at least, look exactly as I envisioned. The spring bulbs in front of my house, the Summer Skies delphinium that’s appeared for three years in a row now, the asparagus bed that hosts dozens of blowsy, pink self-sown poppies every year, the dazzling ,single red peony with its yellow anthers, albeit getting strangled by goutweed.

And that’s the rub. There are always the weeds, always the plant that overgrows its spot and sprawls awkwardly over the others. Mostly, gardens get away from us; they have moments of glory followed by nature taking her course. Come to think of it. just like raising kids.

Eighth Grade Graduation Parade

Tomorrow, Tuesday, June 16 at 6 p.m. LCS eighth grade graduates will be in cars parading at the Beach. The procession will start at Dot’s, head northward across Frohock Bridge, then turn around past Chez Michel’s and wrap around to head south on Route One.

Come down and cheer on our LCS graduates! Please wear masks and/or observe safe social distancing practices. Take advantage of both sides of the parade route.

Another Center General Store Memory

Nancy Heald remembers Scott and Elo Knight: “Once I started school we were all tuned in to when Scott would have a supply of marbles in stock in the spring and usually rubber balls, and jacks, and jump ropes at the same time. There was no peace at home until you found enough pennies in your bank and your parents agreed to make a trip to The Center. Marbles was the big thing everyone wanted. Jacks probably was second. There were kites too.”

­Strawberry Grab and Go

Though the United Christian Church’s popular Strawberry Festival has been canceled for this year, there will be a curbside pickup version is being planned for Saturday, July 11 complete with jams and relishes, pies, shortcake, and hot dogs. Stay tuned for more information!