We went blackberry picking in the back woods, ate them on quinoa.

Early in the morning, my arrangement of poppies against the sunshine.

This morning I will be sewing heads for soft-sculpt dolls to present at the Cumberland Craft Fair in mid-August. This afternoon I have a voice lesson. I have memorized Hugo Wolf’s Begegnung. After that, Nadia wants to paint.

This morning I completed this painting of sailboats at anchor in Boothbay Harbor.

Next I want to paint one of the windjammers that  I photographed by walking out to the end of the pier off the footbridge.

An image of the reflection in the water at high tide was worth the walk around the cove, past the little shack hung with lobster buoys, past the clumps of ripening rose hips. I want to paint this view, reminiscent of a castle and a moat.

Although this summer we find most of the blackberries ripening close to the ground, several canes have climbed into trees, making picking much easier, and this spray has charmingly draped itself over my sign, inviting me to make a watercolor.

This morning I stewed blackberries, wild black currants, black raspberries, and a few red raspberries with sugar to make the well-remembered grütze dessert of my childhood, although my version will be black instead of red.

Every once in a while something magical happens and I create a doll that speaks to me, like this mermaid I have named Ghislaine. I keep a doll like her for myself as proof that this magic can happen, and as a model and inspiration for future creations.

Today I am working with bags full of fleece, “three bags full” and more, and a perspiry task it is, stuffing the bulky bags back on the top shelf, after choosing a handful to wash and pull apart gently sideways to see what kind of doll wig it might make.

This morning I spent time out in the gardens, pulling out overgrown borage to make room for what I think may be pumpkin vines that need more space. In the back woods, hidden under jewelweed, large juicy blackberries are ready to eat.  I picked a bouquet of poppies, queen anne’s lace, radish blossoms, and mint.

I’m watching the tides, waiting for a high tide so that I can  photograph Fort Popham reflected in a pool. Maybe tomorrow morning around eight o-clock I will take a trip to the coast with my camera.

I wonder how the President and his family liked Acadia National Park this past weekend.  What a wonderful move my family  made, deciding to live in Maine, a short distance away from the coast.

Now I return to a bevy of mermaids who are  awaiting net veils and shells and other bits of glamour.

      Something else I did not know grew on our land is wild raspberries. After finding the Indian Pipes I thought I would take a look at the sunny back corner closest to the Lupine Hill and see what was growing there this summer. Only half-convinced that I was seeing honeysuckle berries, I took a second look and found ripe red raspberries! The black raspberries that ripen later grow in the shade on the other side of what we call the bamboo. Black raspberries are exceptional when stewed with our black currants that ripen at the same time. The result is a black version of “rote grütze” a delicious dessert made with red raspberries and red currants. Has anyone seen red currants anywhere?

While I was hacking new paths through our woods I came upon a patch of Indian Pipes just emerging through the pine needles.   They remind me of the summer at Tanglewood when I met Mr. Salute and wanted to show him the Indian Pipes in the woods. I have never seen this plant on our land before.

Red and flame and pink poppies have been blooming all season.  A new bed of poppies is about to open. One morning at sunrise before venturing outside I pictured the new poppies opening in shades of yellow and cream and orange. Later I investigated the garden and this golden orange flower had opened, poppy-sized, but not a poppy.

I heard that the entire Harvard Library will be available online in about ten years, but I am a lover of books I can hold in my hands, especially old books. The volume pictured is tiny, just three inches wide by four and five eighths, and the gold that edges its pages is almost worn off. The title is Forget-Me-Not; or the Philipena, by Mrs. Lunt. Date of publication is 1848.