Portlandia In Spring

Locally raised, organic, handfed beef is once again for sale!
Full disclosure: I bought four pounds for $22.

Portlandia is real.

You only have to watch a few minutes of the TV show "Portlandia" to get the recurring joke. Overwrought do-gooders want to drive to the local farm to check out the conditions before they order chicken at a local restaurant.

Another sign of spring. My parents
are visiting from Florida. 
Though it's based on Portland, Oregon, Portlandia is alive and wall on the East Coast. A co-worker came in to work Saturday and said Portlandia is once again alive and well.

"Oh, did you see the L.L. Bean Bootmobile (Slogan: Rated Highest Smiles Per Gallon) outside? They were playing cornhole next to the truck. Or was it the people rappelling off the building we work in? They're raising money for charity," I inquired.

"No, it was the people in Monument Square roleplaying Lord of the Rings," he said. "They had actual swords. They were fighting in slow motion, but still, actual swords."

A couple of hours later I went outside and confirmed the scene on a break. Confirmed. It's spring in Maine.

Winter has a way of hazing us. March high temperatures were consistently 10 degrees colder than average. There are few flowers in April, only chilly days with light rain. They call it mud season in New England. Nobody likes mud season.

I shoot verticals. Deal with it.
Everybody likes spring, it's just so damn late in arriving. But it's undeniably spring now. The farmers' market returned to Monument Square last week, complete with a saxophonist who played with Bob Marley in the 1970s playing for spare change.

The trees are flowering. Which trees? At least half of them, apparently. White and purple buds abound.

Somewhat regrettably, the tourists are also back, which makes parking and driving downtown a challenge. But they bring fun things, too. The trolley truck was driving around town this weekend for the first time since Columbus Day. And the 70-year-old fire engine they use to give tours was backfiring its way down Congress Street while I went on an early evening walk. Pretty soon we'll be hearing the long moan of the narrow-gauge railroad giving its hourly ride down the Eastern Promenade.

And while it has warmed up, spring remains the most fickle season. It was in the low 70s and abundantly sunny today. Or it *was* abundantly sunny until about 4 p.m. That's when the wind changed and fog blew into town. The temperature dropped about 20 degrees as the wind picked up. It's 57 degrees in Portland right now; it's 76 degrees 50 miles west of here, up in the mountains.

Don't go anywhere without a jacket in spring. And don't worry about the guys playing with swords in Monument Square. They're just re-enacting nine hours' worth of movies.

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