It's Bill, 9/6/26: Ready for Fall

Sep 6

2 min read

We like decorating for the holidays at West Quoddy Station. I still have a ghost hanging from the ceiling as you enter my office. The ghost has stayed here since October 2025. He won’t leave; it’s his home now. This year we got going on decorating last weekend. Never too early!

Last year we had orange lights on the railing of my office. We favor orange lights for Fall as the leaves turn in the trees and the plants follow suit. And, of course, Halloween, always orange.

Getting Ready for Fall

This year we are hanging orange lights on my Office, The Meetinghouse, Clark’s Folly Lighthouse’s doorway, the Garage, The Captains Table and whoo-o knows! We already have mums and asters in large pots by the doorways.

We’ve discovered we have a string of white tube lights. Not sure where they will go, but they’ll find a home at West Quoddy Station. We’re on the lookout for corn stalks. And pumpkins and gourds.

25 Years of Keeping the Grounds

Kenny Moores has mowed our lawns at West Quoddy Station since 2001, 25 years! He started here with his father, Loris. Back then, Loris’s day job was as a groundskeeper at FDR International Park on Campobello Island, Canada.

Loris lived close by on Mapletree and had memories of the old USCG Station as well as the West Quoddy Head Marine Research Center during the ’80s. Loris liked everything neat and tidy, balanced, with natural symmetry and color.

I found out the hard way that Loris didn’t like apple trees. I came back after a weekend in Connecticut to find three apple trees all cut down, in pieces. A bit bewildered, I asked Kenny, “What happened to the apple trees? They weren’t supposed to be cut!”

Kenny answered in his flat Downeast, “Dad don’t like apple trees.”

’Nuff said, I guess.

Kenny Moores sits on a John Deere riding mower on the grounds of West Quoddy Station in Lubec, Maine. — Kenny Moores has been mowing the lawns at West Quoddy Station since 2001. Twenty-five years and still keeping everything looking terrific.

A Beautiful Day at West Quoddy Station

It’s beautiful, blue sky here, 65 degrees, cool breeze off the incoming tide. The wind is snapping the American flag, the Maine flag and the Coast Guard flag on our new 40-foot flagpole.

I’ve got a wool shirt on, feels just right. Kenny just finished mowing and trimming; our grounds look terrific. We’ve got some grass and clover seed on order to fill some bare spots from last year’s Clark’s Folly construction and the cenotaph mound. Some of the wildflowers are going to seed; we’re collecting some seed for next year.

The weatherman says it’s supposed to rain tomorrow, but we don’t trust him that much, so we’re watering today. It’s so dry, the ground is parched, even with watering every day. No such thing as watering too much here.

But I can’t complain about today, just plain beautiful. Come on down!