We have friends in Rumford (W of Bangor, N of Portland) with a standing offer to visit, and we might go up there in early May to see a concert in Brownfield, which is NW of Portland over toward White Mt. Natl Forest. So we'd be west of you but we haven't made any specific plans yet, and Acadia is certainly a place to see. Not having been there I would probably be fascinated with all of it. I require a lobstah, preferably on a beach, but with butter in any case. That is my only requirement. I live in Columbia and am very familiar with Stephens. In fact they have a great equestrian program and some of that Stephens horse manure is in my garden as we speak.

lots and lots of weeds. seeds and all. mostly plantains. also over grown cosmos, poppy. annual painted daisy shasta daisy flops etc... pretty much 5 wheel barrels full of greens and a few shovel fulls of pine chips. i'm just piling it up till fall. stinks to high heck. but come fall it will be easy to mix in some(tons) of leaves. no worries on the stench.it's about 20 or so yards from the house. my closest neighbor is 2 football feilds away and owns horses. snicker... i tell DH is the horses. this is my 3rd or 4th batch this year and since i ran out of hoarded leaves i decided to cold compost for a while. pile it up and let it stink.i mean rot i mean compost. lol.

Five years ago I put the leaves from a walnut (English) tree in one end of my garden(the first fall at a new to us residence). A week later, after tilling those leaves and others in, I was driving down the freeway and I remembered reading in a horse book, 30 years ago, the warning not to use walnut shavings for horse bedding due to some toxicity. I called the county extension service- the gal told me not to worry about it- a couple of days later she called me again, after talking to a horticulurist from Washington State University- there was a problem from the Jugolone in the leaves. My cucumbers wouldn't germinate even after replanting a couple of weeks later. Beans, carrots and beets aren't sensitive to jugolone whereas cucumbers, peppers and tomatos are. I planted a few cucumber seeds in that end of the garden this year and am happy to say that they did germinate. I've read in the last few years that you can use walnut leaves after they have been composted. I still bag my Walnut leaves separately for a trip to the waste management system but if there are some walnut leaves that have blown into other areas I just go ahead and mix them in with the other leaves for the compost bin. Perhaps I should put the one half dozen bags and a Free Leaves sign with them out by the street, to make it easy for any compost whackos out trolling to ...score.

you can use crushed peanut shells instead. But you need to sterilize them to kill any fungal spores. For a small batch just soak them, lift out of water and nuke covered loosely on high for 3 min. that will generate a lot of steam. let cool still under cover. when I had to improvise (had no soil mix) I mixed crushed peanut hulls with a little perlite and chopped Styrofoam from takeout containers and a few strings of long fiber sphag I had leftover from orchid repot. philos rooted in it very well. orchids or any other semi-epiphytic plants can grow in this too. and it is sterile, which is a plus. Styrofoam can be used as a soil lightener, if you don't mind it floating/blowing everywhere: so basically only indoors.