Dear Reader,

The last thing I want to do on this sunny Sunday morning is sit in the house and pound out a column. But duty calls.

On a normal week, as if there is ever a normal week, I would have completed my task on Saturday, leaving me a free day to putter around the yard doing chores I usually avoid.

But, as you remember, Saturday was a glorious spring day, and, like much of Lincoln and Waldo counties, I heard the call of the Moose.

For some reason, I felt compelled to roll out some of my bride’s prize outdoor containers and fill them with bright and cheerful posies.

The old Suburu felt the urge as well and she drove me up River Road, past dozens of flowering fruit trees into Damariscotta. Then she turned right, up Route 1 past Tim Hodgon’s yacht tender factory, past Moody’s Diner, and on to Moose Crossing.

There, like garden shops around the Midcoast and beyond, flower fiends and garden grandmas gathered like black flies, deer flies, and mosquitoes on the back of a Massachusetts-based tourist who dared walk in the forest sans shirt.

There we saw lines of cars waiting to park, lines of patrons waiting to get into the sheds, and long lines of customers waiting to pay for their treasures.

Was it a record crowd? I asked the lady at the cash register. She just smiled.

After we all cocooned during COVID, a sunny Saturday gave hundreds of us a chance to gather without fear and practice our rusty social skills while fondling flowers and choosing the perfect porch tomato.

When I got home, I got ready to dig, when I realized it was May 13, the day Pat Farrin's' family scheduled a gathering to remember one of the region’s best-known and best-loved residents.

As much as I wanted to plant the posies, I had to pay my respects to an old pal.

I had the good fortune to meet Pat when we built a house next door to his late sister, Ruth. If you ever had a horse poop neighbor, you learn to appreciate the good ones, and Ruth was one of the best neighbors ever.

I knew I had been accepted as one of Ruth’s collection of unconventional friends when she walked up our drive and handed me a scraggly skinny stick. "Dig. Right over there,” she said.

She explained it was a white lilac bush she had purloined from her mother’s home. Every spring, when the lilac blossoms send out the best smell of the season, I think of Ruth and her wide grin.

I ran into Pat as he volunteered his services to Boothbay Region Land Trust. Whenever BRLT needed a tractor, an excavator to dig or grade something, or a machine to push on a tall tree as Wolf Schumann fired up his chainsaw, Pat would step up with a smile.

His specialty was building and repairing systems we all need but they are decidedly not “Do It Yourself” projects. Pat and his band of merry men install and repair septic systems. He was fast, efficient, fair, friendly and very, very skilled.

When that old devil cancer invaded his innards, Pat kept plugging along as he got weaker and weaker. The last time I saw him he was piloting his excavator installing a road for Eben Wilson on Lincoln Street in East Boothbay. When I stopped, he waved, shut her off and dismounted.

We chatted for a few minutes. As always, he complained that the Register heaped praise on the fishermen and ignored the contributions of the dirt diggers. Then he let out a laugh, cracked a joke about getting old that I won’t repeat, grabbed my arm, and allowed me to help him back into the machine. And off he went down the hill swinging the bucket with a skill acquired through years of practice.

Hundreds of his friends and neighbors gathered at the Opera House on Saturday to celebrate his life with laughs and smiles. And that was exactly the way Pat would have planned it.

This coming Saturday, we will celebrate the life of another community stalwart. Phil Smith retired as the headmaster of a fancy prep school and settled in a Southport cottage. But Phil didn’t just sit on his lovely porch, enjoy the view, play bridge and eat bonbons. He made a difference by helping to start the Student Aid Fund, making it easier for local kids to attend college. And, by the way, he was one of the leaders who helped raise money to build and run our YMCA building and program.

In the last months, we lost two local giants.

RIP Pat and Phil.