5/6/98.. Fresh greens.

The scarlet blush of maple buds is exploding into tender greens. All the verdant tinges you can imagine are glowing in the skeletal woods, catching the warm light. Roadsides are punctuated with sprays of bright yellow forsythia. Tulips are daubing the dooryards and jonquils are shaking out their thin musk on the air. New grass is a deep and supersaturated green. The neighborly snarl of mowers competes with the songbirds. The pace quickens. It's time for fresh starts.

Jeanine and Angie finally agreed on the details of their new menu, and I've delivered all the color copies they wanted. Eight different views of town now grace the bills of fare at the Town Landing Place. Take your pick.

This graphics design and print job proved to be as much about family relations and the hazards of small business, as about watercolors and Photoshop. At issue were the new entrees and the new prices. Jeanine and Dianne are large ladies of the old school, and the regulars expect solid meatandpotatoes when they chow down. Angie and Allie, Jeanine's daughters are in their 20s, and would like to broaden the cuisine without broadening their beam, and attract some new trade. Salads and broiled entrees have been creeping into the daily specials, along with veggie soups and designer coffees. A home bakery in Litchfield delivers peasant breads. There's even wholewheat pizza(small only), and white pizza(garlic and basil). It's still a conventional American spread, with plenty of deepfried, but there's motion downscale in the fats and animal products.

The problem is: the bigger the menu the higher the overhead, and Jeanine is running scared. She reports that last month they only cleared $500. Prices are already high for a smalltown bistro (you rarely get away without dropping $7 for lunch), and Jeanine is steeling herself for the outcry when her new prices are in print. Angie thinks the jumps are too big, and I changed the draft line items four times, up and down, as the ladies wrestled.

It's a generation thing, of course. Jeanine has worn herself out juggling the business since she and Johnnie split. Now she sees her daughters taking over the day to day operation, and she has mixed feelings. She actually took a vacation, went to the Cape with Dianne last week, for the first time in eight years. But now she's back fussing and worrying. Meanwhile Angie has tried to pick up the reigns, but mother keeps butting back in. All this seeps out between the lines, as they work fulltilt delivering groceries, and caring for us local cases. Always remembering our personal quirks and foibles. Always with a smile.

"Dessert today, Bryce?"

Meanwhile any seachange in Maine fare rises as slowly as the recognition of global warming. You can drive to Portland and get everything from applewood grilled native provisions to obscure ethnic fingerfood, but it's still nearly impossible for a quasi-vegetarian diabetic to eat out, and not feel bad after. RICH is how fine food is still defined downeast. No wonder we brag about the size of our women. So it's exciting to hear that Martin and Henry are opening a vegetarian restaurant in Brunswick this month.

Henry and Martin arrived in these parts, hailing from the Big Apple, the same year we migrated out of the boonies. Henry had been a dancer, and Martin was and is a concert pianist, performing at such venues as Carnegie Hall in piano duo. Martin tours for Steinway, and he and Henry drive a truck loaded with two grand pianos around America, doing demo performances. But they have summers off, and are gourmands. Some years back they opened a seafood restaurant, picnic style, on Holbrook's wharf in Cundy's Harbor.

Holbrook's was a runaway success. A touch of nouvelle cuisine. A sensitivity to the subtleties of fresh seafood. Desserts to die for. And none of the grease of Fat Pat's. It got so you couldn't find parking in Cundy's, or get a table. Even the Times reviewed the place. The New York Times. But it all became too much for Henry and Martin, and when the landlord decided to jack the rent and make further demands, they smiled and said, "No, thank you."

They continued to cater, on and off, and muse about an inside restaurant, intown. On the face of it, the idea is absurd. Most new restaurants fail in the first year, and there are maybe a dozen chow houses on Maine Street alone. Everything from The Great Impasta, for rich tastes at the high end, to the Broadway Deli, where Earl and Nancy sling the pastrami. But the fact remains you can't dine out and have a veggie meal, even quasi, that doesn't leave you bloated, or dissatisfied. We've taken to eating the salads at the cafe in Bookland, because they're often surprisingly good, and always cheap. But it ain't got STYLE.

Martin and Henry's will have style. And fun. And art, both on the plate and on the walls. Makes me drool just to think about it. We had dinner with them at Steve and Arlene's last Saturday, and between exquisite flavors we were reminded what a great community of artists we lucked into here. And we half-joked about the artists' retirement community we could put together. Food by Martin and Henry. Medical care by Steve. Studios for all of us. All we need is a cadre of young acolytes to wheel us around.

Meanwhile the intrepid duo is fitting out the old Gulf of Maine Bookstore as HENRY AND MARTIN'S, Arlene is framing new work to go on the walls, and I'm dreaming about gustatory toys for the tables. There is a tribe of hungry artists guaranteed to hang out there, and a host of foodlovers who can plunk down the change. A change in the gustatory weather is in the offing.

It's been raining on and off for three days now, and the native greenstuff is jumping up and uncoiling. It's fiddling season, and the local pickers are out stalking around their favorite spots. To hear them talk, you'd think there was tribal warfare going on in the creek bottoms. Bruce and Mel are peddling fiddleheads at Marion's, and I foolishly asked Bruce if I could tag along when he went fiddling.

What WAS I thinking? I had in mind discovering some new sites to paint, and a stroll in different woods. Bruce immediately saw me as a spy on HIS pickings. He just laughed. Shows you how far I've come from the ledges off Jonesport, where Muk and I used to make up new names for the islands so we could talk about wrinkling spots without tipping the competition.

Bruce says that it's getting more intense out there, now that the fourwheelers have opened up so much of the backland to heavy harvesting. That's the story with all traditional foraging. More and more of us are rooting around in the landscape, and turning subsistence strategies into commercial acts. Next thing you know they'll be issuing fiddling licenses.

And we still haven't had a feed of fiddleheads. Martin and Henry brought a mess of dandelion greens Saturday night, but I could sure go for a mouthful of crunchies. Think I'll put on my boots and take CC for a hike. Don't ask where.