IT’S HOUSEGUEST TIME

With August fast approaching, it’s time for another look at the houseguest problem. They start coming just as the black flies leave. We love these fair-weather friends (except for skiers and snowmobilers, they rarely visit Maine in the winter), but our short season gets frantic and chaotic, especially with other people always in the house. A sense of dread can come down like a thundercloud when a caller says, “We can only stay a week” or “Is it all right if we bring the dogs?”

It was so easy in the cold months to tell good friends to come see us next summer, maybe on a Christmas card or, worse, when we are visiting them and accepting their hospitality. It is fun at first seeing them here and showing off our lakes and woods and seacoast. And it’s fun having lunches and dinners with them and perhaps – this foggy summer in particular -spending an afternoon playing cribbage or Scrabble.

But then there’s breakfast, with the guests straggling in so that the meal seems to last all morning. Rich people with big houses have been solving that problem by buying up modest natives’ houses and fixing them up as a place to put their houseguests. That’s one reason villages like Northeast Harbor have been losing population so fast.

For the rest of us, mention of the breakfast problem suggests its own solution: a nearby bed-and-breakfast. The B&Bs have been proliferating lately, partly to fill this need. It takes some frank talk to present this alternative. But the visitors are apt to understand and accept it – especially if they have experienced the houseguest problem themselves.

Lots of luck.