DIDN'T RUN 4/4. PARTS USED FOR 4/11.

Well, halloo, Mud Season! Times were when people, particularly on the Madockawando Road, would give huge parties on Washington's Birthday because they knew they wouldn't be seeing the rest of the world for the next six weeks. It's late this year.

Let's welcome some new families to Edgecomb. Mark and Nathalie Gorey on the River Road have been here since last summer. Mark teaches English at Boothbay Harbor High School and Nathalie teaches French at Lincoln Academy. They have two school-age sons. Dennis and Liz Friedland live down the hill from the Gorey's, on Wild Turkey Run. Their daughter is in 1st grade.

On the other side of town, Topher Belknap and Krista Woodbridge will be building on Engelbrekt Road later this spring. Topher, son of David Belknap in Damariscotta, has moved back to home turf, "to be near the water again."

At the Planning Board's last hearing, we met Bill Savage who will be moving in on the Shore Road, if he has not already done so.

Many from Edgecomb met again at Saturday's conference on the Wiscasset Bypass. It was a very productive, actually harmonious, meeting. After an overview we all split into groups to discuss the separate route options, not with an eye to deciding anything, but to fill in facts about grade-levels, crossing intricacies and the like, and to otherwise raise questions, the better to more fully inform Maine DOT. Even the "No Build" option was reviewed, for ways to improve traffic flow on the existing highway. The next such workshop on this subject will be later on in April or early May.

Normally, I am glad to see all the spring birds, but not this time: Alas, the cowbirds are back. Nasty critters, they lay their eggs in other birds' nests and let those parents bring up the young cowbirds, often at the expense of their own. How could such behavior have evolved? It must have been a response to stresses at some time in the distant past. On the cheerful side, we have also seen a pair of purple finches, and some goldfinches, still grey. It is fun to watch the
bright yellow pigment gradually re-establish itself. A large flock of robins were intermingling this morning with the usual 15 or so crows. They are all stripping the bark off Alan Cooper's pasture fencing to build nests with.

The welkin next door certainly rang this Easter! Tom Blackford and Susie Stephenson entertained her cousin Rachel Stephenson and Mario Tribrunizo and their three children, from Monroe. It was nice to hear at least six kids tearing around in those woods the way I used to do. Cheryl Tedford, who is organizing a 4-H chapter in Edgecomb, wants to build a barn on her place on McKay Road for 4-H'ers to keep their livestock projects and for the group to hold meetings. She is considering as a fund-raiser a returnable deposit bottle drive. For more details, call her at 882-4123, or Susie Stephenson at 633-2907.

Meanwhile, I am still pulling my boots on and off at 234 River Road, 633-2978, and bonesukl@midcoast.com.