Three cheers for Buddy, Erica Harpell's little dog! At the recent Rotary/Lincoln Home Family Dog Show, he won the prize for "Most Unique Temperament." I'm not sure what the word "unique" covers in this case, but it must include loving young Erica!
Wedding bells from across the Damariscotta River! Congratulations to the Krawic family, Ed and Joanne (our Edgecomb Eddy School principal!) and to their daughter Anne, married over the weekend to Joshua Jacobs. (My thanks to Long Cove columnist Vicki Nichols for this item!)
The Dedication of the Zak Preserve, 202 acres which encompass Wildcat Creek, is planned for Thursday, August 19. Call the Boothbay Region Land Trust, 633-4919 or www.bbrlt.org for details. The Zak Preserve straddles the Edgecomb/Boothbay boundary. It contains both open fields and a tidal wetland fed by a freshwater stream. The Land Trust is seeking endowment funds for its future maintenance.
Last week Bruce and I attended the reception to celebrate the completion of St. Andrews Hospital's expansion project. We were delighted by the Fraas/Slade painted quilt of the Burnt Island lighthouse, in its comfortable lobby setting. It is complemented down every hall by a number of special donor plaques, graceful small paintings on the same theme, and the coordinated Room number tiles, all tied together by the dominant light bright blue, so warmly welcoming and soothingly cool at the same time! Incidentally, Gayle and Duncan will be showing their Signal Flag series at the Firehouse Gallery in Damariscotta, opening reception tomorrow, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m.
Recently, I took a bundle of Ma's gardening pamphlets from the 1930s to the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens library and talked with Pat Jeremiah, the librarian. Pat and her husband Robert live on High Head Road off the Mill Road. "We have just lost our fifth road sign," which Pat is sure adorns some college dorm room.
Pat once worked as a technical aide in a Connecticut middle school library, and took some cataloguing courses as a consequence. She also had a garden business for fifteen years. When the Jeremiahs arrived in Edgecomb in January, 1998, "just in time for the big ice storm," Pat wryly observes, in short order, she lucked into the start-up of the CMBG Library!
This Library is a special project of former President Claire Hunt, after a two year drive in association with the Federated Garden Clubs of Maine. Built on a nucleus provided by Dr. Richard Howard's collection, their aim is to form a major horticultural research center. Pat thanks her three volunteers as well as the staff of the Boothbay Harbor Memorial Library for their continuing great help. Although its major focus will be on gardening and plants in Northern New England, the collection is not limited. Dr. Howard himself was an authority on Caribbean flora, although that part of his library has been donated to a university. Material about any and all wildflowers is of primary interest, no matter what continent or climate. It is not unusual for people heading for Florida or Arizona in the winter to ask for advice on sub-tropical gardening. Alpine and rock gardening, gardening in the 1940s (pre-DDT), animals and nature, greenhouse gardening, plant history and exploration are all sub-categories under the Dewey Decimal cataloguing system (635 = Gardens; 712 = Design, for instance). Pat hopes to build an archive of gardening on the Peninsula, and has started a collection of gardening books for children.
Right now, CMBG members have a 2-week borrowing privilege, while non-members are welcome to use the materials within the library itself. I expect to be pestering Pat and her colleagues with questions galore!
News item from the Mill Road area, kindness of Pat: A bear has been spotted on several occasions. You might consider keeping your livestock and pets inside, certainly at night!
The second public information meeting about the proposed Tax Increment Financing District was held last Thursday. Earlier, the Selectmen, Planning Board and Budget Committee had a meeting with Camden lawyer Paul Gibbons, whom the Town has hired to negotiate the TIF arrangements. Visit the Edgecomb website (address below) for a report on this meeting.
How many of you had the childhood chore of plucking off potato bugs and tomato horn worms into a can of kerosene? I have lately been stalking Japanese beetles with tweezers and drowning them in a can of a strong solution of dish detergent. Does anyone else remember having to do this? How did you deal with it?
Gardening between hurricanes at 234 River Road, 633-2978, bonesukl@midcoast.com. This column appears in several local papers, and at www.Edgecomb.org.