When we moved to this place, called Sleepy Hollow Farm on the old deeds, all we found were a couple of old peony plants and a few scruffy irises growing in front of the house. Those, and a clump or two of bamboo – Japanese knotweed if you want to be precise, and three old apple trees, twisted and tortured as old apples should be, wonderful for climbing and for tying up the dog.
Not a single rose, lilac, daylily, forsythia or any other familiar New England dooryard plant. It was a blank slate, the perfect place for a new gardener to try out her wings. I liked the idea of growing herbs just outside the kitchen door, handy for those last minute snips of this or that while the stew is bubbling. I hadn’t counted on having to step over a toddler and the dog on the way to those herbs, probably pregnant, as I was the first eight years we lived here. I don’t think many herbs made it into the stew or anything else.
But then, one early March morning in 1975, I stepped outside and decided this was the day, the day to dig the long-wished for herb garden. I know it was March because our two-month old, the Knox County New Year’s baby, lay asleep in his cradle. The three-year-old was excited to get his mom to himself for a little while, and the mom, well she was excited just to pick up the shovel and do something besides nurse a baby.
It probably took a few mornings to complete, but in my imperfect memory, I see it all happening that day. I dug up the front of the house, which if you’ve ever dug up a new garden around here, you know how many rocks came up. I heaved and pried, and pulled them out of the wet ground, then rolled them end over end to the wall. It was like I was coming alive again, dirty and wet, sweaty and tired, no longer the doughy, milky being that is a new mother. The wall I built that day even now is my symbol of rebirth as a strong and capable being, although to be honest, I’ve moved it and rebuilt it so many times it lives on mostly in my memory.
I’d already discovered
Merry Gardens and its founders, Ervin and Mary Ellen Ross. Perhaps you did too. Did you know that Ervin was a Lincolnville boy? Here I have to digress to tell those who remember him, a little about this soft-spoken and knowledgeable man. He, along with his brothers Albion and Howard and sister Margaret, were raised by their father, Miller Ross, after their mother died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. The family lived in what many of us came to know as the rundown and uninhabitable “Blue House”, standing opposite Petunia Pump in the Center. In the 1920s when the Ross family lived there it was a handsome stand of buildings which stretched up Hope Road. Their grandfather, N.D. Ross, owned the general store, which today has many fans eagerly awaiting its renovation, slated to begin this spring.
As a boy Ervin was pals with Laura Hall, another motherless child being raised with her sisters by their father, Virgil, the Grampa Hall of another well-known Center building. Laura remembered roaming the hills and woods around the Center with Ervin when they were children, interested in everything they found in nature.
Ervin, Howard and Albion served in the military during World War II. After the war, Ervin studied horticulture and met Mary Ellen Lougee whose family owned Logee Nursery in Connecticut. The two married and began operating Merry Gardens in the 40s on a piece of land Mary Ellen purchased on Mechanic Street.
If you also were a Merry Gardens regular, then perhaps you too still have patches of tansy, lady’s mantle, catmint, and coltsfoot that come up year after year whether you tend them or not. Maybe you remember spending the precious little time you had away from toddlers, or else had them trailing behind you, down the narrow, moist aisles in what must be the last real glass greenhouse to be found anywhere. Mossy sheets of glass, wooden boxes full of cuttings, hundreds, no thousands of healthy little plants, every possible variety. There was a warm house where the tropicals thrived and a cool house where the herbs lived. And what herbs!
CALENDAR
MONDAY, April 18
No School all week for Spring Vacation
Town Office closed for Patriots Day
TUESDAY, April 19
Lakes & Ponds Committee, 7 p.m., Town Office
WEDNESDAY, April 20
Spring Library Presentation, 7 p.m., Library
THURSDAY, April 21
Free Soup Café, noon-1 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road
SATURDAY, April 23
Children’s Craft Time, 10 a.m. to noon, Library
SUNDAY, April 24
Rev. Kate Braestrup, guest preacher, 9:30 a.m., United Christian Church
Every week:
AA meetings, Tuesdays & Fridays at 12:15 p.m., Wednesdays & Sundays at 6 p.m.,United Christian Church
Lincolnville Community Library, open Tuesdays, 4-7, Wednesdays, 2-7, Fridays and Saturdays, 9 a.m.-noon. For information call 763-4343.
Soup Café, every Thursday, noon—1p.m., Community Building, Sponsored by United Christian Church. Free, though donations to the Good Neighbor Fund are appreciated
Schoolhouse Museum open by appointment only until June 2015: call Connie Parker, 789-5984
Bayshore Baptist Church, Sunday School for all ages, 9:30 a.m., Worship Service at 11 a.m.
Good News Club, every Tuesday, 3 p.m., Lincolnville Central School, sponsored by Bayshore Baptist Church
United Christian Church, Worship Service 9:30 a.m., Children’s Church during service
COMING UP
April 29: “I Don’t Want to Talk About It”
There was thyme and lavender, oregano and rosemary, of course, and for the most part they behaved as expected, the ones that survived our Maine winters that is. Most herbs, I found out, don’t grow in neat clumps with bees humming around them. Before long we were calling the garden in front of our house the “witchy” garden, which it resembled way more than my dream of a Williamsburgesque herb garden.
I brought home borage, false indigo, hyssop, lovage, bedstraw, rocket, rue, skirret, soapwort, southernwood, tarragon, and valerian. These plants are sprawling and viney, or tall and generally unruly. Coltsfoot sends up a yellow dandelion-like flower way before the leaves appear, shaped just like the name. And you’ll never get rid of Russian tarragon with its tough, creepy roots that crawl everywhere. Lovage makes a huge clump and grows 6’ tall; it has a strong celery taste, and we eat its early leaves in salads along with the sharply lemony ones of sorrel
My sweet cicely came home with me in a tiny, two-inch plastic pot, I’m sure with her Latin name, Myrrhis odorata, marked in pencil in Ervin Ross’ precise handwriting. So did the angelica (Angelica Archangelica), the skirret (Sium sisarum), and southernwood (Artemisia abrotanum). By the time I knew Ervin, he wasn’t quite as tall and erect as in the photo of the young sailor. Over the years that I knew him on my twice yearly visits to Merry Gardens, bringing my box of treasures – little two-inch pots of the wildest variety of plants imaginable – for him to label, he always carefully pronounced that Latin name for me, he grew smaller, his back bending under what must have been a crumbling spine. But always the little look of surprise at what I’d picked out, always with a hint of what that particular specimen liked – bright sun, not too much water.
Each time, as I drove away, stealing glances at the little box on the seat next to me, it was with the realization that one time – maybe this time – it would be the last visit to Merry Gardens. And then one day it was.
So the other morning, with a cardinal calling for a mate in the apple tree, I took up my garden fork to tackle the goutweed that’s invaded the perennial bed. I know, here she comes, ranting again about goutweed, but I promise not to obsess. (Have I mentioned before that gardeners have been known to put their places up for sale when they discover goutweed on their property?)
Anyway, poking up amongst all the crowns of this vile plant were several clumps of feathery sweet cicely, offspring of their long ago mother plant. Thinking of how the grandkids love to explore our place, I decided to clean out the invaders so this next generation could have sweet leaves to chew on too. That's when I discovered how looks can deceive; man, are those delicate looking things firmly rooted. No matter how deeply I thrust the fork, wiggling it vigorously in the tangle of goutweed roots, the cicely was unmoved. Working slowly, fingers deep in the soil, I was able to disengage all the tangles wrapped around cicely's long legs. A job well done.
April Library Presentation
This Wednesday at 7 p.m. storyteller Jennifer Armstrong will speak about her children's books. After the traditional cookie break Old Gray Goose will perform their repertory of songs and music. Contact Rosey Gerry, 975-5432, to reserve a seat, $10, and all benefits the Library.
Come Make Dancing Paper Dolls at the Library
This Saturday, April 23, 10 – noon, parents and children, even adults without children, are invited to the Lincolnville Library to make dancing paper dolls with Julie Turkevich. Materials are supplied for these jointed and magnetized figures that be hung on the fridge. It's free, and I promise, fun! Call 763-4343 or email.
"I Don't Want to Talk About It"
That's the title of a three part series sponsored by United Christian Church and focusing on those issues people don't want to face as they grow older: medical matters, legal preparations for one's estate, and planning for the deaths of oneself and loved ones. Pastor Susan Stonestreet will moderate the sessions, saying "These are the discussions that are the least desired, and yet the most needed, as we grow older, becoming less physically able, more concerned about passing on our accumulated assets, and thinking about dying." The first session, Friday April 29th will feature attorney Pam Terry of McKittrick & Warren in Camden talking about the legal and estate planning issues.
The dates for the three sessions are April 29th, May 20th and June 17th, 10 – noon at the Parish Hall, 18 Searsmont Road. Light refreshments will be served at each session. For more information or to register for the sessions, either singly or for all three, call Rev. Dr. Susan Stonestreet at 763-4526 or email. All are welcome to attend these free sessions covering the topics most people need to think about, but "don't want to talk about!"
Erwin, Albion and Howard Ross had a reunion at their home in Lincolnville Center during their service in WWII.
Photo courtesy of LIncolnville HIstorical Society
All welcome to come make dancing paper dolls at the Library this Saturday morning!
Photo courtesy of Julie Turkevich
