The news was on when my grandson came downstairs one morning last week, the day after the school shooting in Texas, and sat down to watch. Of course, it was already old news to both of us by then, still I’d have turned it off if I’d heard him coming.

Jack and I had been waiting for the post office’s call that our chicks had arrived, and thankfully, it came right then. A box of 30 cheeping chicks was just what we both needed about then. They’d come all the way from Missouri, tucked tight together to keep warm during their journey. We turned off the TV and drove right down to the Beach where we were handed this box of …. life – living, breathing, cheeping life.

The perfect medicine to push away scary thoughts.

The brooder was all set up in the henhouse, heated with a single 100-watt light bulb. One by one he lifted out the chicks and dipped their beak in the waterer. Supposedly, this is so they’ll know where the water is, but that could be an old wives’ tale.

The chicks are shipped out the day they hatch. Even at two days old each breed is distinguished by its coloring We’d ordered 10 Rhode Island Reds, 5 Buff Orpingtons (“those are the broody ones, right?” Jack asked), 5 Pearl White Leghorns, 5 Aracaunas, and 5 Welsummers.

Meanwhile, the old girls were stretching their wings and fluffing up their feathers, hopping down from their roosts to begin another day, a day of scratching up bugs, taking dust baths, and maybe, just maybe, laying an egg.  At three years old they’ve slowed down a bit in that department, but as part of a backyard flock they get to live out their years in the Old Hen Home.

Only two are named. Rosella came to us several years ago after being bullied by her own flock, including having an eye pecked out. And then there’s Lenny, our latest rooster. He’s a Lavender Buff Orpington, tall, handsome and very gentle, the nicest rooster we’ve ever had.

Other young life has been waiting in the wings for the weather to break, seedlings that need to get in the ground. After a summer off last year for my new knee to heal it’s good to be back in the garden.

Onions are my most gratifying crop, and I can’t seem to resist writing about them, year after year. Here’s what I found in a February “This Week in Lincolnville” several years ago:

“In a few days, the onions will begin to poke through the soil, little upside-down “U-s”, hunching up and then unfurling their pointy tips. They look like rows of new grass, fragile and thin; every couple of weeks I’ll give them a haircut, snipping the top two to three inches with a scissors (and putting them in an omelet — very tasty). By this trimming they develop thicker stems.

I also water them every couple of weeks with a weak solution of Miracle Grow. (In my mind, we garden strictly organically, except for this one thing. Seedlings do so much better with a shot of it. After all, consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds. If anyone can suggest an organic substitute, I’d be willing to consider it!)

 So now, in my mind’s eye, it’s early May 2014. I have a couple of window boxes heavy with dark green, chunky scallion-sized plants – Copra yellow storage onions and Rossa di Milano red onions. I’ve deeply dug the 25-foot-long bed, loosening the soil with my favorite tool, the broadfork that I got from Johnny’s Seeds  many years ago, then spread buckets of compost from the pile behind the barn on the top. The soil looks good enough to eat, or at least, to plunge your hands into.

 And that’s what we do. Four-year-old Andy is with me that day and eager to help. I drive the old dibble stick (the one I got, years ago, from Bill Brooks, builder of the Duck Trap Motel, a New Jersey transplant himself who took to Lincolnville like a native) deep into that soil, making holes on a 6-inch grid.

I pry out a handful of seedlings, along with the warm soil and roots, gently tease them apart and hand them, one at a time, to the little boy, showing him how to twirl the roots into the hole, then fill it back with the compost top layer. He catches on quickly, but it’s all I can do to keep them coming, so struck am I by the wonder of this little grandson, just beginning to grow back his own head of hair, only now healthy enough to sit on the damp ground and get dirt under his fingernails like any other four-year-old in town.”

We’re bound to hold so many disparate thoughts at once these days: new life, horrific violence, true facts and outright lies. Who would want to be a cop or a teacher, critical care nurse, or the President these days – or for that matter an elected official explaining why this country legalizes deadly weapons meant only to kill people?

We do what we can.

The day of last week’s shooting I was driving a friend home from a stay in a  Portland hospital. We stopped at the Co-op to pick up a food order, and she got out of the car, I thought to stretch her legs.

“I just released a zebra jumping spider that I found in my room,” she said,  on getting back in the car.

A single, tiny spider.

Town

The gym was full the other night when at a Special Town Meeting, next year’s school budget passed unanimously, while the citizen petition for a moratorium on ocean front construction failed. Though I think many were flashing back to the contentious vote on having a police force several years ago, this one was civil.

Though close, the vote was decisively against the moratorium, 70 for and 78 against. Vagueness in the wording seemed to sway the vote. Still, it would be good to have some sort of town-wide discussion of how we’d like to see Lincolnville develop over the next years.

Develop it will, whether we direct it or not. Do we want to remain a town with a healthy mix of income levels? Or are we okay with becoming a second-home, summer town? Do we want to encourage community involvement or not?

It’s up to us.

Augmenting the Record

Last week I rather flippantly referred to the holder of the Waldo Patent, Samuel Waldo, as just a rich and powerful guy. Dwight Emerson called me on such a sloppy historical reference (my words not his!). In fact, Dwight wrote

“A fun read, but a bit hard on Sam Waldo. The "favors" for the king of England, were, at his own expense, he assembled a group of men, then marched north and took the French fort at Louisbourg, at the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. At the time, England and France were at war over control of that river and the access to the Great Lakes, Ohio and even the Hudson River. Lincolnville was a contested area during the French and Indian war with England. Rich and powerful Sam might have been at the time, what he did with it however, helped secure England's control of that part of N. America. We might be speaking French today were it not for his efforts. So, the king granted him the Waldo patent for his accomplishment. …”