This Week in Lincolnville: Gardening in the snow
Our indoor garden on a snowy morning.
Photo by Diane O’Brien
The potting bench, snow outside windows.
Taking a geranium cutting.
Our indoor garden on a snowy morning.
Photo by Diane O’Brien
The potting bench, snow outside windows.
Taking a geranium cutting.
The email from Fedco Seeds came Friday: “Your order’s been shipped…” Then Saturday morning dawned snowy and cold, with a weather report that promised snow all day. Just the day I’d been waiting for, my first day of gardening.
Now gardening is a funny thing. Those of us who love it the most are likely to welcome the final, killing frost of the year. An old friend, a woman I count as one of the best gardeners I know, once said, “I love the frost; at last, it’s over!”
Yes, once the stuff you’ve been coddling and petting and worrying since May is flat and blackened on the icy ground you’re free, free to forget the damn garden.
And forget it I do. I’ve already carried all the houseplants in off the porch and back deck: the sprawling, ungainly geraniums, a spindly and brittle glory vine (brilliant purple blooms in August, a plant we saw growing wild in Australia), an enormous rubber plant, my succulent collection (19 different kinds), spider plants, messy Swedish ivies, and more. I stuff them all over the house, but mostly in the sunroom that runs the length of our ell. I call it a greenhouse, but really it’s my indoor garden.
It’s actually a replacement for the first greenhouse we built off the kitchen door, way back in the beginning. That would be the years when the babies were coming, when my parents were making regular visits to us here in the wilds of Maine. The visits were regular all right, but Mom and Dad made them in such different spirits. For my mother, I think they were disconcerting at best; of course she loved the grandbabies, but there was nothing about the country, about our rackety old house that she could relate to, including my school teacher husband. (Though in her last years, when she’d lost all memory of my father, my brother, her friends, it was Wally she asked about: “Does Wally still go fishing?”)
For my dad, though, everything about our life was magical. Especially the rackety old farmhouse. When we jacked up the barn, actually borrowed house jacks and figured out how to use them, Dad was right in the thick of it. When we borrowed a come-along to straighten up the old butcher shop that stood where our garden is today, Dad was the one calling commands. “Pull!” he yelled to Wally, who took the order a bit too seriously and pulled so hard the whole thing collapsed in a heap. And it was dad who helped us erect a greenhouse out of old storm windows, and an especially large and spectacular window that came from the Knox Mill, big enough to be the entire front.
I puttered around in that little greenhouse, filled it with milk bottles full of water that I’d painted black to act as heat sinks, started seedlings out there, and generally acted as if it were a real greenhouse. We tore it off the year we added the sunroom, a project I fretted about for months. It seemed wrong somehow to so drastically change a 19th-Century structure; to accommodate its roof we had to raise the upstairs ell windows, which necessitated two steep dormers.
I talked myself back into it by just looking around the place. Everyone who lived here made changes to suit their family from the first bathroom our immediate predecessors put in (Nat and Vonnie Stone) to the ell, which had seen a number of renovations before their occupancy. The very ell was an addition, made to the original house, connecting it to the barn.
So, by about 1986 I had the greenhouse/sunroom/indoor garden I’d always dreamed of. The first thing I did was take our old kitchen sink, which had been replaced by an even older slate sink, (another story for another day) and bury it in the dirt of the sunroom. Did I mention that its “floor” is actually the earth? And that the interior wall is covered with clapboards that were once on Nina Hall’s Slab City barn (another story, another day)? I built a stonewall down the middle of the space, forming a planting bed between the wall and the house foundation. That very first winter a critter burrowed up in the middle of it, forming a little tunnel to the outside world that I’ve never been able to eradicate. Every year some wildlife or other makes it way up that tunnel, sort of a reverse El Chapo type, and takes up residence in this outpost of our house. More about that another day.
The old kitchen sink became my garden pool, complete with electric-pump-driven waterfall, filling the whole house with the sound of tinkling water. For most of the 1990s the greenhouse half of the addition (one half is our dining room; we can wave to passersby as we sit at the table) was screened in, giving us an indoor aviary. At various times finches, parakeets, a pair of love birds, even a myna bird, lived out there, free to fly around, and, as it turned out, to kill all the plants and to destroy most of the woodwork with their gnawing bills. One winter we noticed a hole drilled right through Nina Hall’s antique clapboards and the sheathing boards. Before long three or four baby parakeets emerged from the hole, followed by their enterprising Mama. When, some time later, we spotted her going in and out of her nest hole, we got ready for another batch of babies. She went in one last time and never came out. It makes a great story to tell children.
The sink-turned-garden pool was just about as successful. I was never able to keep fish alive in it, and what’s the point of a garden pool without fish? So eventually, the screens came down, and I moved the sink up to make a potting bench. It holds a lot of soil, and, on its removeable plywood top is where we feed Smitten, our cat, these days.
On Saturday morning, with the “snow trough” the weathermen had been talking about firmly planted over Lincolnville and destined to dump on us all day, I chased Smitten away and opened my cache of potting soil. It’s a perfect place to take apart all the dead plants that didn’t survive their move from porch to house, including several pots of annuals. In went the dead lobelia and crispy marigolds, as I cleaned off the dried up dirt and tossed the plants. Next time the outdoor compost pile emerges from the snow I’ll throw them on it.
CALENDAR
TUESDAY,Feb. 16Book Group, 6 p.m., Library
WEDNESDAY, Feb. 17
Winter Presentation, 7 p.m., Lincolnville Library
THURSDAY, Feb. 18
Free Soup Café, noon-1 p.m., Community Building, 18 Searsmont Road
SUNDAY, Feb.21
Guest Preacher Kate Braestrup, 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 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
COMING UP
February 28: Guest Preacher Dick Hanks, United Christian Church
March 5: Republican Party caucus, 9 a.m., Belfast Area High School
March 6: Democratic Party caucus, 3 p.m., LCS
Hands in dirt. You either love it or you don’t. The surviving geraniums have already put out succulent new shoots, those thick green stems and newborn-fresh leaves, barely unfolded from the womb, so to speak. I cut off eight promising ones, dipped them in the jar of Rootone, and poked them into eight identical pots of that rich dirt.
Next came two enormous pots of lemon grass. I’d found the seeds somewhere or other and planted it several years ago, but had no idea how to use it. I just knew it’s a Thai/southeast Asian ingredient and so seemed exotic.
Before long I had two huge pots of grass; it didn’t smell especially lemony, not like any other herb I’ve used. I dutifully moved those pots back and forth between deck and greenhouse for years. Then, on Saturday, I did what we all do these days, what I should have done four years ago: I Googled it, found out how to separate it, what part to eat, how to fix it. So, standing at those tall windows that look out on the road, with the falling snow nearly obliterating the view, I dumped them out, both into the sinkful of dirt. There were dozens of separate plants, each with a little bulb at the bottom and a hardy clump of roots below. I hacked and pulled at them until all were separate, then repotted them, about a dozen pots in all, each with a few plants of lemon grass. I made a soup that very day, Thai chicken coconut soup, using my own lemon grass. Delicious.
I started out to tell you that this was the weekend I planted my onions, the handful of coal-black seeds that will turn into 100 pounds of large, yellow-skinned onions seven months from now. And I did plant them, two long window boxes full. At the moment they’re swathed in plastic, sitting on the heat tape on my seed-starting bench. The plastic is to keep the varmints out; bitter experience has taught me that mice love to snip off emerging seedlings, for the drop of juice they exude, I imagine.
But the most fun on that snowy Saturday was just the dirt, picking out the stems and roots of last summer’s plants, rubbing the clumps into dust, working water into the bone-dry soil. The pots of incubating geraniums and newly-separated lemon grass are lined up on the greenhouse window sills. Next time you’re passing by, give them a nod.
P.S.
If you’d like a pot of lemon grass, I’ve got some to spare, free for the asking. Let me know.
Ice Skating on Nortons
Against great weather odds, Lesley Devoe, of the Recreation Commission, writes: “The rink is ready on Norton Pond in time for school vacation. Thanks go out to Hayden and Katherine Sears and Elaine Neville who helped Robin Milliken and me make the first cut a couple of weeks ago. We then watched the rain and warm temperatures change the surface, followed by snow. Robin did an amazing job clearing during the last two days with the help of ice fisherman Chis Moody’s snow blower.
“We are looking at gas pumps to transfer water for a better surface and wonder if anyone could bring a pump to the pond and walk us through the process once. We don’t want to buy anything until we see there is sufficient interest in skating and know what will work at our site. We could also use a bench, fire pit, campfire quality wood, and a movable box with a cover to protect the wood from the elements.”
This Monday Lesley sent out this update: “We’re trying to keep the rink open for school vacation, against great weather odds. Robin and Travis Milliken will be snow blowing this afternoon to remove the seven inches there now. We could use volunteers with flat shovels tomorrow morning to remove the 3 inches that arrive overnight before the shift to sleet and rain occurs. Slush is the enemy of a rink so the cleaner it is before temps go up, the better. If you’re up for an hour or less of work tomorrow @ 8, bring a flat edged shovel. It takes a village! Also, someone left black skates (with a red maple leaf on each) at the pond. They’re by the stairs going to the rink but are probably covered with snow. Look for the green sign at the end of Norton Pond Road that says ‘Pond Skating’. That means we’ve beaten the odds and the ice is clear!”
Well, that’s pretty exciting! I sure wish I could still skate; there does come a point when engaging in an activitiy that’s likely to result in a lot of falling isn’t very smart – that would be called old age! Speaking as someone who grew up ice skating on a public rink every possible winter day, there’s nothing more fun and invigorating than skating with friends on a bitter cold, hopefully sunny day. Somebody just posted on the L’ville Bulletin Board asking to borrow or buy skates for the occasion. What a great way to find some skates, if only for an afternoon.
Unclaimed Property
Lincolnville’s Representative to the Legislature, Christine Burstein recently posted information on how to access the list of unclaimed property that the state publishes every year. Check it out on line or contact Chris. Another link Chris sent out describes MDOT’s (Maine Department of Transportation) work plan for Lincolnville for the coming year.
Library Book Group to Meet
The book group will meet this Tuesday, February 16 at 6 p.m. at the Lincolnville Community Library to discuss “The Art of Racing In the Rain” by Garth Stein, a heartwarming story of family, love and loyalty told from a dog’s perspective. Enzo, the canine narrator, has been described as “a philosopher with a nearly human soul.” Everyone is welcome to join the discussion and bring suggestions for other good books to read. For more information, call 763-4343 or email.
Winter Presentation
Contact Rosey Gerry, 975-5432, to reserve tickets for this Wednesday, February 17, Winter Presentation at the Library, featuring Emily Randolph-Epstein, a writer and musician living in Rockport, and Miners Creek, a family bluegrass band. Tickets are $10 and proceeds benefit the Library.
This month’s event is being sponsored by Windsor Chairmakers in honor of company founder Jim Brown. Programs start at 7 p.m. and generally last about an hour and a half. Sometimes it’s hard to get ourselves out of the house on a cold night, but we’re always glad we did. These programs are always very entertaining, everyone’s in a good mood, and there are cookies!
Lincolnville Central School
Here’s a really neat idea that I wish had been in place when our kids were eighth graders at LCS. Three high school students, Tora Decker-Griffith, Emily Morse and Clara McGurren will be holding three sessions with the eighth grade class to discuss choosing high school courses, as well as relationships with peers, teachers and other adults at CHRHS. It’s pretty scary to contemplate going from a class of 20 some kids into a school where your class will have some 160 members.
Congratulations to the following January Students of the Month: Kindergarten, Lucy Morgenstern and Alice Lindquist; First Grade, Beckett Grant; Second Grade, Jayden Bragdon and Cam Gautreau; Third Grade, Sophie Baker and Bryce Curtis; Fourth Grade, Mikayla Talbot and Mateo LaChance; Fifth Grade, Layna Thompson; Sixth Grade, Allie Morse; Seventh Grade, Rosa LaChance; and Eighth Grade, Kaylee Bragdon.
On February 24th, Parners for Enrichment will bring Merryspring educator Brett Willard to LCS with his winter tracking workshop for s 6th, 7th, and 8th grades. The students will head out into the woods and fields behind the school to identify animal tracks and habitats, and, with luck, to spot some signs of spring. Brett did this workshop with the LCS K-2 kids last year, and apparently they were so enthusiastic about plowing through the snow looking for tracks that at one point one small person continued hiking along despite having lost her boot in a particularly deep drift!
Caucus Information
It’s hard to miss all the political wrangling over the upcoming presidential election no matter which party/ideology you prefer. Maine, of course, doesn’t hold a primary for the presidential race, but rather holds party caucuses. These are meetings of those registered as either Democrat or Republican; if you’re unenrolled, meaning no party affiliation or are enrolled but want to vote in the other party, you can change your enrollment just for the day.
Waldo County Republicans hold their caucus Saturday, March 5, 9 a.m. at Belfast High School. Arrive at 8 if you wish to register or change parties. More information is on their website. A photo ID is required to get in the door.
Lincolnville Democrats hold their caucus Sunday, March 6, 3 p.m. at Lincolnville Central School. This is the first step towards becoming a delegate to the state and national Democratic conventions.
Condolences
Bob Allport, who passed away last week, had a lifelong connection to Lincolnville. His mother was born here, and his parents, in 1939 bought “a small, rustic farmhouse without indoor plumbing on the backside of Maiden Cliff.” Bob visited this house almost every year of his life. Sympathy to his family and friends.
Living in a Small Place
Not only are ice skates being sought on the Lincolnville Bulletin Board, but now people are looking to trade jigsaw puzzles, nice big ones with 500 – 1000 pieces.
Watch the local news in the evening and the chances are you’ll see someone you know (Maine’s a small town we’ve always said.) The other night on WABI there were Lincolnville’s Jeff Wolowitz and family making Heiwa Tofu. Not only that, we found a package of their tofu left in our egg cooler the same day, a nice surprise.
Then last night, listening to the Moth Radio hour on MPBN radio there was Kate Braestrup, chaplain to the Maine Wardens, guest preacher (next Sunday) at United Christian Church, and L’ville Center resident, telling the true story of horrific Maine crime and her inadvertent role in blessing the perpetrator.
Incidentally, Kate’s nearest neighbor, Liz Hand, is, as I write this, being interviewed by a trio of Swedish journalists on the publication today of three of her books in Sweden.
Finally, my mention of childhood enthusiasms being predictive of the adults we become, brought a call from a local friend. It reminded her of being 9 years old and starting her own neighborhood newspaper. “I designed a mast head and made up a name for it, then marched down to the nearest corner and waited for something to happen.” Nothing did happen, and that little girl came home realizing that “news doesn’t happen just because you’re there.” She abandoned her infant newspaper until many, many years later when, surprise, she found herself writing and editing at a real newspaper.
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