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Left: Rebecca Sawyer-Fay. Right: Lynn Karlin
Sawyer-Fay and Karlin to Sign New Book at Fertile Mind
May 9
Author Rebecca Sawyer-Fay and photographer Lynn Karlin
will be signing copies of their new book Gardens
Maine Style, Act II at the Fertile Mind Bookshop
in Belfast on Friday, May 9, from 7 to 8:30 p.m. The book is a successor to
their very successful Gardens Maine Style (Down East Books, 2001), which was a 2002 Garden Globe
Award winner.
Have you ever thought of the garden as a stage for the
drama of germination, growth, designs and surprises? In Gardens Maine Style, Act II the
“Opening Act” occurs when the first new shoots emerge from the
soil. Plants that merit top billing become “Star Performers.”
Those that complement one another in the scene are “Balancing
Acts.” And “Intermission” is a time to look at edible
plants that refresh the eye and the palate.
The fact that the gardens shown in the book are all
found in Maine, where the growing season is short and winters are harsh,
only adds to the impressiveness of these landscapes. Practical tips woven
into the text will be useful to anyone who gardens in a cold climate, while
garden design ideas that incorporate structure, color, texture, and more
into landscapes large and small will be useful to green thumbs who garden
anywhere. The volume includes an appendix that lists garden resources.
Sawyer-Fay is the author of three previous books,
including Country Gardens. Her work has appeared in Down East, La Vie Claire, Cottage
Living, and other magazines, and she served as features editor for Country
Living and Country Living Gardener magazines. She was also a member of the
editorial staffs at House Beautiful, Yachting and The New Yorker. She lives
in Camden.
Karlin has photographed subjects ranging from celebrities to fashion to food, but ever since she moved to Maine from New York City 25 years ago, horticultural subjects have been her specialty. Some of that work is showcased in the books Gardens Maine Style and Maine Farm: A Year of Country Life. Her photography had appeared in numerous books and calendars,
and is found inside
and on the
covers of magazines including Better
Homes and Gardens, Country Living, Coastal Living, Horticulture, Woman’s Day, La Vie Claire, Cottage Living and
Garden Design. She has received six Garden Writer’s Association Awards of Excellence. She lives in Belfast.
Open Gardens Beginning May 9 in Belfast
Garden enthusiasts will be able to visit the first
“open garden” of the Belfast Garden Club’s 2008 season
Friday, May 9, when Judith Stein opens her spring garden at 39 Battery
Road, Belfast. The spring garden is Stein’s favorite, she says,
because “we are sailors, so by the time I get to sailing season I
don’t see the garden as much. I like my garden best very
early.” Stein offers a colorful display of spring bulbs, forsythia,
iris and primroses which she says are “pretty spectacular.”
“We are on the water so we suffer from the fact that we have cool
breezes coming from off the water and a certain amount of salt air.
That’s always been a part of the challenge,” she says.
The property, with its terraced hillsides, has a number
of garden areas, some with an Oriental look. Stein plans to have her small
greenhouse fired up and will permit visitors to peek into that as well.
Tour hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. A donation of $3 is
requested. Funds raised benefit the garden club’s Belfast civic
beautification projects. Seventeen more gardens will be open this season,
all of them on Fridays. A 10-visit ticket is available for $20 from garden
club members. Those tickets and season tickets (all 18 gardens for $35)
will be sold at the garden club’s Green Thumb Plant Sale on Saturday,
May 17, 9 to 11 a.m., at the Boathouse on lower Commercial Street.
Community Supported Fishery Begins Sign-Up
Maine’s first Community Supported Fishery (CSF),
organized by the Green Sanctuary Committee of the First Universalist Church
in Rockland in cooperation with the Port Clyde Draggermen’s Co-op,
just finished its first winter season providing fresh shrimp weekly to
shareholders. For the summer season, church members are working with the
co-op to provide freshly caught local fish weekly for 12 weeks, from June 8
through August 24.
Organized much like community supported agriculture, in which people
buy shares up front from a local farmer or grower
and receive fresh vegetables through the growing season, a CSF allows people to buy a share and be supplied with a variety of locally caught fish. Based on typical summer
catches, CSF shareholders can now expect to receive haddock, flounder, cod, pollock, monkfish, hake and sole, among others. The fish will be gutted and packed
on ice. At the start of the season Kim Libby of the fishermen’s co-op will give lessons on filleting the fish. “It’s easy with a sharp knife,” she says.
Pickup will be on Sundays between 10:30 and 11 a.m. in
the parking lot of First Universalist Church, 345 Broadway in Rockland.
Other arrangements may be made for those who need a slightly modified
pickup time or place.
Those who purchase a full share will receive 8 to 12
pounds of fish per week; a half share will receive about 4 to 6 pounds. Ten
pounds of whole fish may yield 3 to 4 pounds of filleted fish, depending on
the fish. The cost for a full share for 12 weeks will be $360 with half
shares at $180. Quarter shares are an option for those who wish to share a
half share with someone.
Participants are asked to pay for their shares or
provide a deposit by May 18 with the balance due June 8. For more
information, call the Green Sanctuary Committee of First Universalist
Church at 594-1478 or 594-8413. For answers to fish or fishing questions,
call Libby at 372-8462.
EPA Orders Scotts to Stop Selling Certain Pesticides
In April, the U. S. Environmental Protection
Agency (EPA) ordered Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. to stop selling and
distributing several of its pesticide products.
Two of these products are illegal because they were never registered with EPA and display invalid registration numbers on the labels. The other two products are currently registered with EPA. However, Scotts sold and distributed these products before
they were registered, which is a violation of federal law. According to EPA, the labels
on these two products make false or misleading claims or fail to provide adequate safety instructions to protect people and the environment.
The affected products — which can be identified
by the registration numbers that appear on the package — are:
• Miracle Gro Shake ’n Feed with
Weed Preventer All Purpose Plant Food (EPA Reg. No. 62355-4)
• Scotts Bonus S MAX (EPA Reg. No.
538-301)
• Scotts Turf Builder MAX (EPA Reg. No.
538-299)
• SLS Fertilizer with .28 Halts (EPA Reg.
No. 538-304)
The EPA also issued stop-sale orders to nine major
retailers that carry these products: Home Depot, Lowe’s, Wal-Mart,
Ace, Do-It-Best, True Value, Sam’s Club, Meijer and K-Mart.
“We’re taking these steps to ensure that
the product does not end up in consumers’ homes,” said EPA
Region 5 Administrator Mary A. Gade. “Our advice to people who have
purchased these products is to not use them and store them in a safe, cool
and dry place such as a garage or utility shed.”
Scotts, which has agreed to recall these products from
all retail locations across the United States, advises customers not to
return these products to a store, but instead to check their Web site
— www.scotts.com — and call 888-295-0671 for information on how
to return the unused portion of the products to Scotts.
According to the EPA, at this time the risks, if any,
posed by these products are unknown. The EPA and the Ohio Department of
Agriculture are conducting a laboratory analysis of these products. Updated
information will be posted online when it becomes available. Any questions
should be directed to the EPA National Pesticide Information Center at
800-858-7378. The EPA has posted a fact sheet and will be continuing to
post updated information online at www.epa.gov/reg5rcra/ptb/news/.
Jim Hagedorn, chairman and chief executive officer of
Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, said in a statement released on April 24,
“Over the last several days, we learned that one of our former
employees deliberately circumvented company policies, caused invalid
product registration forms to be submitted to federal and state regulators
and then hid those actions from co-workers and managers. We sincerely
apologize to the EPA, our retail partners, our consumers and our
shareholders. . . . We are taking aggressive steps to better understand how
this action occurred and to seek to avoid any reoccurrences.”
Talk About Lyme Disease in Maine at Camden Library
Dr. Beatrice Szantyr of Lincoln will present a slide
show and discussion of Lyme disease in Maine at the Camden Public Library
on Tuesday, May 13, at 6:30 p.m. She will focus on awareness, risk factors,
prevention and symptomology of the disease. Szantyr is a board-certified
internist and pediatrician who has spent several years researching and
educating the public about Lyme disease in New England. She is a graduate
of the University of Connecticut School of Medicine and St. Louis
University Hospitals.
Lyme disease is the number one vector-borne disease in
both Maine and the United States. Although no deaths have been reported in
Maine, Lyme disease is found everywhere in the state; one may assume that
if one finds a deer tick it is infected with Lyme disease. People should be
especially careful in wooded or forested areas, around wild, unmaintained
landscapes with high grass and around brush or leaf piles.
According to the Mainely Ticks Web site, the Centers
for Disease Control (CDC) reported 19,931 cases of Lyme disease nationwide
in 2006, with the majority of infections occurring in the northeast and
mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. In Maine, the Maine CDC
statistics show 1,599 reported cases in 1996-2006; Maine recorded 529 Lyme
cases during 2007. Officials concede, however, that actual totals may be
much higher. According to the CDC, “studies from the early 1990s
suggest that Lyme disease cases were underreported by six- to 12-fold in
some areas where Lyme disease is endemic.”
Anyone who spends time outdoors in the spring, summer, or fall in proximity to deer tick habitat is at risk. Hikers, gardeners, golfers and even children playing in the yard are all at risk. It is estimated that more than 75% of Lyme disease cases are contracted within
100 feet of the home. Even though
humans are not the tick’s first choice of host, suburban sprawl into wooded
habitat has placed people
in closer proximity to white-tailed deer, the adult ticks’ natural host and chief source of transportation. Contrary to popular belief, small rodents, not deer, are responsible for transmitting the Lyme disease bacteria to ticks. A typical mouse can carry more than 100 ticks during peak tick activity periods and all have the potential to transmit Lyme disease.
Piotti Talk at Camden Library on the Role of Farmland
Preservation
John Piotti, executive director of Maine Farmland Trust, will be speaking on “Revitalizing Local Farming:
The Role
of Farmland Preservation” at the Camden Public Library at 6:30 p.m.
on Thursday, May 15.
Maine Farmland Trust is partnering with Aldermere Farm
to preserve the Erickson Farm
on Route 90 in Rockport, located close to Rockport Elementary School, Ashwood School, and Camden Hills Regional High
School. This property includes 35 acres of farmland that are critical to Aldermere’s cattle operation. Maine Farmland Trust purchased the property last
July in order to permanently protect all of the open farmland and a good portion of the 60-acre woodland through an agricultural conservation easement, and has until July to repay the loan for the purchase. On repayment, the land will be turned over to Aldermere Farm, a program of Maine Coast Heritage Trust.
Maine Farmland Trust, a statewide organization with
headquarters in Belfast, has helped preserve 10,000 acres of working
farmland since its founding in 1999, often in partnership with local land
trusts. This is its first project in the Camden/Rockport area, Piotti sees
a bright future for farming in Maine, and more specifically in midcoast
Maine. Much of the new opportunity is within farms that serve local
markets. The biggest challenge is not the demand for local food, but the
high cost of farmland in midcoast Maine, which often prevents new farmers
from moving to the area. High land costs are also a problem for existing
farmers. It not only pushes up farmers’ property taxes, but makes it
impossible for them to purchase leased land when it comes on the market.
Once preserved through an agricultural easement, farmland will change hands
at its value as farmland, not as potential house lots. Piotti feels that
this is the key to the future of farming, particularly in midcoast Maine.
Beyond working farmland and scenic vistas, the Erickson
Farm also provides opportunities for local recreation and perhaps creative
educational and community opportunities. The property sold for $965,000.
Maine Farmland Trust has secured a federal grant that will cover about a
third of the cost. A small portion of the woodland could be resold to raise
additional funds. But most of the remaining funds will come from local
fund-raising.
Spring Events Abound at Aldermere Farm
Addy Bragg of the Farmhands Program Photo by
Heidi Howard
Aldermere Farm in Rockport is offering programs and
events this spring that will appeal to agricultural and nature lovers
alike. First, Aldermere Farm will host a spring farmhand session from 3:30
to 5 p.m. on Thursdays for six weeks from May 15 to June 19. This program
is for youth between the ages of 11 and 18 who want a chance to get up
close and personal with the “Belties.” Participants will
learn to halter, groom, lead and handle the farm’s young calves and
heifers.
Also, Kathie Egan Gass, local art teacher and nature enthusiast, will lead a trek through the woods to the ocean on Sunday, May 18, from 10 a.m. to noon. Participants will wind their way to a rocky beach on the coast where they will exercise their observation skills
by sketching the coastal beauty. Bring a backpack, water bottle, snack, appropriate outerwear, a clipboard with paper and favorite drawing tools. All skill levels are welcome. This trek is ideal for ages 8 and up. The workshop is free, but donations are appreciated, at www.ericksonfarm.org, to help preserve a local farm.
In case of rain the workshop will be cancelled.
To register for either event, call 236-2739 or e-mail jjardine@mcht.org.
