by Roland D. Hallee Question of the week, it seems, is this: Are we having an epidemic of grubs? I’ve been asked that question many times in the past week. It seems folks in our area are seeing an increase in grub activity in the lawns. What are grubs and what makes them appear in […]
by Roland D. Hallee It’s simply amazing what you come across in the woods of Maine. While preparing to open camp for the season, my wife and I were helping friends do some raking and leaf pickup, when the wife showed me something that she had raked up. It looked kind of odd. OK, something […]
by Roland D. Hallee I will start this column by saying I know we don’t have any of these around here, but on a recent vacation to the Outer Banks, of North Carolina, I saw several of them. A group of us rented a house on the beach in Nags Head, North Carolina, for a […]
by Roland D. Hallee The weather has warmed, the snow is melting and the streams are bustling with activity as the spring runoff is in full swing. On a recent trip to Vermont, my wife and I saw many streams along the route swelling their banks and looking primed for brook trout fishing. I have […]
by Roland D. Hallee A couple of weeks ago we took a stroll down the west side of Main St., in Waterville, and I fore warned you there maybe a few gaps along the way I didn’t remember. Well, thanks to some readers, who obviously have a better memory than I, gave me calls to […]
by Roland D. Hallee What is more inspiring than seeing that first robin of the spring? The American robin, Turdus migratorius, is a member of the thrush family. It is named after the European robin because of its reddish-orange breast, though the two species are not closely related, with the European robin belonging to the […]
by Roland D. Hallee A couple of weeks ago we traveled out of The Plains to take a walk down the east side of Main St. This week, we’ll take a stroll down the west side. On this side, because we are talking about more than 60 years ago, there are a few gaps that […]
by Roland D. Hallee Another sign of spring is upon us. While out checking and emptying my maple sap buckets last Monday, I saw a common house fly on the side of the bucket. The first one of the season. A sure sign of spring, but also the beginning of their irritation. The housefly is […]
by Roland D. Hallee Over the past weekend, I read a news release about materials collected at a Chinese market near where the first human cases of Covid-19 were identified showing raccoon dog DNA comingled with the virus, suggesting the pandemic may have originated from animals, not a lab. The World Health Organization director general […]
by Roland D. Hallee Even though The Plains was a self-sustaining community of its own, there were times when we had to go downtown to get some necessities. Now, that brings up a question because people called it differently. Some people would say “I’m going downtown,” while others would say, “I’m going uptown.” I never […]