CRITTER CHATTER: Speaking of quarantine… Part I

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A pair of young fox became new residents recently. (photo courtesy of Don Cote)

by Jayne Winters

As we try to adjust to social distancing, I wondered about what warrants quarantining at wildlife rehab centers. Indoor and outdoor caging is required to separate incoming injured, and perhaps sick, wild animals from people as well as other wild or domestic animals on site. It is imperative that personal safety and confinement protocols be strictly followed to prevent the transmission of disease and parasites. A “simple” scratch or bite could easily result in serious infection and costly treatment. Let this serve as another reminder that handling wildlife can be risky business and should be done by individuals with knowledge and experience.

When a new animal is admitted to the Duck Pond Wildlife Care Center, it undergoes a physical examination and is assessed for age, injuries, symptoms of illness and general demeanor. Initially, it is kept separated (litter-mates are usually kept together) so that caregivers can observe its activity, feeding habits and temperament (shy, assertive), as well as treat any wounds. If the animal is large enough, a rabies shot is administered as soon as possible. Those who work at the Center are required to have preventative rabies vaccinations if they will be handling any animals to protect themselves before possible exposure to the virus. If there is any evidence of rabies, the animal is euthanized immediately and sent to the state lab for confirmation. Booster shots are given for additional protection to anyone who came into contact with the animal.

Rabies is the disease most of us think of when discussing quarantine, as it is found in our domestic pets as well as wildlife. It is a zoonotic viral disease, meaning it can spread between animals and people. The rabies virus affects the central nervous system, eventually causing inflammation in the brain. It is usually transmitted through the saliva (spit) from the bite of an infected animal, but sometimes young animals can contract it from their mothers through broken skin or mucous membranes (eyes, nose or mouth). Any mammal can be infected with rabies, but raccoons, skunks, foxes, coyotes and bats are the most common carriers. Deer, rabbits, woodchucks, squirrels, rats and mice are susceptible, but rarely diagnosed.

The incubation period for rabies – the time from getting infected to showing symptoms – can be from five days to 12 months, with an average of just less than three months. The animal has no symptoms of illness during this time, but when the virus reaches the brain, it multiplies quickly and the animal begins to show signs of the disease. Symptoms vary: some animals appear shy and fearful; some are aggressive; others stumble as though drunk or appear lame. Extreme salivation (foaming at the mouth) and convulsions can also occur. Once the clinical symptoms are seen, the animal usually dies within five days.

There is no cure for rabies and if left untreated, is fatal. If an individual has been bitten by or exposed to a rabid animal, s/he should immediately clean the wound with soap and water for 10-15 minutes, contact the local game warden or animal control officer and seek medical attention for treatment (a series of injections over several weeks’ time). In humans, the rabies incubating period usually develops within 3-8 weeks after the bite, although in some cases symptoms can occur within 10 days after being bitten.

NOTE: Maine Inland Fisheries & Wildlife reported 89 cases of rabies state-wide in 2019, the majority (38) of which were in raccoons.

Next month I’ll write about mange and parvovirus – both treatable diseases, but highly contagious with often heartbreaking results.

Donald Cote operates the Duck Pond Wildlife Care Center on Rte. 3 in Vassalboro. It is a non-profit federal and state permitted rehab facility which is supported by his own resources and outside donations. Mailing address: 1787 North Belfast Ave., Vassalboro ME 04989 TEL: (207) 445-4326. EMAIL: wildlifecarecenter@gmail.com.

GROWING YOUR BUSINESS: This was their finest hour

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Growing your businessby Dan Beaulieu
Business consultant

“Do not let us speak of darker days, let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not darker days, these are great days, the greatest days our country has ever lived.” – Winston Churchill

The great orator was talking about the bombing of London when he said these words. A time, far more serious and scarier even than what we are going through at this time. But instead of talking of gloom and doom he was talking instead of greatness, the greatness it takes to not only endure but also strive to thrive in serious and dangerous days, like the ones we are experiencing right now.

Dangerous times do make great times. Perilous times tend to force people to find the greatness in themselves.

And then there is this quote from Churchill, “Continuous effort – not strength or intelligence – is the key to unlocking our potential.”

Yes, we are in one of those times. Times when we are all facing challenges. The interesting thing is that this time the enemy is not some other guy, some other country, no this time we are all on the same playing field, globally we are all facing this challenge.

If you, at any time in your life wondered how you would have reacted in a dangerous situation. If you have read books, or watched movies, or heard stories of brave men and women doing great, and courageous deeds of heroism and wondered how you would have reacted in the same situation. If you would have literally risen to the occasion and faced that same danger the same way these people did, then this is your time to find out. Your time to learn what stuff you are made of. This is your time to rise above the fray and show your courage, your strength, your endurance in the eye of the storm and stand up to the challenge.

I know how hard things are for people with small businesses right now. Your restaurant is closed so you have been reduced to take-out service. If you are a contractor, jobs are being postponed or even cancelled as customers are in lock down and are not comfortable with you being in their homes. Retail business have reduced hours. Things look bleak right now, but we have to keep on keeping on if we are going to not only just survive but thrive doing these times.

So, during the next few weeks we will be addressing these issues and helping you to find ways to survive and maybe even grow your business during these trying times:

Here are three strategies to get your started:

Contractors: because many buildings are empty right now, municipal buildings, office buildings, public buildings this is a good time for you to go into these buildings and work on projects. Market your company as someone who could do some painting, or flooring, or wiring while these buildings are empty.

Retail stores: Offer special sales. Offer door pick-up or better yet delivery. If you have a website use that for communications, advertising and payment collection. If not, then take ten minutes and set up a Facebook account to do the same thing. Or there is always the USPS.

Landscapers: You have it better than most since you work outdoors. Offer special early bird specials. Early spring clean-up, anything that will help keep your team employed.

And finally, find a way to keep your spirits up. As I said earlier, this is our time, our generation will be judged by how we dealt with this situation. We will be remembered for what we did when the world was at a crisis point and how in the end, we came out of it better, better people, better companies, better countries and a better world.

I’ll leave you now with another quote from Sir Winston Churchill, “Let us therefore embrace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will say, ‘This was their finest hour.’”

Stay safe.

Note: I have put together a short plan of ideas on how to keep your business going through these hard times. If you want a copy email me at danbbeaulieu@aol.com or call me at 207-649-0879.

The moose is loose!

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Katie Esancy, of Vassalboro, sent in this photo of a moose crossing the pavement on the Hannaford Hill Road, in Vassalboro.

SCORES & OUTDOORS: What are crazy worms and where did they come from?

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The common earthworm, top, and the crazy worm, below. Note the difference in the clitellum (a raised band encircling the body of worms, made up of reproductive segments), and its location on the two species. (photo courtesy of Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)

Roland D. Halleeby Roland D. Hallee

Did you know there are no native earthworms in Maine? Here in the Northeast where glaciers scrubbed our bedrock bare a few years back we have no native earthworms. Non-native earthworms from Europe (such as nightcrawlers) have become well established here through early colonial trading. Though they are beneficial to our gardens, earthworms can have destructive effects on our forests.

Are you tired of hearing about new invasive species. Yeah – right there with you. Aside from the fact that there’s too much bad news around as it is, we’re still working on a solution for those good old-fashioned pests that rival the common cold in terms of eluding conquest. Japanese beetles, European chafers, buckthorn, wild parsnip, Japanese knotweed – enough already.

And now, there is another species of worms out there that are not so welcome.

Crazy worms are a type of earthworm native to East Asia. (Here we go with Asian invaders, again. It seems every invasive species, of any kind, originates in Asia). They are smaller than nightcrawlers, reproduce rapidly, are much more active, and have a more voracious appetite. This rapid life cycle and ability to reproduce asexually gives them a competitive edge over native organisms, and even over nightcrawlers. They mature twice as fast as European earthworms, completing two generations per season instead of just one. And their population density gets higher than other worms. And they can get to be eight inches in length, longer than a nightcrawler. When disturbed, crazy worms jump and thrash about, behaving like a threatened snake.

Crazy worms are known and sold for bait and composting under a variety of names including snake worms, Alabama jumper, jumping worms, Asian crazy worm. They are in the genus Amynthas, and distinguishing between the several species in the genus can be difficult. All species in this genus are considered invasive in Maine. It is illegal to import them into Maine (or to propagate or possess them) without a wildlife importation permit from the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife (MDIFW). For more information, visit MDIFW’s Fish & Wildlife in Captivity webpage.

crazy worm

Crazy worms are native to Korea and Japan, and are now found in the United States from Maine to South Carolina and west to Wisconsin. Crazy worms were first collected from a Maine greenhouse in 1899, though an established population of this active and damaging pest was not discovered here until about 2014 when two populations were discovered in Augusta (one at the Viles Arboretum) and two populations were found in Portland. They have also been found in a rhododendron display at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens, in Boothbay. It is believed that crazy worms are not yet widespread in Maine, but they have been discovered in some new locations since 2014, including nursery settings. If allowed to spread, crazy worms could cause serious damage to horticultural crops and the forest ecosystem in Maine.

So, why are crazy worms a problem? Crazy worms change the soil by accelerating the decomposition of leaf litter on the forest floor. They turn good soil into grainy, dry worm castings (a/k/a poop) that cannot support the native understory plants of our forests. Other native plants, fungi, invertebrates, and vertebrates may decline because the forest and its soils can no longer support them. As native species decline, invasive plants may take their place and further exacerbate the loss of species diversity.

In nurseries and greenhouses, crazy worms reduce the functionality of soils and planting media and cause severe drought symptoms. After irrigating or rains, you may find these worms under pots. These worms may be inadvertently moved to new areas with nursery stock, or in soil, mulch, or compost.

Many of Maine’s forests are already under pressure from invasive insect pests, invasive plants, pathogens, and diseases. Crazy worms could cause long-term effects on our forests.

When handled, these worms act crazy, jump and thrash about, behaving more like a threatened snake than a nightcrawler. They may even shed their tail when handled. Annual species, tiny cocoons overwinter in the soil, and the best time to find them is late June to mid-October. In nurseries, they can often be found underneath pots that are sitting on the ground or on landscape fabric. In forests, they tend to be near the surface, just under accumulations of slash or duff.

There are precautions you can take.

Do not buy or use crazy worms for composting, vermicomposting, gardening, or bait. Do not discard live worms in the wild, but rather dispose of them (preferably dead) in the trash. Check your plantings – know what you are purchasing and look at the soil. Buy bare root stock when possible. Be careful when sharing or moving plantings, cocoons may be in the soil.

What ever happened to just having regular nightcrawlers or “trout worms”?

Roland’s trivia question of the week:

In 2008, which Boston Red Sox rookie stole 50 bases?

Answer can be found here.

SOLON & BEYOND: There’s a new business in town

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photo: Simply Rustic Facebook page

Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percyby Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percy
grams29@tds.net
Solon, Maine 04979

Good morning, dear friends. Don’t worry, be happy!

I am so excited and happy to tell you about a wonderful, new shop that has opened in Solon. It is named Simply Rustic, at 1654 River Road, on Thursday and Friday from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m., and Saturday from 10 a.m. – 5 p.m. The phone number is 431-0028.

I was very impressed with all the many items for sale in the house where Gary and Cindy Rogers and their family lived in years ago. It was very welcoming as I went in the door, and I immediately spied something I couldn’t live without! Here is a list of some of her wares: Lamps, small furniture, signs, candles, jewelry, pip berry garlands, Boot jacks, jams, jellies, pickles, dilly Beans, New and used wraths by Wanda Blanchett.

Much USA-made large wooden sunflowers for outside, granite cheese boards, local honey, local maple syrup, stands from live edge wood, and Goats milk soaps and lotions.

Hope you will all support Cindy with her new and unusual shop!

I received an e-mail from Happy Knits in Skowhegan that says Happyknits is now open on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., for phone orders and curbside pickup. Whether its yarn, needles, accessories or patterns, they will be happy to bag it up or mail it out to you. Give them a call, or contact us by email or on Facebook.

Came across an old The Carney Brook Chronicle, dated April 17, 1998, paper that I wrote for back in those days, when I was looking for things to write about now, in a world that has changed. That paper was owned by Terry Drummond and he was very good about putting in whatever I wrote.

That week it happened to be, Memories of a Lost Art, by Marilyn Rogers. The end of an era took place 22 years ago and log driving has become a lost art. It is my belief that history should be remembered as it was before progress set in with the constant rumble and roar of the big trucks now on our highways. Twelve years later I wrote a similar article for the Somerset Reporter. Perhaps there aren’t too many log drivers left in this area that will recall fond memories from these words, but it is my hope that some in the younger generation will find it interesting. The words of the wonderful book Salt say it so well: “If somebody don’t go after things like that – it’s an art that will be lost forever. There will be no remaking of it.

This story will center on river driving in the Dead River area. It started every year as soon as the ice was out, usually in late April. The drive would start on the south branch of the Dead River and it took about two weeks to put in a landing. Large cranes were used to pile the river banks high with pulp, which often extended out into the stream where the pulp wood froze together.

There were two boatmen and a dynamite man to each bateau, a small boat used in river drives, and they would have to open the stream so the pulp could begin its only one journey to the mills drown stream. This was done by poling the bateau upstream where the dynamite man would place charges of dynamite on a long pole, light the fuse and place it under the pile of wood and then get down stream quickly before it blew. It usually took two days of using dynamite before the stream was clear and what was left on land was bulldozed into the stream and then the “rear” started.

Men in the bateaus picked off the center jams and others waded in the cold water clearing pulp from the bushes along the banks . It took about three weeks to drive the south branch – this was eleven hours a day, seven days a week. The men had to work while they had water.

The south branch was all rapids with one set of rips after another except for five miles of quick, deep water and then more rapids. The north branch was also driven but it didn’t have as many rapids. Different companies did each drive. For many years there wasn’t any drive on big Spencer Stream but in the years 1957 through 1959 it was driven again. Ten thousand cords of pulp was taken out each year and two men worked every day breaking up jams when the water was low. I interviewed my stepfather, Clarence Jones, for the information in this story. (Will continue the story next week, but must leave enough room for Percy’s memoir, and here it is…:

“The more you read, the more you know, The more you know, the smarter you grow. The smarter you grow the stronger your voice, when speaking your mind or making your choice.”

I’M JUST CURIOUS: What has happened to us?

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by Debbie Walker

This is another one of those columns I must ask you to not blame The Town Line editor. This is just my thoughts on a subject and my curiosity how you would want to react. And I said ‘would want to react’ because there are situations we might want to say or do __whatever________ but we maybe we are shy or, whatever.

You are on a flight home and you notice a uniformed soldier on board. You become aware he is escorting a fellow soldier who is in a casket in the cargo hold of the plane. You have just been informed the soldier will be the first to debark the plane, he will go below and march with the Honor Guard as they bring a fellow soldier off to present to his family. You are asked to “remain in your seat and quiet, please.”

Our traveling widow of a 20-year Navy doctor is on this flight. She had a thought and went to each person (before the plane began descending). She wondered ‘wouldn’t it be nice if we sang the national anthem as the procession begins?’ Most of the traveler’s thought this was a wonderful idea and there were a few who said they did not care to. Okay, so they just do not participate.

Just before landing the flight attendant comes to you and says it is against company policy to do the singing and wants you to tell the others. She said there were a few people who were not comfortable with the idea. The Navy widow decided to not co-operate. But the attendant got on the PA system again with the instructions to please stay seated and observe the request for quiet.

The Navy widow saw the singing as respectful. She felt so bad that she was not brave enough to go through with it because she was afraid of repercussions with the airlines. She was hurt thinking what her husband would say about that. She felt she let him down.

Imagine, the plane lands on American soil (last I knew Atlanta was part of the United States), they wanted to honor the American soldiers on American soil, with an American-based airline. They were instructed to not sing the National Anthem.

I want to write this for another reason besides the injustice heaped on this woman and the others. Please understand I am, of course, curious; how did we ever get to this point? An American soldier, escorting a deceased American soldier, lands on American soil and because of a couple of people were unhappy about it Americans could not sing our national anthem. What has happened to us? When? There have always been people who did not want to be ‘part of …….’ However, these days that is all it takes. What about our rights? I do not buy the line that “we don’t want to offend”. A friend of mine has a saying, heifer dust!

I understand our lady received a letter of an apology from the airline and they assured her that the attendant was wrong, they had no such policy. Oh well folks, the damage was already done.

Okay enough of that. You know what I am curious about this time. But I also want to share a wonderful event! I became a great-grandmother today to a beautiful little girl. Addison Grace came on May 6, 2020, and, of course, I am in love! We all are here! I cannot wait to see her and rock her; it’s one of my favorite things about having a baby to spoil! Rocking and reading to them.

Have a great week! Thanks again, for reading.

REVIEW POTPOURRI: American Country Classics & Henry Thoreau

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Henry David Thoreau

Peter Catesby Peter Cates

American Country Classics

A Columbia Musical Treasury
6P 7157, six LPs, released 1980.

Columbia Musical Treasury was an offshoot of the Columbia Record Club, later known as Columbia House, and it released numerous, moderately-priced record sets of best-selling artists, such as Percy Faith, Dionne Warwick, and the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, or musical genres like classical, easy listening, gospel, big band and country and western, the last category fitting the above title in a truly authentic manner.

American Country Classics contains 60 selections that span from Roy Acuff’s 1936 hit, Wabash Cannonball to harmonica virtuoso Charlie McCoy’s 1972 Orange Blossom Special (McCoy is the only one of all the contributing artists still living, at 79.). It includes the Carter Family’s Wildwood Flower, Red Foley’s Old Shep, Hank Thompson’s Wild Side of Life, with Kitty Wells’s rebuttal, It Wasn’t God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels, Margaret Whiting’s and Jimmy Wakely’s Slipping Around, and Jean Shepherd’s A Satisfied Mind.

There are several gems that may have been hits in their day but I was hearing them for the first time. The lesser known covers of certain classic songs stick out: Bob Atcher’s I’m Thinking Tonight of My Blue Eyes, Jenny Lou Carson’s Jealous Heart, the Pinetoppers Mockin’ Bird Hill, and Slim Whitman’s Indian Love Call, which is light years different from Nelson Eddy and Jeannette Macdonald’s old Victor 78. And selected first timers such as the Flatt and Scruggs Cabin on the Hill, Merle Travis’s So Round So Firm So Fully Packed, and Carson J. Robison’s Life Just Gets Tee-Jus, Don’t It? worked their spell.

This collection and the Smithsonian one of Classic Country Recordings both filled huge gaps in documenting an important musical legacy of our nation’s history.

Country legend Hank Williams (1923-1953) made an astute comment about Roy Acuff (1903-1992), whom Williams and many others considered the father of country music, during a 1952 interview: “He’s the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn’t worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God.”

* * * * * * * * ** *

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), of Walden fame, wrote the following passage about his hike through the Maine wilderness during the 1840s:

“Perhaps I most fully realized that this was primeval, untamed, and forever untamable ‘Nature’, or whatever else men called it, while coming down this part of the mountain. We were passing over ‘Burnt Lands,’ burnt by lightning, perchance, though they showed no recent marks of fire, hardly so much as a charred stump ……When I reflected what man, what brother or sister or kinsman of our race made it and claimed it, I expected the proprietor to rise up and dispute my passage. It is difficult to conceive of a region uninhabited by man. We habitually presume his presence and influence everywhere. And yet we have not seen pure Nature, unless we have seen her thus vast and drear and unhuman, though in the midst of cities. Nature was here something savage and awful, though beautiful. I looked with awe at the ground I trod on, to see what the Powers had made there…. This was that Earth of which we have heard, made out of Chaos and Old Night…..Man was not to be associated with it. It was Matter, vast, terrific- not this Mother Earth that we have heard of.”

FOR YOUR HEALTH – The Safety of Mushrooms: From Harvest to Home

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Mushrooms, that tasty, versatile superfood, are harvested very carefully, with both worker and consumer health and safety in mind.

(NAPSI)—With new procedures and protocols from the impact of COVID-19, mushroom farms around the country are building on their strong foundations of safety.

Consider Maria. Before she begins her shift at the local mushroom farm’s packing facility, she pulls essential items from her locker: facemask, hairnet, gloves and a smock. Now in “uniform,” she takes her place on the processing line, 6 feet apart from colleagues, where she fills tills of the mushrooms that find their way to your grocery store. What may surprise many people to learn is that the items Maria puts on before each shift are nothing new—they have been part of Maria’s uniform since she began packing eight years ago.

With the advent of COVID-19, all segments of agriculture have had to adapt their business practices. For mushroom farms, that means leaning in and building on their strong foundations of safety, quality and excellence to continue to provide this nutritious “superfood” to the public.

Mushroom farms and their packing houses, like other commodities, comply strictly, every hour of every day, to food safety and worker protection laws under U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other federal, state and local regulators. Farms are inspected routinely, often unannounced. So, for Maria, learning new guidelines wasn’t difficult. She was glad to find there’s no connection between the spread of the Coronavirus and the food supply chain—you can’t catch COVID-19 from food.

With a myriad of safety procedures already in place, mushroom operations quickly incorporated COVID-19 guidelines—including requiring harvesters, packers and shippers to social distance, increase handwashing and increase the frequency of sanitizing processes, among other protocols. While public attention on farm and food worker safety has heightened, today and every day, facilities that grow, harvest and pack mushrooms are continually and steadfastly making the safety of both their workers and their products their top priority.

That’s good when you think about all the benefits mushrooms bring to consumers. Mushrooms have long been celebrated for their gluten-free, powerful nutrients and low calories, sodium, fat and cholesterol.

Your immune system is made up of a network of cells, tissues and organs that work together to protect you from infection and maintain your overall health. Mushrooms have unique levels of selenium and vitamins D and B that support immune systems.

So, the next time you’re social distancing in the grocery store, you may want to pick up a till of mushrooms and use them in your favorite dishes. Who knows, maybe they will have been packed by Maria.

GARDEN WORKS: How to plant a garden when seed companies are out-of-stock

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Luscious tomatoes. (photo courtesy of Old Farmers Almanac)

Emily Catesby Emily Cates

Are you just itching to plant a garden this year? For many, this is the year, no doubt about it! Faced with COVID-19 uncertainty, droves of folks are inundating seed companies with orders, creating backorders and out-of-stocks to the moon and back. So what’s a gardener-in-waiting to do? Well, read on for a few suggestions. Don’t worry, there’s still hope: The answer might already be in your pantry! Yes, let’s look at some seedy characters in the cupboard that just might help us.

Do you have organic potatoes, dry beans, fresh tomatoes, winter squashes, carrots, or bulbs of garlic and onions kicking around? If so, you could have the start of a garden without even knowing it.

While most commercially-cultivated varieties of garden vegetables like tomatoes are bred for uniformity and keeping qualities as opposed to flavor, it’s still possible to grow something from them — even if the results are not as good as their parent plant. Oftentimes seed saved from a hybrid cultivar will produce inferior offspring, but this can be avoided if the parent plant is an open-pollinated variety that didn’t cross with another cultivar.

The chances of having seeds that are open pollinated, true-to-type, and adapted for our area are increased if the veggie was locally grown. That squash you bought from the farmers’ market last fall? It might be kinda mushy now, but you can try planting the seeds after the frost in nice rich soil, or in a compost or manure pile. If the farmer and her neighbors only grew buttercup squash, for example, then the seeds should grow up into delicious buttercups.

The problems with hybrids and cross-pollination are nonexistent with clones. Clones, by this definition, are plants propagated by separating and planting individual pieces of plant material that grow up into individual plants. Think garlic. Or potato, where you can just go ahead and plant a whole tuber that will grow up into a potato plant which produces several potatoes. I like to plant my spuds this way, especially the small ones. Large potatoes with lots of eyes can be divided into pieces with a few eyes per section. Ones that have begun to sprout are desirable, and green areas are fine. Just make sure they look healthy and aren’t treated with sprout-inhibitors notoriously applied to supermarket spuds.

I have heard of folks replanting carrot and other root tops to start a new plant, but honestly, I’ve never tried this. It would be a good way to promote flowering of the plant and produce seeds for saving, provided the guidelines for open pollination and true-to-types are followed.

We’ve all had the fortune of onions deciding to sprout behind our backs. Instead of chucking them, why not plant them and harvest their “scallions” from the garden?

What about beans? Surely you have a jar of dried beans lurking somewhere, waiting patiently for an apocalypse to compel someone to notice them. Now is the time!

Also, those organic wheat berries you planned on sprouting can also be sowed, exponentially increasing their amount as their plants mature and produce grains. Wheat straw is a good mulch—bonus!

If there’s any doubt of the viability of the seed, a few seeds can be folded into a wet paper towel and kept warm and moist for several days up to a couple of weeks and watched for signs of sprouting.

Well, I hope these ideas are helpful. If you have any you’d like to share, we would love to hear from you! Thanks for reading, enjoy your garden.

Emily Cates is a master gardener living in China and can be reached by email at EmilyCates@townline.org.

SOLON & BEYOND: MCS Library newsletter ready for viewing

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Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percyby Marilyn Rogers-Bull & Percy
grams29@tds.net
Solon, Maine 04979

Good morning, dear friends. Don’t worry, be happy!

This morning I have some e-mails to share with you, and as always, I thank the people who send me some news.

The following is from Angie Stockwell;

Dear Readers: COVID-19 has not stopped the presses from running nationally, locally, or at the Margaret Chase Smith Library. The May newsletter is ready for viewing. Most all activity here has been done virtually and it seems that may be the “new normal” for awhile yet. Featured are the Essay Contest winners; National History Day updates; Harley Rogers’ update; links for educational resources; and the 50″ anniversary of Senator Smith’s Second Declaration of Conscience. Here’s the link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1oNy-DoaMUHITci_uXtAV6wlabIoJjd3h/view.

Stay safe, social distance, and be well, Enjoy!

The other e-mail I received last Friday is from Happyknits store, in Skowhegan, and it starts: Good Morning, Yarn Friends! We’re trying a few new things as we adapt to the world around us. One of those new things is a weekly newsletter offering some ideas of how to keep our collective spirits up until we can see each other face-to-face again. Another “new” thing is that we will be in the store on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays from 10 a.m. – 3 p.m., to provide you with curbside service or phone help. We can also pack things up and put them in the mail for you. We’ll be featuring some kits and yarn, and starting a knit-along on Ravelry.

By their very nature, knitters are people that look forward to what is still to come. We think Casapinka’s Breathe and Hope shawl is the perfect project for knitting optimism into your day. We will be starting our own Breathe and Hope Knit-Along on our Happyknits Ravelry Group which began May 8, and we hope you will connect with us and your Happyknits friends by joining the group. We’ve got some kit options available here at the store or we can put something together for you if you have a special request.

Have been trying to organize all the items I have saved during my many years of writing for different papers and came across some more clippings that I had cut out. I also took the pictures for some of the articles. Don’t know which paper this one was in; but the headline caught my attention … Solon couple saves Canadian! By Marilyn Rogers, Solon Correspondent. Solon: Late Friday night, Nov. 30, Larry and Wanda Blanchet were returning home and met a large Canadian truck on the bridge in Solon. Larry glanced in his rear view mirror after they passed and saw fire and sparks coming out from under the truck.

Thinking of the safety of the driver, he hurriedly drove to the Solon Superette and turned around, then raced back through town trying to catch the truck. The truck was rolling right along but the Blanchets caught up with it the other side of River Road and by flashing his lights Larry got the Canadian driver to stop.

Larry was able to converse and got it across that the guy’s truck was on fire. They got the fire extinguisher from the truck and used that all up and the fire still persisted, so Larry went to the home of Gary Davis nearby and got water, finally extinguishing the blaze.

A wheel bearing had caught on fire and oil kept the blaze going: it got so hot the tire exploded.

The Blanchets brought the Canadian back to the home of Wanda’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Clayton Adams, where he called his boss in Québec. There was a picture of the couple who had helped the Canadian with that awful situation, and thankfully no one was hurt.

And now for Percy’s memoir; Think on this a bit this week; How to live a hundred years happily: Do not be on the outlook for ill health. Keep usefully at work. Have a hobby. Learn to be satisfied. Keep on liking people. Meet adversity valiantly. Meet the problems of life with decision. Above all, maintain a good sense of humor, best done by saying something pleasant every time you get a chance. Live and make the present hour pleasant and cheerful. Keep your mind out of the past, and keep it out of the future. Hope you have a wonderful week.