Pictured in the photo above are, from left to right, Jason Howell, Heather Bannister, Ariana Eaton, Jackie Alix and Dan Labriola.
LYME — On Monday evening, members of Lyme Ambulance and Lyme Fire Company turned out to train with a Life Star crew. The training exercise included the Life Star helicopter landing in a field at Tiffany Farm on Hamburg Rd., which is one of the specified landing zones in Lyme.
The fire and ambulance service members that participated in the exercise described it as, “A great night of training.”
The Life Star helicopter landed at the side of Hamburg Rd. in Lyme.
In operation for more than 35 years, Life Star is Harford Hospital’s critical care 24/7 air medical service.
Trained crews, including medical personnel flying out of Midstate Medical Center in Meriden and William W. Backus Hospital in Norwich, transport more than 1,000 trauma and emergency patients each year. The crew consists of a flight nurse, flight respiratory therapist, pilot, mechanic, and communication specialist.
The LIFE STAR service operates two American American Eurocopter EC-145. Both can travel at 155 miles per hour and either can be airborne within minutes of a request for service.
Given the life-or-death nature of their mission, Life Star helicopters have air space priority over virtually every other plane in Connecticut.
LYME/OLD LYME — The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)’s latest COVID-19 Community Levels Map for Connecticut (CT), pictured above and dated Thursday, Jan. 19, shows an improvement over the previous week’s map dated Jan. 13. New London County not only remains in the Yellow/Medium category but Fairfield County has rejoined it there.
The remaining six counties in Connecticut, however, are still in the Orange/High Category.
Because all eight Connecticut counties are either in the High or Medium categories, the CT Department of Public Health (DPH) recommends that all residents consider wearing a mask in public indoor spaces. People who are at high risk for severe illness should consider additional measures to minimize their exposure to COVID-19 and other respiratory illnesses.
To help protect themselves, their families, and the state’s most vulnerable residents and to preserve capacity in the CT health care system, people are also advised to stay up to date with COVID-19 vaccines and get tested if they have symptoms.
The links to all these resources can be found in the DPH COVID-19 toolbox at www.ct.gov/coronavirus.
Additionally, the Federal Government has now made available four free self-test kits per household. These free self-test kits can be ordered by visiting www.covid.gov/tests.
The COVID-19 Community Levels inform CDC recommendations on prevention measures, such as masking and testing. The guidelines include a color-coded system available on the CDC website of “Low,” “Medium,” and “High.” This approach focuses on preventing hospitals and health care systems from being overwhelmed and directing prevention efforts toward protecting people at high risk for severe illness.
Editor’s Note: This article is based on a news release issued Jan. 7, 2023 by the Connecticut Department of Public Health and sent to LymeLine by Ledge Light Health District.
Your yard in winter can be an anchor, connecting heart, body, mind and spirit to Mother Nature.
Maureen Haseley-Jones is “The English Lady.”
I know it is only early January, but it is never to early to begin to plan for this season in your garden. My motto has always been to plan, before action and production. Mother Nature is waiting for us with her gifts of renewal, growth and nourishment as we begin to plan for the coming season. She tells us that in this wonderful pastime called ‘gardening,’ we can escape from the trials and tribulations of our world. Each day we move gradually from the dark into the light to a longer, brighter day and welcome spring.
A few weeks ago, I retrieved my second batch of Narcissus from the brown paper bag in the refrigerator and planted them on pebbles, with just enough pebbles to anchor the bulbs in place or you may use potting soil. I use tall glass vases, making sure to keep the pebbles moist with just enough water to cover the bottom of each bulb.
I brought my Rosemary plant indoors in September, as Rosemary is not hardy outdoors in Zone six. I spray the plant twice weekly with warm water and run a cold-water humidifier and two germ guardian air cleaners with UV lights for personal health and the health of my plants.
After planting the paper white Narcissus, I placed them in a dark, cool closet until the foliage is about four inches tall. Today I moved them from the dark closet to a cool room with indirect light and where the temperature remains at about 65 degrees. When the buds are almost ready to open, I will place them in a brighter area to be enjoyed, not only for their bloom but also the heady fragrance which permeates the house. The new bloom draws me out of the winter doldrums and their gentle fragrance lifts my spirits.
Paper-white narcissi have a beautiful fragrance. Photo by Masaaki Komori on Unsplash.
I know that the severe changes, which are occurring with global warming combined with pollution in the air, water and the earth, are severely damaging our planet. Your personal contribution to saving our planet is to organically tend the soil with compost, manure and natural brown mulch, which builds the humus component in your soil. Your plants and vegetables will thrive, as will you. Throughout the year, allow your garden to anchor you, connecting heart, body, mind and spirit to Mother Nature’s life-giving bountiful gifts and spiritual energy.
The cold, harsh winds of January and February extract moisture from trees and shrubs, especially the evergreens. Winter winds are more harmful to plants than cold temperatures, not only causing plant breakage but also soil erosion. For that reason, it is helpful to have a few bags of topsoil and mulch in the garage. With these items on hand, any roots can be covered when they become exposed by wind or frost heave.
Roots exposed to the elements for any length of time can kill the plant, so when you notice exposed roots, quickly cover exposed areas with soil and mulch. When spring arrives, and the earth warms up, the plant can be resettled in place together with composted manure and natural brown mulch to provide protection and nutrition.
On a sunny day in January, take a walk round the garden and breathe in the freshening air, and as you walk, make some notes and decide what worked for you last year and what you will never try again.
Later, when you are back indoors, relaxing in your armchair, browse through the catalogues that began arriving a few months ago. You have already begun making lists of plants that you are thinking of buying. However, a word of caution when gazing at the photos, which are meant to tempt you with their lovely but “doctored up” pictures of plants.
Don’t be fooled by these pictures, instead decide that this season in the garden will be for sensible and organized change. Do not allow your imagination to run amok and get caught up in the fantasy of the brightly colored, high-maintenance garden pictures you see in the catalogues.
Suit your garden to your lifestyle and what will work within your timeframe and physical abilities. If you follow that construct, you will have the time to sit, relax and smell the roses, without being overwhelmed or disappointed.
As you sit and plan for the coming season, it’s important to keep your budget in mind. It’s hard to believe as you look outside at the muted landscape, that in a few months, sunshine and gentle breezes will warm the soil and new growth will appear.
When the soil is dry enough to tread on, winter debris may carefully be cleared away. Then with a clean palette, make a clean edge on the borders; this simple task makes such a difference to the look of a garden. Then in mid -April, add that lovely layer of manure and compost (the ratio being three parts manure to one part compost). With that prep completed, you are ready for the fun stuff — the placing and planting!
For those of you who are vegetable gardeners and look forward to a bountiful year with fruits and vegetables; spring rain, extra irrigation and sunshine will produce delicious bounty. As spring moves along, so will the appearance of both good and bad insects, moles, voles and other critters, that can be dealt with naturally. My remedies for this problem I will give in an upcoming gardening letter.
Your memory of your garden from last season may be lost in the enthusiasm of a new season, therefore, I am asking you to be kind to yourself. If last year you became overwhelmed with too much gardening, and not enough time to relax and smell the roses, the following are some suggestions you might follow to avoid that problem:
For example, send some of your borders back to grass.
If you are tired of mowing all your grass areas, spread wild flower seeds in the grass and enjoy the pleasure of a prairie meadow.
Turn some of the high-maintenance perennial borders into mixed shrub borders. To accomplish this, take out some of the high-maintenance perennials and donate them to a worthy cause.
In their place, plant small- and medium-size evergreen shrubs; some green, some blue and some of the lovely gold species of evergreens. With these shrubs displaying their all-season beauty, add small flowering deciduous trees and shrubs that begin flowering in April and successively through June. The Carlesii viburnum, also known as Korean Spice, is a favorite small shrub of mine, with its white buds that open to a pale pink with the most delightful fragrance.
Add a Ben Franklin tree with its white cup-like blooms and gold center that flowers in August through September.
Nestle three Blue Mist shrubs in the mixed border; this plant will delight with purple blooms and fragrant leaves into September.
On a fence or trellis, plant white autumn clematis.
Add a groundcover as an evergreen framework – my favorite is Myrtle with its glossy leaves and miniature blue flowers that bloom in April.
I feel it is never too soon to introduce your children and grandchildren to the wonders of the garden and begin by introducing them to the garden fairies. Through the years I have asked children to draw a picture of the garden fairy and make a list of questions to ask the fairies, who live in the wild patch in the garden. We all have a wild patch in the garden; and at this point you are probably saying, “Maureen, my garden is one large ‘wild patch.’
Children become so excited and enthused about their lists and pictures of the fairies because what you are showing them is the transformation of science into magic. These days we seem to have forgotten about fairy tales, dreams and magic; it is way past time to bring those wonderful energies back into our lives and into the lives of our children.
In spring and on into summer I would find my children or their friends impatiently checking the garden wanting to see their planting efforts come into bloom. In the vegetable garden they gathered to check what was ready to eat from the produce they had planted. I have found that this introduction to the garden has inspired these children when they become adults to enthusiastically plant and tend gardens of their own.
My son Ian is a great example of this as he has partnered with me through the years in the garden – and thus the old adage that ‘the student is better than the teacher’ has certainly proved to be correct. Ian is a designer par excellence and I invite you to check his website LandscapesbyIan.com and his Facebook page for lovely examples of his work.
In my March gardening tips, I’ll offer you some suggestions of ornamental trees, shrubs and long-blooming perennials. With that list in hand, it is a good idea to obtain your plants from local garden centers that carry tried and true plants that will flourish in Zone six.
On the other hand, if you feel that over the years, you have been throwing good money after bad and you are feeling desperate because you feel that your garden, no matter what you do, never looks right. If that is the case then get in touch with a landscape company like LandscapesbyIan.com, who will keep your budget in mind whether you want to do your own work, or wish for a design to install yourself.
But if you are planning your garden for this coming season, there are important facts to keep in mind:
What are the plants requirements for sun, shade, soil, and water?
Will they survive in this zone, Zone 6?
What are the growth patterns of the plants? Do they grow fast or slow?
You do not want a 50 ft. tree up against the house with tremendous roots that will play havoc with your house foundation. Or do you want that lovely but very large, Catawbiense Rhododendron, all 10 ft. of it, climbing through your dining room window in five years?
To find those facts, either check the plants in a book, on the Internet or read the labels attached to the plants in the nursery.
Check every aspect of the plant before you buy. The red or green Lace Leaf Japanese Maple looks lovely in spring but is it something you can enjoy, without its leaves in the winter? Personally, I not only enjoy the foliage of plants and trees but also the shape and bark of trees without foliage in winter.
For those of you just beginning to garden, I must be honest and dispense with the myth that gardening is always a relaxing hobby. At the end of that first day of digging, lugging soil, manure and fertilizer, and planting everything at the proper depth; you will feel rather exhausted.
At that juncture, you remember that you still need to water the newly-installed plants as you drag your tired body to switch on the hose. Thank goodness, the mulching can wait until tomorrow or next weekend.
Watering by the way can be meditative. Imagine that the hose is your umbilical cord so that as you nourish the earth and the plants, the earth can nourish you.
By now the sun has gone down, and you trudge indoors muttering to yourself, “What the heck did I get myself into?” To this comment I say, “You did not have to tackle all of the garden in one day.”
In gardening, there is always tomorrow, or next week, and even though the label says to plant it by the end of May or June, believe me folks, a few weeks later does not matter, the garden will wait for you.
You may be saying to yourself at this point “Maureen are you trying to put us off gardening”? No, but I would remiss, as someone who has gardening in my blood (as well as manure) for over 400 years to tell you, however reluctantly, not only the pleasures, but some of what can cause aches and pains.
The idea is not to bite off more than you can chew. For first-time gardeners, don’t scatter your energies all over the garden, tackle and complete one area at a time. That area should be priority one until it is complete.
A water feature need not be elaborate. Photo by Dan Hayman on Unsplash.
If you have a new home with no landscaping, some hardscape may be required. Hardscape is walls, walkways, patios, ponds, decks and so on. The sound and look of a water feature in the garden is delightful. A water feature need not be elaborate, a fountain is fine – the reflection of water is Mother Nature’s mirror. If you are not able to do this construction yourself, get in touch with a landscape contractor now, so that a plan can be done now, installed and ready by spring. (I say to connect now as Ian tells me that many landscape products are short on supply this year.)
All of these endeavors mean you getting yourself in shape physically, so get off that couch, put away the catalogues and your plant lists, stretch, then wrap yourself up in warm gear and take that walk.
As you walk, look at the trees in winter, the elegant shape of them, the lichen on the stonewalls, and the moss tucked in cracks and crevices. Clear your mind and allow nature’s spirit to surround you. As you walk, look at a few gardens in your neighborhood; gardens that you have admired when they were in bloom and see what they look like in winter.
I remember one of my professors saying to me when I studied at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London, England, “In winter you can tell a really good landscape by its bones, without the flesh of flora and foliage.” In spring, get in touch with those neighbors whose gardens you admired and ask them some of the secrets of their garden. They will be happy to talk with you, not only of their successes but their failures – true gardeners are realists when they speak about their gardens and love to share.
Well folks, I’ve given you plenty to think about right now so enjoy your daydreaming of the season to come and I’ll see you next month in your garden.
About the author: Maureen Haseley-Jones is a member of a family of renowned horticultural artisans, whose landscaping heritage dates back to the 17th century. She is one of the founders, together with her son Ian, of, The English Lady Landscape and Home Company. Maureen and Ian are landscape designers and garden experts, who believe that everyone deserves to live in an eco-conscious environment and enjoy the pleasure that it brings. Maureen learned her design skills from both her mother and grandmother, and honed her horticultural and construction skills while working in the family nursery and landscape business in the U.K. Her formal horticultural training was undertaken at the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in Surrey.
HARTFORD — Connecticut lawmakers on three legislative committees tried to tackle the real estate market Tuesday during an informational session on home sales, affordability, and construction.
Jessica Lautz, chief economist and vice president of research for the National Association of REALTORS, told the Housing, Planning and Development and Insurance and Real Estate Committees, that there are only 3,600 homes for sale in all of Connecticut. That’s down from 17,000 homes for sale in 2017.
The median price for a single-family home has also increased from $235,000 in 2017 to …
LYME/OLD LYME — It is always interesting in early January of one year to crunch the numbers and see which stories drew the highest number of readers in the previous year. This year was no exception — there were some predictable winners like the announcement of the Old Lyme 2021 Citizen of the Year and the unexpected (and unsuccessful, as far as we know) auction of the Old Lyme Shopping Center.
There were several pandemic-related articles such as the opening of applications for ARPA grants in Old Lyme and a dramatic increase in the number of Connecticut towns in the Red Zone in April. The decision by the First Congregational Church of Old Lyme to hold its White Elephant Sale after a two-year Covid-enforced hiatus was greeted enthusiastically by many readers as was news that Lyme-Old Lyme Schools had dropped their COVID mask-mandate.
Controversial issues always prompt a rise in readers and predictably the whole business about the then-insuperable obstacles facing Old Lyme’s Open Space Commissions’ efforts to acquire two parcels of the Ames property fell into that category. Similarly, people wanted to read all about the appointment of a new face to the OL Economic Development Commission against both the recommendation of its chair and over an incumbent. The still-ongoing saga of the Tantummaheag access dispute made the list as did the subject of armed guards in Lyme-Old Lyme Schools.
Sad news also invariably attracts increased readership and so the announcement of the passing of our beloved food writer Lee White is on our list as is the unanticipated departure of the then-director of the Florence Griswold Museum.
There were surprisingly few politically-related stories in our Top 15 for 2022, even though it was a feisty election year. The one that did make the list related to a well-known Old Lyme resident being the major funder of a new Republican PAC in the state.
We knew Maureen Haseley-Jones’s gardening columns were popular, but it was a slight surprise that February’s — of all months — crept into our Top 15. Congratulations , Maureen!
But the biggest surprise of all was the most-read story of the year, which, against all odds, was the second and final segment of a two-part-story about the history of tobacco in Connecticut!
It is a particularly topical article for today — Martin Luther King, Jr. Day — because (and who knew?), MLK worked in the summers of both 1944 and 1947 on a tobacco farm in Simsbury to earn money for tuition. He wrote to his father that, “there was no discrimination at all,” north of Washington DC, adding that up North, “We go to any place we want to and sit anywhere we want to.”
King wrote in his autobiography, “It was a bitter feeling going back to segregation after those summers in Connecticut.”
Corey Kilgannon wrote in the New York Times that the dream of equality that MLK first glimpsed in Simsbury helped reshape his world view, adding, “It was during those summers that King began his path to becoming a minister.”
Congratulations to our very own Tom Gotowka on being the author of our most-read article in 2022!
We have a feeling the article was picked up by some research entities, which may have increased its readership numbers, but that takes nothing away from the simple fact that it recorded more readers than any other article in the whole of 2022!
The complete list of our Top 15 most-read articles for 2022 in descending order is as follows:
