Great Outdoors

Vegetable bounty served up cold

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It is September again (already), school has started and the gardens and farm stands are overflowing with bushel baskets of vegetables. This month’s recipe for marinated vegetables makes great use of any and all of the garden treasures in a healthy way!

Great Outdoors

Electrofishing for (not-so electric) eels in the Salmon Brook

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Seven years ago, the National Park Service added the Lower Farmington River and Salmon Brook to the National Wild and Scenic River System, joining the previously designated Upper Farmington River.
The designation recognizes the rich biodiversity, cultural significance, geological features and recreational opportunities within the watershed.

NOT WANTED

Asiatic Bittersweet (Celastrus orbiculatus): Invasive of the month

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Like the southern “kudzu” vine, Asiatic bittersweet spreads a drapery of death across thousands of acres in the northeast US. Bittersweet is an extremely vigorous woody vine that can grow 60 to 80 feet high, completely smothering small and medium sized trees and shrubs, wrapping tightly around and girdling trunks, covering and depriving leaves of light, weakening trees over time and often pulling them down.

Great Outdoors

Granby’s other special white oak

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In the last issue I wrote about Connecticut’s white oak and its place in the history of our state charter. That issue also contained information from the Granby Land Trust about the Dewey Granby Oak on Day Street. In this issue, I’ll tell you about another very special white oak. It is located on Holcomb Farm’s Tree Trail.

Great Outdoors

Ice cream trucks and icebox cakes

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Summers in the 1950s included gleaming white Good Humor trucks whose jingling bells announced that frozen treats had arrived. I’d beg my parents for change and dash to the curb for a creamsicle or toasted almond bar.