Annual town meeting targets community concernsby Melanie Lekocevic / June 30, 2022Related Posts
THROUGH THE WOODS: Our beautiful fall flowers
By NANCY JANE KERN
It is now fall and beautiful wildflowers are a nice addition to the colorful leaves and part of the last flash of color before the snow comes. Roadsides are great places to look for flowers. One of the most spectacular and easy to identify is the New England Aster. It is about 2-3 ft. high and a knockout, often hosting feeding butterflies like our orange and black monarchs. The flowers are bright purple with yellow centers and hard to miss. There are many other asters too, and easier to identify with a good field guide to flowers, something like the Peterson guide.
Unless you are an expert it is always a good idea to carry a good field guide, and it is worth hooking up with more experienced observers and investigating different types of books in the library. Now there are also some great apps for our smartphones. A few more asters are New York aster, Wood Asters, and Swamp asters. Then there are the brightly colored goldenrods. Many people see these flowers and just say goldenrod. There are many varieties in our area and if you look closely you will start to see the differences. There are tall ones that look like a fountain shape, some are flat-topped, there are branched specimens, and then some look like a single stem with the yellow flowers clumped along the stem. One of the latter types is the spice-scented goldenrod, so it is worth smelling the ones that look like this. The yellow color varies from an orange tinge to a light, cream color.
In wet areas, there are occasionally turtlehead flowers. These look like stems of snapdragon with cream to white flowers on straight green stems, and the blooms look like little turtle heads. This year I am seeing lots of them, which is good because the Baltimore checkerspot butterfly favors this plant to lay its eggs. Joe pye weed is purplish pink in color, and we have 3 varieties. Boneset is a cluster of flowers forming a dull white head and there are usually many tall stems together, like the joe pye weed. Vervain is blue and looks like the tall stem of a branched candelabrum with the “candles” formed by the blue flower at each tip. Tall spikes of purple loosestrife fill some ditches and wetlands. This has been a very invasive species that crowds out other vegetation, but it again greatly decorates an area in intense color.
Some roadsides are lined with white Queen Anne’s lace mixed with blue chicory plants, one of my favorite combinations. People like to make wildflower bouquets, and this is nice if you are aware of those plants protected by New York State. If you are very lucky you may find some of the blue to purple-colored gentians which are all protected. There are the rare, fringed gentians and some bottle gentians around our county. These are usually found while walking and are often short and hidden among the grasses.
Some back road banks are covered with white snakeroot plants, so named for their long snake-like roots. Many plants used for making hay have pretty blossoms. These include yellow, purple, pink, and white clovers, blue alfalfa, deep yellow bird’s foot trefoil, yellow and white types of sweet clovers, and purple vetch. It is great fun to learn to recognize these many beautiful plants, but the most important thing is to get out and enjoy the time we have them before winter is here again.
Library works its magic to get kids reading
By Melanie Lekocevic
Capital Region Independent Media
RAVENA — Mosher Park was alive with the sound of laughter and goofy music Thursday as the RCS Community Library hosted its kick-off to the summer reading program with a special treat — a magic show.
About 115 kids and parents turned out for the show with magician Brian McGovern, who kept everyone giggling and engaged.
“Today we have our magic show with Brian McGovern. He came up from New York City,” said Interim Library Director Barbara Goetschius. “We had him here last year and he is always a huge hit — he is very personable and the kids just love him.”
For local families, the magic show was a big hit.
“It’s great to get the kids together,” said Regina Radley, of Selkirk. “It’s great to get out in the middle of the week and get the kids together and have fun.”
The summer reading program is offered at the library each year to encourage children to keep reading while they are on summer break. Each year there is a different theme, with activities that foster a love of reading.
“This year’s theme is ‘Oceans of Possibilities,’” Goetschius said Thursday. “We will be doing a lot of programs related to oceans, sea life, things like that. For example, next week is ‘Tide Pool Week,’ so we will be making tide pools in plastic bins with sand and rocks and shells and water, of course, and whatever else comes our way. We do stories with the kids and then we do the activity.”
The program is open to all kids, from infants on up.
They earn a raffle ticket for every hour they read; for the younger set, being read to counts, too.
“The goal of the summer reading program is to get kids reading over the summer so they don’t lose ground with their reading skills,” Goetschius said. “It’s like any other muscle in your body — if you stop exercising it, you begin to lose ground and then it hurts a little more when you start up again. This helps bring them in and gives them a chance to do different activities in a safe space and then find books on their own and just have a really good time.”
Kids aren’t the only ones who can benefit from summer reading — there are also raffles for teens and adults. To enter, they just have to read three books over the summer, fill out a raffle ticket, and they will be entered to win prizes.
The magic show at Mosher Park was the official kick-off to the summer program, but another special event was held at the library, Bubblepalooza, at the end of the school year in June to make sure families know about the summer reading program.
“That was insane — we had to move it inside because it was so windy outside,” Goetschius said. “We had 87 people attend. We opened up the space, we moved furniture out, we moved shelves around, and we brought chairs, chairs and more chairs. They were sitting in the aisles.”
At that event, a performer was brought in and he did activities with bubbles — making them, popping them, putting bubbles on kids’ hands. The big hit of the day was a device he used where a child stood on a platform and using a special circular tray and a loop, the bubble was brought up over the child.
“They went insane for that,” Goetchius said.
With so many events canceled over the past couple of years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Goetchius said it was great to see families back participating in library programs.
“We have had so few programs because of COVID, it’s great to get back in the groove,” she said.
After several weeks of marine-themed activities, the summer reading program will conclude with a bang.
“At the end of the summer we will have a wildlife program, ‘Turtles to Toads,” Goetchius said. “That will be the last activity in the summer reading program, in mid-August.”
“We just want to have fun,” she added.
For more information on the summer reading program and upcoming activities, visit www.rcscommunitylibrary.org.
