Marblehead Hollyhock Garden - Northshore Home - Spring 2016

You can’t miss them. Drive by the Marblehead home of Pam and Paul Dougovito in July and you’ll notice the usual display of patriotic bunting, but that’s not what stops traffic. What causes the skid marks when passersby throw on the brakes is the megadose of hollyhocks beyond your wildest dreams. Imagine nine-foot spires touching the skies. Line those spikes with dozens of big, open-faced blooms in an otherworldly color range. And then multiply the whole shebang times 200 or more. Rumor has it that Marblehead was once rife with hollyhocks, but scant evidence remains except the wallop of towering blossom spires in the Dougovito front yard.

Pam admits that she didn’t see the hollyhocks coming. Sure, the house had the vestiges of some perennials in evidence when the realtor showed it off on Memorial Day of 1993. When they closed on the shoreline house in August, maybe seven or eight hollyhocks were in the picture. But coming from a hollyhock-deprived background, Pam didn’t really recognize the plants. Growing up in Ohio, she thought she’d been exposed to all aspects of gardening by the “sergeant general” of the local garden club (who came around to each home to perform white-gloved inspections and critiques), but hollyhocks were not part of the local agenda. For all those reasons, the hollyhocks took the Dougovitos by complete surprise when they began to spruce up and feed the front yard.

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Marblehead Hollyhock Garden - Northshore Home - Spring 2016

Marblehead by Rebecca Lindenberg : The Poetry Foundation

Marblehead by Rebecca Lindenberg : The Poetry Foundation:

You take off your black

motorcycle jacket, hang it

on the back of a chair. It’s cold

from our walk along the sea wall.

Your pockets jingle with shells.

While we were gone, you left

the stove on low—some things

you do make me so nervous.

You graze the surface of sauce

simmering in a pan, shiny fingertip

held out for me to lick, you say

“What does it need?” Maybe nothing,

maybe honey to unbitter the lime.

Later that night you’ll bury your face

in my belly and sob. “I’m sorry,”

though I don’t think you are

always talking to me, my love.

But now lobster steam billows

up the window, you gulp

purple wine, your pinky sticking out,

and the round olives are the green

all green things aspire to be.

Rebecca Lindenberg, “Marblehead” from Love, an Index. Copyright © 2012 by Rebecca Lindenberg. Reprinted by permission of McSweeney’s Publishing.


Source: Love, an Index (McSweeney's Publishing, 2012)

View From Beach Street, Marblehead, Time Elapsed Video

Big plans for Marblehead's Hamond Nature Center

MARBLEHEAD



By William J. Dowd 

A big push to restore the Hamond Nature Center to its glory days when nature programs brought droves out tops the Recreation and Parks' docket of things to do.

The center, formerly the Girl Scout Camp Shore Lea, sits atop a hill at the entrance to Wyman Woods and at the end of Everett Pain Boulevard.

"Our department is trying to let the town know about the nature center," said Travis Farley, assistant superintendent of the Recreation and Parks Department. "Not a lot people know it exists."

Or as Rec and Park Superintendent Tim Short put it: "It's a hidden gem."

Hidden is right. Until recently, the building was all but hid from view tucked behind bushes and brush.

The department began polishing the gem, however, after years of sporadic use. Farley put together the Hamond Nature Center Sub-Committee that convened its first meeting in January 2015. The group of residents and teachers are charged with studying the site's deficiencies and setting goals into a comprehensive five-year strategic plan.

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Big plans for Hamond Nature Center

Marblehead Designated Certified Local Government by National Park Service

By ADAM SWIFT (Marblehead Patch Staff) 


Marblehead, MA - Marblehead was one of 34 communities from across the United States designated as a Certified Local Government in 2015 by the National Park Service. More than 1,900 communities now participate in the program which provides local governments access to historic preservation guidance and grants.

Certified Local Government (CLG) designation makes communities official partners in the portion of the federal historic preservation program which engages local, state, and federal partners to promote historic preservation at the grassroots level. As a Certified Local Government, communities can use expert technical historic preservation advice from the National Park Service and their respective state historic preservation offices. The designation also gives localities access to grants for historic preservation that are available exclusively from the Historic Preservation Fund for Certified Local Governments.

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