“It’s an old tree. Older than you and me,” wrote Richard Morgado, a Mattapoisett resident. His words continue to tell of a hollow tree on his property, held up by the thick vines that encircle it. This old tree – a playground in Morgado’s youth – still stands on Dexter Lane as a memorial to its own age and history.

Morgado’s story is one of ten collected so far by the Mattapoisett Tree Committee. These accounts, written and submitted by Mattapoisett residents, tell of the aged and beloved trees in their town.

An exhibit in the Mattapoisett Free Public Library displays these anecdotes, along with photographs and other visuals, including a beautiful oil painting by Priscilla Hathaway depicting the English Linden tree of her personal story.

While the exhibit at the library will only be on display for two weeks, the Tree Committee will continue to share people’s stories at Town Hall in the future. As more stories are submitted, the committee plans to rotate them on a display next their Tree City USA plaque.

Tree Committee Chairman Sandy Hering is delighted with the townspeople’s response to their project. She hopes to have another dozen stories submitted by the end of the year.

“There are a lot of stories that people have and if we don’t record them, all of a sudden they’re going to be gone,” she said, “No one will know who planted that tree, or why was it planted, or what kind of activities used to occur underneath it. Some of the stories are really quite fun.”

Hering cited one of her favorite experiences from this project – when Mattapoisett resident Howard Tinkham brought the Tree Committee a cover of Presto Press depicting a drawing of the posting tree on his property on Long Plain Road.

Presto Press, founded in 1954, was a weekly publication that ran in the Tri-Town for nearly forty years. This piece of local history showing a drawing of the posting tree, where the town warrant used to be hung, is a treasure to both Tinkham and the Tree Committee.

“He had it lovingly framed and it’s beautifully hanging in his house right now,” said Hering of Tinkham’s Presto Press cover. The posting tree died and was removed long ago, but it is memorialized in the Presto Press drawing.

“We’re trying to make sure that people appreciate the beauty of the trees that are here right now, because once they’re chopped down, it takes so many years to regain that shade and that beauty that that tree represented to our town,” said Hering.

By collecting cherished stories in the Tree Committee’s latest community service project, Hering hopes the committee will be able to preserve this appreciation for the town’s trees. Once they’ve collected enough stories, the Tree Committee may compile them into a small book to be printed by Bristol Community College.

Along with this project, the Tree Committee is actively protecting Mattapoisett’s trees by working alongside the Highway Department on the road reconstruction of Main Street, Water Street, Beacon Street, and, eventually, Marion Road to Route 6.

“The Tree Committee has been doing a tree assessment of every tree on this route and what we hope to do is to identify the trees that are must-save trees,” explained Hering, “We hope that the work will preserve the best of the trees and new trees can be planted so that future generations enjoy a shady street.”

Trees provide more than just a shady street, and Hering illuminated the value of a green town by pointing out both the environmental and the economic benefits.

On the environmental side, trees mitigate some of the world’s global warming issues, they secure soil during storms, and their evapotranspiration process helps cool the planet.

On the economic side, Hering said, “It’s been proven that tree-lined streets are most desirable when people go to purchase houses and decide where they want to live,” so planting and preserving trees in part maintains the town’s economic value.

Some trees provide more than just environmental and economic benefits though – they can be sentimental and historical. As seen through the stories displayed in the Tree Committee’s project, many Mattapoisett residents feel strong connections to the trees they played on in their youth.

Some stories preserve a culture of an older time – Howard Tinkham submitted a story about a tree on the west side of the Mattapoisett River, which is bent to point towards a favorable crossing to the east side of the river. This tree is evidence of how early nomadic Native Americans created a trail system by bending oak saplings to point towards destinations. What seems like just an oddly twisted tree actually has a meaningful history behind it.

Mary Worden of Ocean View Avenue summed up well the sentiment behind trees in her story about two Japanese Pines when she quoted American writer Joyce Kilmer: “I think that I shall never see … a poem as lovely as a tree…”

If you have a story to share, you may submit it to Town Hall, attention Tree Committee, 16 Main Street, Mattapoisett, MA 02739.

By Renae Reints

Ask why Susan LaFleur does what she does, year after year, to organize the Annual Rochester Grange Fair and you’ll get a humorous and also heartfelt mixed response.

At first, she’ll tell you that it is because she is insane on some level – volunteering countless hours of time, even months before the Grange Fair festivities formally began on Friday, August 15, filling out all the paperwork with the State Department of Agriculture, designing the fair booklets, and all the time it takes setting up for the event.

And then, all joking aside, LaFleur, the Rochester Grange and Grange Fair secretary, will tell you why she really donates so much of her time and energy to coordinate one of the events that seems to dwindle every year across the state and across the country.

“It’s tradition,” said LaFleur on Saturday, August 16, minutes before participants in the Grange Fair would arrive to find out if their flower arrangement or gigantic zucchini won first prize in their respective competitions. “There are very few granges that are still doing them.”

Every year, the members of the Rochester Grange and their friends bring forth their prize-winning tomatoes, squashes, eggplants, baked goods, handicrafts, you name it – all things country – in hopes that theirs will win first prize. Although, in many cases the prize does not exceed three dollars, they still get a pretty first, second, or third-place ribbon – plus bragging rights for having the most perfect green bell pepper in the town.

The Grange Country Fair tradition began 104 years ago, when LaFleur said granges were popular around the country and people flocked to the grange fairs to display the fruits of their labor, to socialize, and to gather as a community.

“Way back then the Grange was very agricultural. Now, it’s a lot more … it does everything in the community sense,” said LaFleur. “They used the fair as a way to show off their crops to the world.”

LaFleur said the grange fairs were a lot like the Rochester Country Fair of our own time, with horse pulling and cattle and sheep shows.

This year, according to Rochester Grange Assistant Steward Beth Gonneville, entries were a bit down from previous years, and people that normally enter simply did not this year. After all, it was an uncommonly late spring season this year, which delayed the planting of many a garden in Rochester.

“One girl said she had to plant twice this year,” said Gonneville, “so the vegetables weren’t ready in time.”

Others just did not see the results as spectacular as in past seasons when it came to garden vegetables.

“Every year is different,” said Gonneville.

But every August, the Rochester Grange Fair goes on as scheduled, and the Grange Hall is filled once again with baskets and rows of vegetables. Walking around, you could catch a whiff of that first-place set of green bell peppers, onions, and tomatoes just sitting there in their glory with their blue and red and white ribbons lovingly laid across them. You could almost taste that first-place juicy tomato, and imagine how great it would feel to chop up those perfect cucumbers and toss them into your salad.

It takes a lot of work for the grangers to set-up for the big day, and LaFleur said help is hard to find. The membership at the Grange is simply diminishing over time. And by Friday when participants arrive with their entries, LaFleur’s head is spinning.

“You get frustrated,” said LaFleur, “but at the same time, you just don’t want to see them end.”

Thank goodness for the Boy Scouts of Troop #31, said LaFleur, who come earlier before the event to set up the wooden stands and tables, and then take them down afterwards.

“Without them, we would be doomed,” said LaFleur. “If they didn’t come and do the heavy stuff, then we’d be in trouble.”

Herb LaFleur, husband to Sue LaFleur, said he is also in it for the tradition. He went on to list his different roles at the Grange, such as treasurer, business agent, fair chairman, and former Grange Master. Do not forget general deputy of the Massachusetts State Grange, too.

“Oh, stop boasting,” Mrs. LaFleur said to Mr. LaFleur, chuckling and adding, “We’re just a little group of folks hanging out.”

The spirit of tradition, like that of the LaFleurs, is what keeps the Rochester Grange Fair going year after year. And how long will Sue LaFleur remain secretary of the Rochester Grange?

“Basically, till I die,” laughed LaFleur. “Nobody wants the job!”

To learn more about the Grange and why you should become involved, visit the National Grange website at www.nationalgrange.org.

By Jean Perry

Marion Board of Selectmen on August 18 witnessed firsthand how divided residents and interested parties are over the root cause and future remediation of Sprague’s Cove, which resulted in a vote to take more time to digest the information before deciding on who should have control over the site. Until then, selectmen are holding onto their authority over the property.

The board and about 50 residents alike heard two conflicting presentations by the Marion Conservation Commission and the Marion Open Spaces Acquisition Commission (MOSAC). They also heard advice from phragmite expert Dr. John Teal of Rochester, who also serves on the Rochester Conservation Commission.

By now, most Marionites know what a phragmite is. The invasive and non-native species of wetlands vegetation is increasingly invading and occupying wetlands all over the Southcoast, choking out indigenous species of wetlands vegetation and wreaking havoc on the biodiversity of sensitive wetlands habitats.

Efforts to thwart the spread of the unwelcome invaders have been a losing battle thus far across affected areas and, as Teal pointed out during his presentation to familiarize selectmen with the Tao of the phragmite, there is only one way to eradicate them: diligent repeated applications of herbicide, and even that can sometimes fail to defeat the phrags’ assault on ponds, swamps, marshes, and beaches.

In its own attempt to spare Sprague’s Cove from succumbing to phragmites, a wetland was constructed in 1995 to counteract fecal bacteria contamination of Silvershell Beach from storm water runoff, and the ConCom back in 2012 authorized an outside agency to mow down much of the phragmites at the site, causing some outrage from concerned residents in the vicinity because of the aesthetic alteration to the area.

Norman Mills, on behalf on the ConCom, gave a slideshow presentation on the past, present, and proposed future of Sprague’s Cove.

Mills said the phragmites are restricting the water flow of the natural filtration system, reducing the biodiversity of the cove, and they have “destroyed what was put down there originally in 1995.”

“MOSAC is well-equipped to control maintenance of invasive species,” said Mills after emphasizing that Town Meeting this year struck down an article that would fund the ConCom’s effort to control the phragmites. “MOSAC has done nothing to control invasive species…”

The ConCom’s recommendation for the future of Sprague’s Cove, as presented by Mills, is “to continue the way it is right now,” enlisting the help of volunteers in order to restore the wetlands to “the way people remember way back when it started,” eliciting a quiet chuckle from MOSAC Chairman John Rockwell seated in the audience, awaiting his turn to address selectmen and residents. Mills admitted that the ConCom “probably overstepped its boundaries” when it had the phrags mowed.

“We went in too quickly,” said Mills, and without the input of the community. “Whatever the selectmen decide is fine.” Mills said the ConCom prefers to “be proactive, but passive and leave it alone.”

Rockwell, also a wetlands specialist, contends that the problem with the drainage of Sprague’s Cove stems not with the phragmites, but with a clogged six-inch drainage pipe that has diminished 40% of the system’s capacity to filter through water, and what needs to be done is to snake the clogged pipe to open it up again and devise a maintenance plan, involving several interested parties who will agree upon the plan. He added that there has been a history of issues with the drainage throughout the years.

Phragmites, he said, have been used in the past as a preferred soil erosion inhibitor and what is happening here in Marion is the result of aesthetic concerns.

“They don’t like the way it looks,” said Rockwell. He said, although phrags are one of his concerns overall, he limits that concern to the more pristine areas of Marion that phragmites have yet to invade. Otherwise, the futile battle to remove phragmites is not the best way the town can spend its money, according to Rockwell.

Toward the end of the public discussion, despite Board of Selectmen Chairman Jonathan Henry’s statement that the time would not be used to pin blame on either side of the issue, there was a bit of mudslinging nonetheless.

Some wondered that if Rockwell knew of the drainage issue in the past, why he did not bring it up. Rockwell maintained that he had informed someone, but no action was taken. He said MOSAC would not undertake the remediation of Sprague’s Cove unless the selectmen voted to hand the authority over to MOSAC.

“And now the selectmen hold the bag, and it’s probably a bag they don’t really want to hold,” said Rockwell.

ConCom member Stephen Gonsalves had a hard time wrapping his head around the drainage pipe, rather than the phragmites, being the main problem with the functioning of Sprague’s Cove.

Accompanying MOSAC was the engineer of the original plan for Sprague’s Cove, Bernadette Taber, who stated that phragmites would do “just as good of a job” of filtering water as the native species that were originally planted at the site.

“It doesn’t affect how this system right now is functioning,” said Taber.

“I’m no lover of phragmites … I’ve killed plenty,” said Rockwell. “It just shouldn’t be done under the guise of making the basin work.”

Selectman Jody Dickerson said he heard a lot of information that night and needed more time to process, do more research, and preferred to table the matter until the next meeting.

“At this point, I’m not certain how that should come out,” said Henry. He said he heard both arguments and “it could go both ways.”

Resident Annie Rockwell interrupted a vote to introduce a petition of 162 signatures in favor of handing authority of Sprague’s Cove to MOSAC.

Another resident, Sandra Parsons, addressed the selectmen and asked to have her signature stricken from the petition. She said after learning more about the situation that evening, she was no longer sure if she preferred MOSAC to manage the site.

“The jury is out for me,” said Parsons, “because I have new things to think about.”

Rockwell interjected one final time to suggest that funding phragmite removal at Sprague’s Cove was not the wisest way to use Town funds.

“It’s not a good use of town money,” said Rockwell, emphasizing that his opinion had nothing to do with how he personally felt about phragmites.

By Jean Perry

New Playgrounds at Washburn Park and Point Road are now open! The construction was completed within a week. Marion Recreation would like to give special thanks to the Marion Department of Public Works for assisting the department. If you haven’t been to either playground yet, now is the time to check them out!