Letters to the Editor - The Lakeville Journal - 11-5-20

Why a rhino?

Dear Friends and Neighbors,

If you glance at 462 Lime Rock Road as you drive past, grazing under the purple beech, you will see a new lawn ornament, a rhino.  This is not a political comment, but a zoological one. 

The rhino was painted by Michael Gellatly of Amenia.  Michael usually illustrates books, but rhinos are within the scope of his work.  His portfolio includes the maps in the Game of Thrones books. 

The rhino is 8 feet long, which is diminutive for a rhino. They are usually 13 feet long.  Michael has taken artistic license with the DNA of this particular rhino, recently christened Juliette Cordelia. This rhino incorporates the plate shielding of the Indian rhino with the elongated horns of the African rhino.  He thought it looked more interesting and more recognizable. But since she is a very girly rhino, she has eyelashes. Her tail is of particular note.   

So why did I want a rhino in my front yard? You may remember the giraffe ornament that used to eat the apples out of a tree on Route 22 south of Millerton.  I really liked that giraffe. I collect rhinos because many years ago I was being coached by a prominent acting teacher. He said of me, “I think there’s a rhinoceros in there somewhere.”  Two weeks later I had an audition for NBC News in New York. Thinking I didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of getting the job, I decided to act like a rhino. And sure enough, they gave me a job as their tax and finance reporter. So that’s why I wanted a rhino… . Best regards.

Martha Miller

Lakeville

Holley Block: size relates to function

I am a member of the Salisbury Housing Committee, but the following are my individual comments and not the committee’s:

Off the bat, affordable housing is recognized as a critical need of Salisbury, especially as the gap between housing costs and wages becomes a canyon. And rental housing is both the biggest need and the biggest challenge. This 13 unit project is the right size. And having this built with State funding is an extraordinary opportunity for our Town.

In answer to opponents:

Dangerous? Exit and entry whether on foot, bike or car will generally be onto Holley Street, a low flow, low speed road that also provides safe passage for families to the grove. Traffic and parking concerns are exaggerated and should by no means derail this project.

The remaining push back is architecture and size.

There is no mention in the deed of how to use the property. The money donated to purchase the property did come with a request for a design in keeping with the Federal or early 18th Century image of our village. I think the design resembling the previous Holley Block is quite successful, but in my unprofessional opinion, the architecture is not Federal or early 18th century. My unprofessional legal opinion is that this is not a reason to reject the proposal. (Correct me if I am wrong. I am confident you will!) Whatever weight this letter has 50 years later, I am guessing the Belchers are the ones that would have standing to try to enforce it, and the Belchers have provided a letter of support saying that they approve of the proposal as it reminds them of the building they grew up with.

The other complaint is that it “looms” over the buildings next to it.

And furthermore the proposed Holley Place should be penalized for being taller than the building to the east that is substantially down hill.

If looming is a sin, let’s look at the historic Holley Manufacturing Building. It’s the “loomer” in the neighborhood.

It looms enormously over the forge building across the street that is Lakeville Interiors.

Looming doesn’t seem a big issue for the Historic District or Federalist construction projects. Could it be that they understood that a building’s size is related to its function?

Holley Place will be no more a “loomer” than was the Holley Block that preceded it. Holley Place is an apartment building of a size that sets a path for successful grant approval, construction and ongoing operations. That it is larger than the adjacent buildings is entirely appropriate. It has a different function.

Speaking only for myself, if opponents acknowledge that this 13 unit apartment is a reasonable project, I am quite happy to entertain architectural changes, and I suggest opponents offer to provide funding to explore architectural alternatives with the Salisbury Housing Committee and its architect. What will the committee say? I do not know.

George Massey

Salisbury

Autumn is the time to attack invasive plants

Now, back to earth:  it’s Alien Woody Invasive Plants Awareness Week!

Fall is the time trees and shrubs reveal themselves, as species and as individuals. One after another, they get their time to show off. Suddenly I see again the luminous yellow crown of a large poplar, all summer invisible and immersed in a uniformly green hillside.  Then, after the poplar leaves are all on the ground too, what was uniformly green in summer is now all gray until spring. 

You may have noticed that on some shrubs the leaves linger long into November. This is the time alien woody invasive species expose themselves. Now one can make a good assessment of the presence of woody invasives in a forest, along roadsides, your garden perhaps. The pale-green understory shrubs – bush honeysuckle. The ground-hugging reddish thicket — all Japanese barberry. The pale-yellow elegant garlands circling up a leafless tree — Oriental bittersweet. Still a healthy dark green – Multiflora rose and glossy buckthorn. It’s easy to tell a Norway maple now from our native species, because they are still in full leaf. (Invasive shrubs in the Northeast have their leaves an average of 77 days longer than native shrubs, which includes earlier leaf-out as well. Maynard-Bean, E., Kaye, M., Wagner, T. et al. Biol Invasions 22, 3325–3337 (2020).

Awareness of a problem is the first step to solving it. Taking action, at least on your property,  is the next: some plants you can pull by hand, thicker stems can be cut and painted with a drop of concentrated herbicide (“Buckthorn Blaster” applicators are commercially available); just repeated heavy pruning weakens a bush-honeysuckle’s shallow root system enough for yanking it out.  

It is a never-ending task, because fresh seedlings are constantly arriving via bird droppings. Yet there is hardly a more satisfying gardening activity than restoring a piece of land, however small, which is degraded by alien invasives to a beautiful and diverse native flora. With a little help, trilliums and ferns, spicebushes, dogwoods and witchhazel will recolonize the open ground. Such a restored land will in the long run also be more valuable and valued perhaps as highly as the condition of the house.   

Fritz Mueller

Sharon