Living

Dr. Pember Edwards and Matt Chapman were married on April 26 at the Presbyterian Church in East Hampton, the very church where they had met in a youth group in the 1990s. The ceremony, officiated by the Rev. Jon Rodriguez, was filled with thoughtful details of deep significance to the couple.

“All gardens are a form of autobiography,” said the late, great Bob Dash, who began ‘writing’ his own into the soil of Sagaponack in 1967 — a story those at the Madoo Conservancy have continued in the dozen years since Dash’s death and the four decades the public has been welcomed into his two-acre botanical sanctuary.

If you have explored natural approaches to gardening, you may have heard of biodynamics. Depending on how it’s described, it can sound either mystical or based on ancient farming wisdom.

There it was: the moment the Garden Book editor became a gardener herself.

In the Victorian-era school of thought known as “the Language of Flowers,” wisteria is associated with romance, beauty, and devotion, with a slightly ominous postscript referencing the plant’s twisting vines and warning of loving something a little too much, lest it be suffocated.

Floral arranging and gardening have been Lilee Fell’s synergistic passions since childhood. As the owner of Lilee Fell Flowers in Sag Harbor, she grew up watching her mother create floral arrangements for garden club flower shows and her grandmother making arrangements for their church’s altar guild.

Concerned Citizens of Montauk is urging home gardeners and professional landscapers alike to stop adding synthetic fertilizer on their lawns, flower beds, and vegetable gardens.

It’s time to get growing. The publication of The East Hampton Star’s annual East End Garden and Home supplement means the 2025 gardening season is officially under way. With this comes a lively calendar of spring and summer events, including garden workshops, educational lectures, art activities, and benefit parties, just a few of which are detailed here. Additional events may be added as the season progresses, so readers should check with their favorite organizations and garden clubs for more information.

Joe Silvestro is proof that high school robotics clubs can prepare students for future careers. He graduated from Southold High School in 2020, “a crazy time,” he said, to be stepping out into the real world. Two semesters at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in upstate Oneida soon helped him realize that college wasn’t for him, and he went to work for the Mills Canvas company in Greenport. Now, five years later, Mr. Silvestro is a founding partner in a company called Talos 3D Fabrication in Southampton.

Georgia O’Keeffe once said, “When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it’s your world for the moment.” In the spirit of the pioneering modernist painter’s hope to give that world to others, The Star spoke with two local anthophiles about extending the ‘moment’ of both store-bought and hand-harvested bouquets.

Edward Francis White and Breanna Dawn Halbur of Arvada, Colo., were married on Sunday afternoon on the steps of the Denver City and County Building overlooking Civic Center Park, with the Hon. Renee A. Goble officiating.

Luke McCarron and Tom Borah, both of Chicago, were married at the Cook County Marriage and Civil Court there on Jan. 17.

Georgia Bennett and Evan Fox were married on Sept. 28 at the Hedges Inn in East Hampton, with one of the bride’s uncles officiating and another performing on trumpet.

When she heard that other municipalities had ceased holding Bingo games with money on the line, Diane Patrizio, East Hampton Town's director of human services, decided to check on East Hampton's own license to conduct the game at its senior center. She discovered that the license had expired.

In recent years, genealogy research has grown in popularity, as people are curious to discover such details about their family history. The rise of accessible DNA technology and the digitization of census data and historical documents have greatly expanded access to information.

As autumn gets colder and darker, it's the perfect time to pull up a comfy chair, make a piping-hot beverage, and settle in with a good book. This list includes memoir, historical fiction, crime fiction, and more, both brand-new and recently released, that are also available in accessible formats like audio and large print.

 Very long ago, I read the words "out on the wine-dark sea" in Homer's "Odyssey," first as a student, then as a teacher of world literature. Homer the poet was besotted with the Aegean Sea, and I, as student and teacher, was besotted with Homer, though not yet inclined to dally in the waves and tides that sourced his ecstatic reflections.

'The ancient of the salt sea haunts this place . . . '

When it comes to at-home care on the East End, those who need help are finding it, well, hard to find. Factors like long driving distances to reach clients and a perceived lack of competitive wages for aides make the home nursing field challenging to navigate from both perspectives.

In a 2021 survey, the National Funeral Directors Association revealed that only 36 percent of adults have ever had a conversation with loved ones ahead of time about what they want to have happen when they eventually die. Considering it's inevitable, the experts say that pre-planning for your own "final expenses" is one way to ease your loved ones' grief when it finally occurs. The Star asked a local expert, Ken Yardley of the Yardley and Pino Funeral Homes, for his take on funeral pre-planning. Here's what he had to say.

From classic movies to hands-on activities and educational resources, there are plenty of ways older adults can relax and socialize together at local libraries, cultural institutions, and the town senior center. Here is a curated selection of upcoming events that promise to be entertaining and informative (mainly free, unless otherwise indicated).

Memoirs have the ability to touch us more deeply than a work of fiction. What does that say about us? Many of us are interested in other people's lives — not only what happened to them but how the experience shaped and affected them.

Devon Leaver, a daughter of Suzanne and Brian Leaver of Amagansett, and Xavier De Cardenas, the son of Evangeline and Frank De Cardenas of Roselle, N.J., were married on Nov. 9 at Montauk Downs. The Rev. Joe Iadanza officiated.

Loralee Ryan and Michael Brown were married on Oct. 20 at Bill Miller’s Castle in Branford, Conn. The bride’s sister, Robin Ryan, officiated.

Louisa Sidney White and Eliot Graeme Sperling of Washington, D.C., were married on Saturday at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. The Rev. Dr. Adam Shoemaker officiated.

Emilie Erica Stoll and Jean Carlo Barrientos, who were married on Friday at Navy Beach in Montauk, still remember the exact date they met: July 23, 2014. They had both finished their freshman years at college. They were at the beach. “He was surfing the hurricane swell at Napeague that evening while she was going for a sunset dip,” they wrote. “He came up to her as she was walking back towards the parking lot and asked her name, and the rest is history.”

Leland E. Winslow and Chelsea C. Walker were married on Sept. 22, the anniversary of their first date, at East Wind in Wading River.

Jennifer Johanna Mula and Gabriel Joseph Greenberg got engaged in Amagansett Square on Aug. 6.

Daniel Rose Marrow of Washington, D.C., and Julia Cuddihy Butz of New York City were married on Saturday in the rose garden at the groom’s family home on Ocean Avenue near East Hampton’s Main Beach.

OK. I’m 76. Maybe you're 76, too. Surely, somebody out there reading this is 76. Or, older. Or, more likely, younger. So. 76. Not great. I think it was Bette Davis who said, "Old age ain't no place for sissies."

True collectors, whether of teacups or tractor seats, are a breed apart, detached from the rest of us by the intensity of their passions. I once knew an older woman who collected manhole covers, dozens of which hung like works of art on the walls of her garage. You couldn't walk with her along the lane without stopping every 500 feet or so while she bent over and peered down.