Rain gardens offer an opportunity to work with nature to restore balance, using the contours of the land to capture water that flows to lower elevations. The plants’ roots absorb rainwater and nitrogen runoff, while the soil filters particulates before they end up in our waterways. And rain gardens are also a way to ameliorate the dramatic loss of 3 billion birds in North America over the past 50 years.
Budbreak — when wine grapes’ winter buds open and begin to release their woolly leaves — has unfurled across the East End, perhaps inspiring people to dream of growing wine grapes of their own.
Where some see weeds, others, like Jill Musnicki of Sag Harbor, see "a hotbed of glorious biodiversity," to borrrow a phrase from The Guardian. Her front yard has been carefully cultivated into a pollinator garden with native plants undesirable to some but "a miracle" to bees, butterflies, birds, and all kinds of beneficial insects.
Perhaps making up for two years of lost time, the spring and summer of 2022 will be filled with marvelous workshops, lectures, and benefits here on the South Fork.
