Outdoors

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.

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.

Like helicopters and jets, leaf blowers have long been the bane of many a South Fork resident’s existence, each one a portable spewer of pollutants and source of ear-splitting noise. But in towns and villages alike, enough residents got angry and organized, and governments listened. Today, the use of leaf blowers is restricted across the South Fork.

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.

In the Northeastern United States, at least, these blossoms — whether red, pink, peach, yellow, white, or some combination of all — are at peak perfection starting in late May through June. As you stroll about, drive around town, or even take the train, here are some South Fork spots where you can find this favorite flower.

Who better to understand the power of collaborations between brands than two women with backgrounds in the fashion industry, which seems to rely on the constant merging of brands? With 100 Design Style, Nikki Butler and Brigitte Branconnier created an interior design company that seems to strike the perfect balance between layout, light, color, tactile materials, and a connection to nature.

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.

To make your backyard bird-friendly, you'll need to think like a bird when making landscaping decisions.

Scott Bluedorn, an artist and activist living in Sag Harbor, is also an aficionado of vermiculture — a contained composting system in which earthworms break down food scraps to quickly create a mineral-rich soil amendment.

As I perused the selection of seafood on display at Schiavoni’s in Sag Harbor the other day, an elderly gentleman peering into the saltwater holding tank with about a dozen lobsters in it said to me, “I’d love to buy one, but not at this price.”

While the song is the sparkling characteristic of the hermit thrush, I also appreciate its muted appearance. We can’t all be cardinals.

I had a bit of trepidation as I started the 370-horsepower diesel engine. After writing numerous checks this winter that amounted to nearly $30,000 for a multitude of repairs to my 20-year-old craft, would it hold up?