This is for all the armchair history buffs of Norwich, CT. The people who have read all the books that tell the same stories over and over but never contain any of the names and information of the less than famous or infamous residents.

To you I present from the March 9, 1902 Norwich Bulletin a List of “Award of Prizes for Best Short Stories in Contest of 1902.” I wish I had more information such as the sponsor but alas all I have is the following list.

“Dixie Land,” by Elsie M. Talbot, Norwich, Conn, First Prize $10.00

“Antie Sue,” by Laura Marie Lucas, Poquetannock, Second $5.00

“Helen’s Sacrifice,” by Agnes Virginia McKee, Norwich, Third $2.50

“Interrupted Wooing,” by Frances Davis, Wellesley Hills, Mass, fourth $2.50

“Pete’s Temptation,” Myra A. Cochran, Norwich, Conn, fifth $2.50

“Narrow Escape,” Cornelia H. Spencer, Lebanon, Conn, sixth $2.50

Honorable Mention

“Echo – the Lady of the Great Falls,” Bertha Mae Davis, Putnam, Conn.

“Redemptioner,” Gilbert Osgood Webb, Norwich.

“The Tramp and His Story,” Nellie M. Gardiner, Center Groton, Conn

“How I Became the Possessor of a Dog,” Nellie M. Ward, Saxton’s River, Vt.

“Portia,” Vera I. Benjamin, Norwich, Conn.

I did manage to verify that Elsie Talbot, Agnes McKee, Myra Cochran, Mabel E Day, Vera I Benjamin and Gilbert Osgood Webb were all on the 1900 census of Norwich, CT. Mr Osgood dropped out of the Yale class of 1908 and returned to live on Slater Avenue in Norwich. I am not positive but I think Agnes Virginia McKee married Dr Ernest J. Jones and lived across the street from me when I was a little girl. I can’t prove it but I think she was the mother to Gwendolyn, a school dental hygienist and James, a survivor of the Korean War Bataan Death March in April 1942. I would love to know if I am correct!

Anyway, my point is that everyone is more than just the sum of their birth and death dates. Every person has a story, an incident a uniqueness that should be recognized.

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

For the past few months I have been lending a hand to the Uncas Health District Covid Vaccination Clinics at the Rose City Senior Center. For a closed facility it is certainly a busy place. One of the busiest places in all of Norwich that I frequent at least. Their website is www.norwichct.org/seniors and their phone is 860.889.5960.

Individuals come to the facility to purchase used books three for twenty-five cents. I can candidly say that I have perused many of the books and previous readers have left all of the words on the pages. People have exchanged 250 – 1000 piece puzzles. The size of the pieces does matter and to the man who puts them together with the printed picture upside down and when he is done then turns it over to see if he has done it correctly a standing ovation. I thought he was kidding until he showed me photos of puzzles in progress and then turned over. Amazing!

On Thursdays DoorDash Delivery drivers report in one at a time to pick up The Salvation Army non-perishable Food Boxes for delivery to those who remain high-risk of severe complications from Covid, those in quarantine and others. To receive a food box the instructions say to call United Way at 2-1-1 and tell them you are interested in the DoorDash Food Box Delivery through the Salvation Army who will contact you to arrange a delivery.

TVCCA VITA Income Tax Assistance appointments can be virtual, online and with convenient drop-off options too. If you would like an appointment, you are asked to call 2-1-1 then select option 3 then option 6. This service is free and has an income limit of $66,000. For more information please see https://www.tvcca.org/financial-services/vita/

By the way, from the monthly news letter, I just learned that Norwich has a Property Tax Credit (Circuit Breaker) Program for real property owners who are 65 or older with an income less than $37,600 for individuals. The discount is based on a graduated income scale and calculated by the town’s Tax Assessors Office and the discount is applied directly to the applicants real property tax bill. Applications are accepted February 1 thru May 15, 2021. Veterans with established Connecticut residency may be eligible for other tax credits as well. Check with the City Ta Assessor at 860.823.3723.

Otis Library may be open only by appointment but AARP, The Mystic & Noank Library, Simsbury Public Library and the Lyme Public Library are busier than ever. AARP has been joining with Quinnipiac University for a virtual lecture series on Asian Studies the next being April 21^st on the East India Company and the last being Gender & Nationalism in the Colonial World on May 12^th. Register at www.aarp.org/ctevents

Tim Wachtmann of Plantscapes of New England is presenting a Gardening with Native Plant Series via Zoom thanks to the Mystic & Noank Libraries. Why Native Plants? Wed March 31, at 6 pm

Planting for Native Polinators Wednesday, April 14, at 6 pm and

Enjoying your native landscape on Wednesday, April 28, at 6 pm

Register at www.mysticnoanklibrary.org click on Event Calendar and the click on ZOOM programs.

You can use the same website for their Whole Food Cooking Series by Colin McCullough of Colin Cooks Vegan, who teaches people how to incorporate whole-foods and plant based meals into their diet. Healthy and Amazing Sauces on Thursday, April 29 at 6 pm and Veggie Burgers and Sausages on Thursday, May 27^th at 6 pm.

On a personal note I am pleased to say that Senior Center Director Mike Wolak has given me permission to begin a FREE Seed Library at the center that will be open to everyone who wants to participate and not just seniors. If you are interested in FREE SEEDS please come to see us at St Marks Church on Broadway in Norwich, CT on Sundays from 1-2 pm. We have a wide variety of vegetable, herb, annual and perennial flower FREE SEED PACKETS available.

Please watch the Facebook Norwich Plant Swap page for the announcement of our outdoors plant swap we hope for Sundays in late April and May. All outdoor swaps are weather dependent.

Kudos to the Norwich Recreation Department for their vastly improved Spring/Summer 2021 activities catalog. I am excited to see the addition of the Rose City Pentathlon that includes the Norwich Golf Course, the Norwich Bowling Center and the Mohegan Park Disc Golf. Safe fishing instructions with DEEP as well as a community Police Fishing Series at Spaulding Pond and Brown Park. Who doesn’t love Polar Express on a big screen with S’mores, popcorn and pj’s? A family movie night at the beach will be perfect in early August before school starts. Welcome Norwich Recreation to the 20^th Century. I know that there will be improvement every year!

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

 
 
Yes its another blog about gardening. I just spent the last hour or so fighting with my free standing wisteria and my nemesis the bittersweet that is trying to strangle my beautiful wisteria. Anyway . . .
 
 
 It gave me too much time to consider the age of my wisteria and snow ball and Japanese Quince. They are all very old. At least 60 years old and from what I can tell still happy and healthy. In the 1940's , 50's and 60's the back yard had very specific garden beds. I have memories of a bed of pink and red poppies. Pink and red bush roses. Maybe they weren't roses but they just looked like roses to me. A round patch for the rhubarb. The Jerusalem artichokes grew tall and formed a fence with dainty black eyed susan type flowers on the very top. Below the  pole for the clothes line was a thistle with a round light purple flower. It was very pretty but the leaves were mean with thorns. There was a bed with flowers you could cut for vases and plenty of violets and johnny jump-ups to pick as well.  
 
 
 So where are my thoughts down memory lane leading me? With the interest Norwich residents have in municipal history, there should be some folks who would be interested in mixing their interest in history with their interest in gardening and farming. Throughout its history Norwich had very little serious interest in farming but loved their gardens.  
 
 
 Seriously, gardening was a huge industry in Norwich, CT. Greenhouses were plentiful and so were the flower shops they supplied. When you read about the actual historic events and not just the stories and folk tales in the local history books they are filled with descriptions of the floral arrangements, who made them or supplied the greenery.   
 
 
 Wouldn't it be wonderful if people brought back some of Norwich history by planting the gardens on the “historic walks” or the property of local house museums with the flowers and grains that might have been seen in a particular period? They wouldn't need to be authentic to the period but a simple representation of what might have been there. In the Leffingwell House Museum is a kitchen set of flax  that was grown on Wawecus Hill, spun and woven on Wawecus Hill and made into an apron and dish cloths for a home on Wawecus Hill and never left Wawecus Hill until it was given to the Society of the Founders of Norwich, CT for the Leffingwell House Museum. What does a a field or a patch of flax look like? What is the process required to  spin and weave it into cloth? Wouldn't that make a great display?  
 
 
 Thanks to the internet and the dedicated Otis Library volunteers there are plenty of old photographs of Norwich, CT that could be referenced with a little hard work and dedication toward looking at the flora  and fauna of the various areas of Norwich.  The Norwich Bulletin and the Day both ran articles that could be used for research for those that wanted to carry the authenticity to the extreme.  
 
 
 It would take some cooperation but the maybe the multiple local gardening and historic societies could work together towards a specific beautification goal?  Maybe some of the very old and now very tired historic walks could be peppered up with some of the stories of the gardens of Norwich, CT. Just because the history is old does not mean that it was dull. Time to brighten it up!
 
 
 Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs
 
 
 
 
 
 
   

Some day I would like to have a calendar of Norwich, CT with all of the important dates marked on it. Not just the modern holidays but the truly important dates in the history of Norwich.

For example on March 5, 1907 the Norwich City Council acquired the original 400 acres of Mohegan Park for $875. from John A Rockwell, Charles Bard, Edward Harland, J. Hunt Smith, Henry R and Mary B. Bond, W. H. Allen trustee of the will of Charles Spaulding, Fanny Louise and Edith Mary Bliss, Mary W. Reynolds, William H. Bushnell, and Dr. L. W. Bacon and children.

Roadwork within Mohegan Park began in August 1907.

The first bath houses were constructed in July 1908.

The first children’s play area was completed in December 1909.

The skating pond (now called the Lower Pond) was completed in 1911.

The Washington Street entrance was opened to traffic in 1911 with the “driveways” joining Washington Street and Rockwell Streets were not finished until 1912.

1912, was also the the year the first deer were brought into the park.

Jimmy (?) the first monkey was given an established residence in 1915.

“Luigi” a baby monkey was given to the park zoo by the Patrolman’s Benevolent Association on May 24, 1959 to replace a monkey lost in a January fire. There is even a photo of Officers Joseph H Tambori, Henry Swatzburg and a young Tom Moretti of Harriett Street.

In 2021 Mohegan Park measures over 500 acres with multiple hiking and walking trails, cross country running paths, play areas, recreation fields, a beach, fishing areas, group pavilions, gazebos, picnic areas, a memorial rose garden and more.

I wonder just how many specific dates on a calendar could be filled in just with historic park events?

I try and add specific names and dates in my blog whenever I can in case there are descendants out there looking for more than just birth and death dates of their ancestors.

Take advantage of Mohegan Park Resources. The Park is open daily from dawn to dusk all year round. No fees, or admission charges and plenty of easy free, convenient parking.

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don’t hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

My apologies to everyone who is supportive of the 2021 Norwich Plant Swap and Seed Swap. For the Sunday, Seed Swap on 3/14/21 we will have a limited amount of seeds to give away from previous seed swaps and giveaways.

I have not heard a peep from the CT Master Gardeners and UConn who promised a new selection of seeds donated from Rhode Island Job Lot for the second week of March. I have left voice mails, sent emails and texts just asking when they are expecting the pick up date to be with absolutely no reply whatsoever.

Without a grain of evidence, there is still no question in my mind what happened. The CT Master Gardeners have never been involved in a seed give-away program and so did not have a solid understanding of the amount of work that goes into it and my further guess is that they did not have enough confidence in themselves to ask the simple question, “what questions or directions should I ask, before, agreeing to participate in the program?”

Lets walk through the program and you will quickly see what I mean. Rhode Island Job Lots is a chain of stores that sells seeds, January thru November. In December the seed packets at each store are counted and returned to a central point. This is where I think the delay comes in. The seed packets don’t come in all sorted. The seed packets come into a central place in a jumbled mess that agricultural students and Master Gardener volunteers then sort and create the requested orders for distribution. This is a lot of detailed work for a great many hands under normal circumstances. In the days of Covid when there are limits to group numbers it could be a problem by itself.

It takes a surprisingly long time to sort the packets not just into vegetable, flowers and herbs but into the specific types. Take for example green beans. Bush beans or climbing? Then it breaks down into the specific varieties. Have you ever been to the garden center and been dazzled by the number of varieties and colors of one specific type of flower? Think about peppers for a moment. Hot peppers, mild peppers, green peppers, red peppers, purple peppers, long peppers, short peppers, yellow peppers, ornamental peppers, the list continues but you get the idea. This is a new program for Connecticut Master Gardeners and I do not think they were fully prepared for groups, and individuals to quickly mark their orders with the quantities of seed packets they wanted for use or distribution. At the time of posting of the announcement and the order form they were still working out the details of where the distribution would take place. I thought it would be somewhere on the Uconn campus or they would send the orders to many Connecticut Master Gardener locations throughout the state with a follow-up email to arrange a pick-up of the order at a specific time and place. (Norwich just happens to have a CT Master Gardener location next door to the Three Rivers Community College campus.)

Another issue is the expense of putting together the orders. How can there be an expense when the seed packets are free? Each order was sent by email so each order needs to be printed so there is the expense of toner and paper. Each order whether an order for a single packet or an organizational order of 300 packets needs to be assembled and marked for identification. In the past, when working with our usual source the URI and RI Master Gardener program, the individual orders were placed into 10×12 manila envelopes and marked with the organizations, or individuals name. Envelopes and markers cost money. Did anyone consider a budget? The manila envelopes were then on tables in a loose alphabetical order that on pick up day, energetic volunteer runners could quickly check and hand off to the pick-up individual. It is without doubt a lot of tedious organization.In the past six years of working with the Rhode Island program my longest wait in line was less than fifteen minutes.

As I stated earlier, I have not heard a peep from the CT Master Gardeners or UConn but I will continue to contact them for further information and will update everyone through the Norwich Plant Swap Facebook page. Please continue to be patient as they work through the process.

There will be some seeds available on Sunday, March 14, 2021 at St. Mark’s Church, on Broadway in Norwich, CT from 1 – 3 pm. Thank you again for your patience and support.

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs

I think I have had a sense of accomplishment more in the two months of 2021 than I did in all of 2020. For example I was at the laundromat this morning and managed to make vaccine appointments on my cell phone for three people. Right then. Right there. No muss and no fuss. Not my first time making appointments for others and won’t be my last but what a great way to start the day.

At 1 pm this afternoon I met with the Sunday Community Meal people to learn their location for the month of March 2021 and finalize the plan for the 2021 Seed and Plant Swap location. We will have seed packets available until they run out on Sunday March 7, 14, 21 and 28 from 1 pm – 2 pm at St. Mark’s Church, 248 Broadway, Norwich, CT. We will be inside so inside and outside cuttings and plants are welcome.

I currently have over 100 older seed packets. I think the oldest may be four years old. That is not really considered to be old by most gardeners although they may want to plant two seeds to every one seed of a current year packet. I also will be suggesting people soak or dampen the seeds before planting to loosen the seed casing which may have dried and toughened a bit.

Now is a really good time for the “Winter Sowers.” “Winter Sowers, ” that’s a new term for me are the people who successfully grow plants from seeds in the plastic water and milk jugs outside, in the snow and freezing temperatures. I have posted many examples of the successes people have had on the Facebook, Norwich Plant Swap page. Please note that none of them are of my plants. I love gardening, planning the gardens, digging in the soil even fertilizing but my reality is not always the success I dream of . This year I will be trying lots and lots of “internet advised” techniques to see if I have better success. For example I read that if I bury the contents of a can of water packed sardines beneath my tomato plants I will have an improved harvest. I already have a ceremonial spring planting of a banana near the roots of my roses every year but the internet says I should be just cutting up the banana peel, soaking it in water for a few hours or over night and then watering the roses. Oh. Oops. But to be honest the burying of the banana in the spring has become a fun little ritual that I enjoy. Anyway, watch and learn some of the helpful tips from professional gardeners on the Norwich Plant Swap page.

I will be posting more information about the 2021 Norwich Plant Swap as soon as I learn it. One of the issues was whether the plant swap would be inside or outside. Since we had our 2020 Plant Swap many of us have enjoyed the growth and multiplication of our indoor plants that need to be shared with new homes. As the location is indoors we will have a reduced issue with temperature shock. Many indoor and young plants don’t like rapid temperature changes, well, truth be told, many outdoor plants don’t like rapid temperature changes as well.

The rules for the 2021 Norwich Plant Swap remain the same as in previous years.

1. Everyone must wear a mask and respect all Covid regulations.
2. There will be no product or plant sales.
3. All plants may be given or traded freely.
4. It is not necessary to bring seeds or plants to participate.
5. Everyone is welcome to come and adopt plants or seeds.
6. Plants do not need to be potted. Plants can be traded in newspaper, paper cups, take out containers, boxes, bags, envelopes or any other carry convenience.
7. Swap organizers are not responsible for supplying trunk or backseat liners or other plant equipment or supplies.

I hope to see everyone at one of the 2021 Norwich Plant Swaps!

Thank you for reading and sharing my history and Norwich Community blog freely with your family or friends or anyone you think might be interested or in a position to take on some of the suggested projects. Don't hesitate to contact me for further information. I am happy to pass along anything I can. Together we can make a difference. Email comments on this blog to berylfishbone@yahoo.com View my past columns at http://www.norwichbulletin.com/section/blogs