In eastern Massachusetts, we don't expect drastic changes to the landscape. Long before any of us were born, our Puritan forbears chopped down the oak-hickory-chestnut forest that greeted them in West Cambridge, radically transforming the land—but in the past century, we've paved away most traces of their farms piece by piece. No one in particular has attacked Lexington since 1790, so for the past two centuries we haven't had the town burned by vengeful armies, and we haven't had any bloody miner's strikes, either, partly because we don't have any mines (Paint Mine excluded). It's been pretty…

When the weather is sufficiently grim, I spend my time exploring the Internet instead of the great wild world. On one recent thunderous afternoon, I found myself poking at BioMap2, the Massachusetts Natural Heritage and Endangered Species Program (NHESP) on-line map viewer for “strategic biodiversity conservation.” The map is intended to help the state focus on protecting the most critical habitats for the rarest species, rather than, say, protecting a stretch of forest where a state senator's grandmother had a summer home, or buying whatever land is cheapest at the moment. Real estate prices…

It's August. In my mind, it ought to be blackberry season—but in August, my mind is generally in New Jersey. At one of the first talks I gave about my book Boston Gardens and Green Spaces, a kindly-looking, stern-voiced woman well past a certain age asked me, “You're not from around here, are you?” The answer was no; although components of my genetic material have been lurking in Massachusetts since 1630 or so, I was compelled to grow up in New Jersey, just beyond the reach of the Laurentide glaciers. There, the ground wasn't full of rocks, the boulders weren't erratic, and every summer we …

On sunny summer days, visitors to the Minuteman Bikeway have a hard time seeing the trains. There are so many distractions: the spandex-wrapped racing cyclists ready to crush slow-moving pedestrians under their razor-thin wheels; the nervous cyclists who yell “ON YOUR LEFT!” at all living creatures within 50 yards of the Bikeway; oblivious walkers who respond to shouts of “ON YOUR LEFT!” by moving to the side of the path, or towards the middle, or standing still from the shock of being addressed by strangers; even occasional off-leash dogs who must be the racers' first victims. But behind all…

It was raining steadily the morning I visited Wild Acre Inn, and the entrance didn't look too promising. From Highland Avenue, all I saw was the sign for 50-52 Percy Road, a wooden fence, and a small sign reading “Plant Sale Today 10am-2pm.” But not every morning is sunny, and not every entrance can be grand, so I went on in.  Once I parked my car, I saw a jumble of nasturtiums and tables full of flowers: brilliant red begonias, floppy frilly petunias, blooming coleus, snapdragons, brown-eyed Susans. Nearby was the garden with orderly rows of triumphant-looking lettuce, and the greenhouse. It…

The annual migration reaches the parking lot in late June. Emerging from the Harrington school at dawn—well, at 8:45 a.m., which passes for dawn at Lexington's elementary schools—the stalwart fourth-graders make their way up Winchester Drive, a road distinguished by sporting four names in 3.6 miles. The children arrive at one of the few open edges of Whipple Hill, Lexington's 120-acre conservation land parcel of oak/hickory/pine forest full of wild blueberries, lady slipper orchids, wood frogs, and wintergreen. The kids didn't care about mere living things, though -- they have come to look at…

First, here's the bad news: the Lexington Field and Garden Club's (LFGC) bienniel garden tour was last Saturday, June 4, and if you missed it, you'll have to wait another two years to see the wonders Lexingtonians have wrought from seeds and soil at their homes. The good news is that you can view plenty of other gardens the Club's members are maintaining in grand style any day of the year. If you drive through Lexington Center, you probably see them every day (bicyclists might have to go a bit out of their way to get a good look). But do you even notice them? When was the last time you took a…

You have to travel up two dirt roads to get to Meadow Mist Farm. Did you even realize the Lexington has dirt roads? The first one, Bacon Street, runs right off of Marrett Road, less than half a mile from the Dunkin Donuts and the Waltham Street snarl. Go a quarter mile up Bacon Street, past a wet meadow to an intersection shaded by sugar maple trees and turn left onto another dirt road, then turn right, and suddenly you'll be back at Grandpa's farm, or maybe the farm you wished your grandparents had owned. It's a clean, sweet-smelling place with chickens and cows and lambs and blueberries and…

At this time of year, a certain set of Lexington families suffers the same unappetizing fate each week. The long, warm days allow for evening soccer practice, commencing at 6 p.m. Hundreds of children and their stalwart coaches are reduced to eating in the car in lieu of dinner, devouring cold sandwiches, granola bars, hideous blue Gogurt sticks and far, far less edible substances, just to make it to the field on time. It doesn't have to be that way. There are alternatives to this gastronomic misery. Lincoln Park is full of wild edible plants to banish hunger and soothe the car-sick soul—but …

Patriots! The days of parades, re-enacted warfare and solemn ceremonies are past, but we cannot be idle. We must defend our sacred soil from the ravages of still more invaders, invaders who threaten the future of life itself! And we cannot use muskets, or bayonets; these foul intruders must be fought with our bare hands! (Well, you can wear gloves if you're squeamish.)  Yes, my fellow Lexingtonians, stewards of American land, it is time for the unfortunately annual Lincoln Park Garlic Mustard Pull. Every year, our proud Citizens for Lexington Conservation gather to remove this invasive plant …

“It was one by the village clock, When he galloped into Lexington.” Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Revere's Ride How can you imagine what Paul Revere saw? Sure, the Buckman Tavern is still there, looking as colonial as modern methods can make it, but you can't just get the right perspective on it. The problem is, Lexingtonians just don't ride down Massachusetts Avenue on horseback any more. Apart from Halé Schatz's flock of dwarf Nigerian goats (gentle and sweet-smelling all), you'd be hard-pressed to find any type of quadruped near Lexington Center. If you're tired of walking, there are no…

When is a street complete? Nowadays you can't just hack a path through the trees wide enough to drive your hogs to market and call it a road. Even cobblestones are insufficient by modern standards. Today's drivers expect actual pavement with lines in the middle of the road to show them how not to run into other cars. Motorists like to see signs with street names on them, lights at busy corners and traffic signals at hazardous intersections. That's pretty much all you need to see... if you're driving. Strangely enough, there are people in Lexington who don't drive, but have the temerity to …

It's hard to photograph a frog nowadays. That isn't to say that the frogs aren't around. They are. My son tried to catch one in Whipple Hill just this week, but ended up with only a net full of leaves and mud. The frog was too small, too brown, too fast for a winter-weak boy to catch as it leapt into the March cold water. The frog was highly motivated to escape. It was a wood frog, and on its way to mate and catch up on the stats for basketball games it might have missed while snuggled down for the winter in the rotting stump or shallow burrow. In all honesty, “snuggled” is hardly the right …

February is the time of year when I look at gardening catalogs and despair. Like many of Lexington's older homes, my house is surrounded by mature oak trees. They do a fine job of shading and cooling our rooms in the summer, admitting just enough light to allow a few spindly cherry tomato plants to pretend that they might fruit one day.  I did spend two years attempting to grow vegetables at Lexington's Allen Street Community Garden, which has plenty of sun. Alas, I lived too far from the garden to get there often, and did not intervene in a timely fashion when unseen forces chewed my peppers…

During the recent weeks (eons?) of miserable weather, I've spent more time at the computer screen typing idle Google queries than roaming outdoors. I have, however, spent plenty of time driving/shuttling my children from place to place rather than risk walking on snow-narrowed streets and glaciated sidewalks. While waiting in the Harrington School's overflow parking lot (more commonly known as Lowell Street) to enter to the school's driveway, I wondered; how many parking spaces are there in Lexington?   As it turns out, there is no easy answer to that question. I asked Stephen Ervin, a …

Imagine; on a cold winter night, you see a few flakes of snow wafting by your porch light. You wonder if there might be snow, a blizzard, an orange French Toast alert on UniversalHub.com, so you saunter over to the couch, hook up to the internet, and surf over to the Weather Underground site, and request a forecast for Lexington. To the left of the screen is a map of Massachusetts, with an option titled “Wundermap” below. That sounds Wunderful, so you click on it, and see a map covered with little circles with numbers in them. You choose a circle and zoom in, again and again, until you …

Once upon a time in Lexington, when the fence viewer and tythingman were the stuff of everyday complaint, newly appointed town leaders would “walk the perimeter.” These stalwart men would set off on foot to travel the border of the entire town, presumably so that they would come to understand just how big a mess they'd gotten themselves into – that is, the true size of their awesome responsibilities. If our selectmen were to undertake such a journey today, they would be stymied by crossing both Rte. 2 and Rte. 128, several bodies of water and a section of northeast Lexington that simply doesn…

"It was one of these mysterious fairy calls from out of the void that suddenly reached Mole in the darkness, making him tingle through and through with its very familiar appeal, even while as yet he could not remember what it was. He stopped dead in his tracks, his nose searching hither and thither in its efforts to recapture the fine filament, the telegraphic current, that had so strongly moved him. A moment, and he had caught it again; and with it this time came recollection in fullest flood. Home!" ——The Wind in the Willows, by Kenneth Grahame I wasn't even looking for the nose. I had …

Early December is an unattractive time of year. The most persistent marigolds have frozen into dry brown lumps, and autumn's bright foliage has succumbed to the ravages of time, leaving dead leaves matted into lawns and storm drains. Despite the pleas of hundreds of elementary school student yearning for snow days, the Cold Miser has not yet granted us the snow to cover the mess up. The ground is frozen hard, but it's open and bare. This brief interval is the perfect time to inspect Lexington's newest bridges: in Parker Meadow, Arlington's Great Meadows and Beaver Brook North. Meadows? A …

One of the hardest things to imagine about historic Lexington is just how the place looked. Yes, the Battle Green swarms with reenactors (and hundreds of appreciative onlookers) on Patriot's Day, and Buckman Tavern and other historic buildings give us an idea of how people lived and drank-- but what did Lexington look like if you walked away from Massachusetts Avenue off into the neighborhood? What would you see along the streets? If you're in Petersham, Massachusetts, you could stop by the Harvard Forest Dioramas to get a glimpse of the evolution of New England from forest to farm in the …