Beholding Beauty

If there is one thing I have learned as the editor of Cape Cod ART, it is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Everyone, it seems, has a different idea about what makes a work of art compelling. This truism was underscored for me again when our staff reviewed possible cover choices for this issue.

Camp Memories

There is something about camps and cottages that seems the essence of Cape Cod and the Islands. Everyone seems to have a story about a special place where they spent part of a summer, from vacation cottages to cherished family camps perched on the edge of beaches or at the end of wooded sandy roads.

Our 20 BEST OF Years…and Counting!

This summer, Cape Cod Life is celebrating the 20th anniversary of our Best Of Readers’ Awards poll.

Since 1992, we’ve reached out to our readers for their Cape Cod, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket favorites. In our first Best Of issue, voters mailed back paper ballots with hand-written choices for attractions, beaches, and restaurants in just 16 categories. This spring, the voting is completely digital and the categories have expanded considerably to include 50 categories for everything under the sun. Read more…

Posted in Susan Dewey's Blog

Love on the Wing

We are planning a wedding.

In September, our son, Dan, will marry a Cape Cod girl, Erika, in West Barnstable Parish Church. The reception will be in a meadow that looks out towards Sandy Neck Beach.

Erika was born on Cape Cod—she is a sea sprite of a girl with hair the color of beach grass and blue eyes like the ocean on a bright September day. She grew up loving the water and life by the beach. She is the kind of person you would be lucky to have in a small sailboat during a sudden storm on Vineyard Sound.

Dan was not born on Cape Cod, but he has been here for some part of every summer from the first time when he happily dug his eight-month-old toes in the warm sand at Craigville Beach. After the wedding, they will live in West Barnstable where Dan runs an organic land care business. Erika hopes to teach art in a Cape school.

We are excited that our two families are joining together, strands knotting tight like a good bowline knot. On her Mom’s side, Erika is descended from the Hopkins family who has been on the Cape since the 1600s. Through my dad’s side, Dan is descended from the Higgins family, who were part of a pioneering group—which, incidentally, also included the Hopkins family—who settled the Orleans area.

In this, our special wedding edition, we share some happy memories from recent Cape weddings. Read about Kathleen and Dan Hodge whose wedding at Ocean Edge Resort last summer was classically romantic with special seaside flair. Find out why Cape wedding planners often choose Sperry Tents for their clients in a stunning photographic spread and story on page 60. And revel in the fantasia of seaside wedding floral designs by Mashpee Commons Verde Floral Design on page 54. Lastly, read Brian Shortsleeve’s Gunk’holing on page 96. We share the column Brian wrote in 1990 as he was preparing to marry his wife, Judy, in an island ceremony to remember.

It is May. The hydrangea are in full bud. The osprey have come back to reunite with their mates, wild calls waking us to sea and sun and plans for seaside days.

Love is in the air. Come celebrate the start of our splendid season!

Susan Dewey, Associate Publisher
& Editor, sdewey@capecodlife.com

Posted in People, Susan Dewey's Blog

Green Dreams

I have this fantasy that someday we will move out of our old Cape into a green house—not the kind where you grow flowers, although that would be fine with me, too—but an environmentally efficient house where we could live a sustainable life. This fantasy occurs often in the winter months when the floors of our house are very cold (no insulation), the wind whips through ancient doors, and the furnace never seems to stop running. Read more…

Posted in Susan Dewey's Blog

Growing seedlings for your vegetable garden

Light

The first thing to consider when starting your own seedlings (which usually take around six weeks to be ready for planting in the garden) is light. To sprout and flourish, seedlings need lots of sunlight, such as that found in a bright Southern exposure window, or steady constant light provided by fluorescent lamps. Read more…

Posted in Gardens, How-To, Nature, Susan Dewey's Blog

Reap What You Sow

Starting your own vegetables from seed is time consuming—but worth the work—for Cape Cod gardens.

The pleasure of vegetable gardening never grows old. Even on Cape Cod—where variable soil conditions range from sandy to solid clay and erratic weather patterns run from humid summers to cold storm-battered autumns—there’s nothing like growing your own tomatoes, beans, brussels sprouts, lettuce, or whatever vegetable suits your fancy.

The gardening season on Cape Cod and the Islands is longer than in many other New England regions. The surrounding ocean warms things up every summer, which is why this area has a hardiness designation of Zone 7. Zone 7 stretches from Cape Cod to Georgia and includes places like Charlotte, North Carolina. Read more…

Posted in Gardens, Spring, Susan Dewey's Blog

Creating a simple hydrangea wreath for year-round pleasure

Last weekend I walked around the old cranberry bog on Bumps River Road close to our house with my best friend and our dogs and all around us nature was giving a flamboyant goodbye to summer . . .always a bittersweet time on Cape Cod and the Islands. It is hard to let go of that glorious golden time every year. As I said in the just released 2011 winter issue of Cape Cod HOME, I am always sad when the hydrangeas—that emblem of Cape Cod—begin to turn from intense blue—just like the sky over a Cape beach in summer—to muted greens, grays, and soft purples.

We have lots of hydrangeas surrounding our old Cape house, in beds around the yard—these show-stopping beauties burst into bloom around the end of June and perform their hearts out until around mid-October. A few weeks ago when my husband, Steve, and I were doing our fall clean-up (raking, raking raking!), I decided to take a break and make a few hydrangea wreaths. These wreaths can be done with blossoms that still hold color, or even those that have faded to that lovely beige color, kind of like old lace.

When Words Bloom

When our publisher, Brian Shortsleeve, suggested that we launch Cape Cod GARDENS as a new April Cape Cod LIFE issue, I could not believe my luck. I can work in my Cape Cod garden by the hour without any sense of time. I am imagining bright red tomatoes, rows of vibrant basil, glimmering mounds of zucchini, billowing hydrangea, and perfect velvet-petaled roses as I plant, weed, and prune. I do not stop until the spring, summer, or fall sun goes down, or a blister develops on my hand, or my family and the dog wander by, wondering about a meal. Reluctantly, then, I put down my tools and turn off the story in my head. But I know I can pass through that gate again tomorrow into that imaginary world.

The same thing happens to me when I am writing . When I am writing at the office and it is going well, I do not hear phones ringing or coworkers talking. I am in whatever world I am creating and reality moves without boundaries just before a blinking cursor on my computer screen. Often, I don’t realize that the day is almost over until it starts to get dark in my office and I notice that my coworkers are heading home. This is what happens when you do not care how many hours it takes to help create a magazine with words and pictures as if it were a garden full of sight, color, and experiences so vivid that others can know it with you.

In this issue, you will see some of my garden world. Just as it is a joy for me to share this passion with you, one of the Cape’s best known garden writers, C.L.Fornari takes you through the world of growing roses, her knowledgeable words guiding you down the path to growing that perfect seaside rose. When C.L. writes about gardening, you can tell that she loves her job, too.

Our photographers move you into the natural world on Cape Cod and the Islands, their images caught in flashes of glory on these pages, so vivid that you want to reach out and touch that hot chartreuse beach grass along a wooded Nantucket path, where a gardener is following his vision of plants and stones and glimmering koi in a small pond…

I hope our very first Cape Cod GARDENS helps you shape your own garden world, perhaps with a little bit of Cape Cod and the Islands beauty from these pages in it, some bright lilies seen in this issue beside a Nantucket pond, or my favorite nasturtiums by our back door dancing in the golden light of a Cape Cod afternoon.

Happy gardening,

Susan Dewey, Associate Publisher & Editor
sdewey@capecodlife.com

Posted in Arts & Culture, Gardens, Nature, Susan Dewey's Blog

Our Life’s Canvas

One of the best things about living on Cape Cod is the diversity of its art world. There are artists of many kinds on the Cape and Islands, and the depth of their talents make it hard to choose who to profile in our arts edition. Some of the people profiled on these pages were suggested to me by friends, co-workers, and other artists. I have met some of them personally at cultural events. I wish that we had endless pages to present more of their work—it is always hard to pick photos reflecting an artist’s talent. Read more…