The Trustees are busy at work developing their new plans for Mary Cummings Park. There is no final version ready to show, but we understand it will include a small parking area, nature trail, and picnic area. This all is likely to be created in the area south of the blue water tower, an area that is now so deeply infested with invasive brush that it is impenetrable, except by animals.
We requested that the brush be cleared at such a rate as to allow those animal residents to find new homes.
We look forward to seeing the final plans and sharing them with you, our park supporters.
We recently got word that Grace Cummings of Woburn passed away at the age of 98. She was a direct descendent of the Cummings family. Her daughter asked that donations be send to us, The Friends of Mary Cummings Park, in honor of her mother.
We are very grateful for the honor of being recognized by this family and we will use the donations to further the care of the park.
Here is the notice for Grace Cummings.
There has been regular vandalism in Whispering Hill Woods and Mary Cummings Park over the last years.
But this year it has hit a new level. Signs posts were smashed out of the ground, and thrown into the woods. It appears that they used barbells to break the signs out of the ground and ATVs to move the signs they dislodged around the park.
The Friends of Mary Cummings Park has been taking care of both parks for years, paying for kiosks, signs, and maps from our own pockets and from donations.
If you know who did this, please speak to them or their parents, or identify them to the police.
We will be looking into placing hidden field cameras and working with local police to catch those responsible.
The culprits have a firepit where they go to drink and then vandalize the signs in that area, also filling the area with empty beer and drink containers.
Here is our flyer about this recent round of destruction:
We held the drawing as announced at 11am on July 27th at the park. We raised over $2000 towards paying our legal expenses from saving the park from developers.
Below is a video of the drawing which is not interesting at all, but shows how it was done in public with no funny business!
We thank everyone who bought tickets. The money went towards paying the legal fees from saving the park from developers.
Commonwealth of Massachusetts / Town of Burlington / Raffle License #2019-04
The welcome warm weather brings visitors out to the park.
We were happy to see this couple visiting our kiosk and perusing the maps we provide.
And soon after we ran into this happy group on an LL Bean outdoor nature walk.
Come on out, the park is going to explode with life over the next month!
We went for a walk in the park to see if we could find scenes of winter. And we wanted to see if we could avoid getting views of the new Northeastern buildings… that have desecrated the park for all future generations.
The creek that drains most of the park, before running under Muller Road, provided visuals and inspiration.
In the summer of 2018, your Mary Cummings Park webmaster raised a group of Monarch butterflies from eggs and released them at Mary Cummings Park. Here is how that came about:
1. My good friend Andrea asks if I can raise her monarch caterpillars since she is going away for vacation and I say sure.
2. I learn to raise eggs to caterpillars to chrysalis to butterflies and release them at Mary Cummings Park.
3. I mention this to Vance Gilbert, who asks where the butterflies go and I reply that I don’t know because – I don’t speak butterfly.
4. Vance requests a song by that name and I write one. I like the song.
5. I decide to try AirGigs and have someone wonderful sing it and play it on piano.
6. Liel Bar-Z sings it and Diego Zapatera plays it.
7. I create a video to go with the song. Visuals created in Photoshop, animated in Final Cut Pro X.
For more songs by Uncle Jon, visit his website.
The Conservation Commission of Burlington is holding a photo contest for adults and children to find the best images of natural Burlington. Of course, we think that Mary Cummings Park is a great place to start, with forests, meadows, and wetlands full of plant and animal life.
Here is a link the the contest page where you can find out all you need.
Our friend and monarch caterpillar guide, Andrea Golden, was going on vacation and needed some caterpillar sitting. She had a group of monarch eggs and baby caterpillars that she brought in from her yard, and was raising in terrariums.
We offered to become the foster parents and took the group home, with Andrea’s advice in mind and her handwritten instructions in hand.
Andrea tells us that only about 2% of monarch eggs survive in the wild, so hand raising them is helpful to this threatened species.
We brought them home and set up the nursery on the back porch. And also started setting up timelapse sequences to record their progress. After a number of tries we got a video of the birth of a caterpillar.
Since Andrea taught us what the teeny eggs look like, and where to find them, we found some of our own at Mary Cummings Park, and brought them to the nursery to hatch in safety. One suspects that a monarch egg, not yet tainted by the milkweed poison, must be a real tasty find for other insects, birds, and other critters.
Now we are raising another crop of babies from Andrea, along with some we found at the park.
So this year we will have released 8 monarchs back into Mary Cummings Park, a great insecticide-free haven. And along the way we gathered tens of thousands of frames of timelapse video which will soon emerge from their own chrysalis as a complete lifecycle video of the magnificent monarch butterfly.
Stay tuned.
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