I often go to Mary Cummings Park just to watch the sun set behind the treeline.
You never know how a sunset will turn out. This one was colorless, but promising, with lots of different cloud systems at work. Normally I bring lots of high end photo gear, but on this day I was replacing old signs with new, and didn’t want the extra weight and hassle of the cameras. So I set up my iPhone on timelapse mode and let it go. I couldn’t actually see the sun when I started the sequence and didn’t realize it was way over on the right, almost out of the frame.
But I watched with some delight as the sunset ripened and became quite spectacular.
And when it was over, and barely light enough to see my way home, I noticed a doe and a fawn grazing in the grass, too dark to photograph. Not a bad evening at Mary Cummings Park, here inside the 95-128 beltway. A miracle, actually.
Three shifts of energetic Stantec volunteers came to Mary Cummings Park on Wednesday, September 20, 2016, and cleared out overgrown trails. From 10am until after 4pm, staff from The Trustees of Reservations guided Stantec teams around the park for trail maintenance. A major trail was fully restored by end of day. We thank Stantec and The Trustees for the great work.
A team of 7 volunteers from the Burlington, MA, offices of VMware contributed a day of excellent trail clearing and sign-post repair. The 7 hardy people who came to the park cleared over 2 miles of trails where shrubs and thorny bushes had started to block passage. In addition, the team dug out two tippy sign posts, gathered some good sized rocks, and cemented the posts back in.
It was a great day’s work, and it was satisfying to look back on the big improvements made to the trails.
Plus, aided by super weather, cool and sunny, everyone had a great time.
If you or your group would to help out with trailwork or other volunteer activity at Mary Cummings Park, contact us at our contact page.
Click any photo below to see it larger, and read what’s taking place.
There was a fund raising event at Talbots in Burlington on September 21st.
10% of pre-tax sales was donated to The Friends of Mary Cummings Park. This much-needed money will help us continue to supply free trail maps and upgrade the trail signs.
Cynthia John, Joan Kennedy-Constant and Ed Loturco were on hand to greet shoppers and tell the story of Mary Cummings Park.
This walk was rained out! After the driest summer in years, we got a good soaking on Saturday. We will reschedule Diana in the spring.
Our October Nature Walk will be a bird watching walk with expert Diana Fruguglietti. We will take a walk, exploring the varied habitats of the Mary Cummings Estate. Meeting Place: Parking lot on Blanchard Rd in Burlington. 10:00 – noon.
(Full disclosure: the lovely photo above of Diane was NOT taken at Mary Cummings Park, where we don’t have a sea of sunflowers, though we have many other delightful habitats.)
Diana spent her career working in the software industry as a Software Configuration Manager but in 2012 decided to pursue her true love of nature, animals, photography and travel. She has seen Mountain Gorillas in Uganda, Orangutans in Borneo, Tigers in India, Jaguars in Brazil, Penguins in Antarctica and most of the big animal species in Tanzania, South Africa, Uganda and Madagascar. Africa and Central and South America are her favorite areas to travel with Colombia being her favorite country.
Diana has been birding since 2002 and is on a quest to see as many species as possible throughout the world. She loves to travel and has been fortunate to have visited 51 countries thus far and has been to all continents. In the last 2 years she has started organizing birding trips around the world. She prefers to hire local guides and has many contacts. If you would be interested in traveling with her, please email her at [email protected].
Her life list is 4159 species seen throughout the world of over 10,000 species and her ABA list is 694 species seen in the US and Canada.
Diana is the Program Director for the Menotomy Bird Club and on the Board of Directors for the Brookline Bird Club and leads bird walks for both clubs as well as for WREN.
The September 3rd walk with Gerry Kehoe was a delight for all of us. She showed us many plants, leading us from the parking area all the way down into the wetland, finding remarkable things to see every few paces along the way. (We even voted to take the long way back since we were all having such a good time.) The gallery below features just some of the sights we saw. Click any photo to launch a viewer where you can read the captions which include some plant identification and other explanations. (Photos by Jon Sachs)
Families learn about Mary Cummings Park and its benefits and kids get to color their own version of our animal, plant and nature concept images.
(The Coloring Corner is a re-use of the giant cutouts created for the July 4th 2015 parade.)
