There are two species of the New World genus Hudsonia, or false heather, on the Cape: a woolier one with fuzzy leaves and flowers that don’t have much of a […]
Visual Stories
RARA AVIS
This Week’s Bird Sightings
Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, April 8 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet […]
ASTRAL PROJECTIONS
Prepare to Exhale
Relief from retrogrades is on the way
With so much going on in the cosmos (and in the world), it’s been hard to focus on the tasks at hand. It hasn’t helped to have retrogrades turning workaday […]
THE DRAFTING TABLE
A House Painter of a Different Sort
Marin Reinhardt renders her love of design in watercolor
Marin Reinhardt had always wanted to run her own business. For a few years, she brainstormed how to build on her background in interior design. Should she start a housecleaning […]
SLICED AND SHAVED
Salads for When Spring’s Not Yet Green
It’s time to cast aside winter’s comfort foods, even if the lettuce isn’t up
I have been a fan of shaved salads ever since I had my first plateful at a Brooklyn neighborhood restaurant called Frankies 457 Spuntino many years ago. It was a […]
MEET THE MAKER
Making a Scallop Dredge, Al Youngren-Style
In the Orleans workshop of a veteran fisherman who knows all the angles
ORLEANS — On a rusty table fashioned from what once held the shaft of a windmill, Al Youngren sketches the outline of a scallop dredge with a piece of white […]
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Knowing When to Let an Old Car Go
A fix-it freak consults his inner analyst for advice
A 30-year-old car cannot be your backup car. The problem with a 1995 Subaru Legacy station wagon — snazzy metallic teal and all — is that it’s not exactly what […]
THIS WILD CAPE
Respect for the Gulls
Learning to look for yellow legs and other distinguishing features that make a bird not just a bird
[Here we are, anywhere on Cape Cod. We look up and see a gull. There’s a flock in a parking lot, or bobbing on a freshwater pond. Fifty miles out […]
WARRIORS WATCH
Nauset Spring Sports Preview, Part 2
Unified and co-ed track, golf, and tennis teams are optimistic
EASTHAM — The spring season gets underway in earnest this week as every team except unified track plays at least once. This is the second of a two-part series previewing […]
NATURAL SELECTION
Good for a Pain in the Apse
The smooth red-brown buds opening like hatches across from the Methodist Church in Provincetown may belong to Salix discolor, the native pussy willow, or they could belong to an introduced […]
RARA AVIS
This Week’s Bird Sightings
Confirmed bird sightings on the Outer Cape in the week preceding the Independent’s deadline on Tuesday, April 1 included the following, based on a report prepared by Mass Audubon’s Wellfleet […]
ASTRAL PROJECTIONS
It’s Aries Season. Are You Feeling the Heat?
It’s hard to know when to fight and when to fold ’em
The stars are stirring up a lot of tension and conflict this week. What this means for you might depend on your sign. With Mercury, Venus, and Saturn sitting in […]
UNHINGED NEWS
April Fools Issue
Truro Decides All Can Vote at Town Meeting ‘Period of healing’ brings part-timers and year-rounders together By Paul Benson TRURO — Cape Cod’s smallest town took a giant step toward […]
MORNING FLIGHT
The American Woodcock’s Got the Moves
A peent and a sky dance announce the arrival of one goofy bird
It was a still March evening, and I was watching the sunset along the Pilgrim Spring bike path in Truro. For what seemed like a long while, the marsh there […]
LOGGING IN
Fungi Are Forever
Leo Parent’s carved wooden mushrooms spring from finds on forest walks
Leo Parent takes a hand torch to the top of a large wooden mushroom, and the smoke puffs up, gray and fragrant. The torching technique is called shou sugi ban, […]
