About Town

Orchard House Turns 100, Charlotte’s Web Comes to Concord, and It’s Time to Register for the PMC Kids Ride

There are lots of opportunities to support local organizations; check them out here.

  Maureen is right: the lady slippers are beginning to bloom, and the weather is getting milder – perfect for those walks in the woods. If you haven’t yet been up in the woods where all the Thoreau quotes are, as well as the quotes of other famous people, then take the time to do it. Totally worth the walk. The Concord Players closed out their very successful run of Little Women last weekend, and now Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House is getting ready to celebrate their 100th anniversary as a museum. If you’re going to be around over the Memorial Day weekend, consider buying tickets to the Saturday night Boston Pops performance at Symphony Hall. That night, May 26, is a benefit for Orchard House, and will feature a special performance by …

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About Town

About Town: Garden Club Plant Sale, Minute Man MARCH, and more Little Women

Check out this weekend’s MARCH and Little Women ticket opportunities, and next weekend’s plant sale hosted by the Garden Club of Concord.

  Ok, we’ve had a little rain, the lilacs are in full bloom, spring has really started to – well, spring. Even so, my garden is looking a little bare: as the greens start to poke up, I can get a good look at where I could use a plant or two. Lucky for me – and for you, too – the Garden Club of Concord is having their plant sale next Saturday, May 12. It takes place from 8:30 am until noon on the lawn of Middlesex Bank in Concord Center, rain or shine. This is no ordinary plant sale: these are local plants that have been dug from the gardens of some very experienced and successful gardeners. Meaning I may have a higher chance of success than with the plants I buy at Home Depot, I’m thinking. These are plants with a proven track record. …

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About Town

Earth Day Celebration, Ice Cream for All, and an Artist in the Making

Musketaquid Earth Day is this weekend; time is running out to load up your Bedford Farms card for a cause.

  One of the things I love about this column is the opportunity to give shout-outs to people doing interesting and/or extraordinary things. Today that person would be my friend Zoe Gregoric. Zoe is a junior at CCHS, and two weeks ago she was featured as the “Art Student of the Week” in the Concord Journal. Her preferred art medium is photography, and she especially loves doing portraits – which, if you are her Facebook friend, you can see, as she loves posting them. I love seeing someone find a creative outlet for their passions, and I’m really proud of Zoe for finding, and following, hers. I can’t wait to see her continue to grow as an artist. Another parade! In case you weren’t paying attention, Earth Day happened last Sunday, …

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About Town

Little Women Opens, the Fishing Derby is Happening, and Golfing and Gardening Are in Your Future

Come see great theater, sign your kid up to fish, and check out Decibels Foundation and the Concord Museum’s Annual Garden Tour.

  Hello, friends, and welcome. For those of you who had the week off from school who decided to stay around, I hope you kept busy, taking advantage of all the cool things going on around town. There’s a lot coming up, so let’s jump in. Little Women March On Awhile back I told you about the Little Women Spring we’re having – well, the next event is the production of Little Women itself. It starts next Friday, April 27, and runs four times each weekend over the next three weekends: Friday and Saturday nights and Saturday and Sunday afternoons. It’s a show the Concord Players do every 10 years, in tribute to Concord’s own Louisa May Alcott, and their script, which hews closely to the book, is an original adaptation by local playwright David …

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Spring Strawberries and Cream on Biscuits

Pair fresh strawberries with sugar, cream and buttermilk biscuits for a delicious Spring dessert.

"One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste." ~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe I noticed the other day that our strawberry plants are beginning to grow and I already can't wait to pick them fresh from the garden. They are much smaller than the berries you get at the supermarket but they are sweeter and tastier. I immediately began to crave strawberry shortcake. I stopped at the market and found some nice red ripe strawberries but there were no packages of shortcakes in sight. I thought about making my own (nah, too lazy). I looked at the angel food cake (nah, not one of my favorites). Then I wandered over to get the cream and there was my answer...buttermilk biscuits. Just pop open the can, throw 'em in the oven and …

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About Town

Poetry at the Library

Pushcart Prize Winner Jill McDonough will read this Sunday at the Main Library.

  Hello, friends, and welcome to Thursday! We’ve got a big weekend coming up, with Patriots Day being celebrated on Monday, and taxes due Tuesday. (Yes, we have to take the bad with the good.) Nice thing is there are lots of activities going on, all of which are neatly outlined here by my good friend Maureen, so you have no excuse not to get out and enjoy some festivities. One activity you may not know about, however, is this weekend’s poetry reading at the Concord Free Public Library, happening Sunday, April 15 at 3 p.m. Among its many fabulous offerings, our library hosts a Weekend Poetry Series that takes place roughly once a month from about September/October to May/June. They get some really interesting poets, both traditional and not…

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Culture and Cannons OK'd by Selectmen

The Board of Selectmen approved two separate requests at Monday night's meeting: dates for historic canon firings and the creation of a local-level cultural district initiative.

Cultural District Committee Approved A new committee is forming to map out Concord's cultural cred in a bid to get the town listed alongside culturally notable destinations like Fenway Park and Gloucester's Rocky Neck. On Monday, April 2, the Board of Selectmen gave Chamber Director Stephanie Stillman the go-ahead to form a Cultural District Committee tasked with detailing several walkable cultural districts within the town center and nearby areas. The goal would be to earn a designation as a Cultural District by the Massachusetts Cultural Council. Stillman presented rough draft maps of the possible locations and their affiliated cultural impacts such as the Hawthorne Inn and Walden Pond. Stillman explained that she has talked with many …

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About Town

Art Instruction at Home, a Gala, and the Visitor Center Opens

Concord resident’s company brings art instruction to you; Community Chest hosts their gala.

  Ah, how things can change in a week! Last week it was sandals and shorts, this week we’re back to fleece and sneakers. Such are the joys of living in New England! It IS a little odd to see blossoms on the trees so soon, and the forsythia out, but I’m loving the colors. I only hope it doesn’t get cold enough to stop them in their tracks. Today I want to tell you about local mom and businesswoman Alicia Cleary, who I met through my friend Kate Harmon. Alicia has had a fascinating life – she lived in Hong Kong in the last days before China took it back, and she’s worked in a bunch of cool places, like the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Now she’s living in Concord and raising her family, and it was while she was doing that thing …

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Object of the Week

Historical Object of the Week: 1880 Silk Quilt

A weekly look at some of Concord’s most historical items.

  Welcome to Concord Patch’s newest feature, Object of the Week. Each week we will present an artifact from the Concord Museum collection that speaks to Concord’s storied history. We welcome comments, memories and suggestions for future items. Whether it is a small cradle quilt passed down in the family of a patriot of the American Revolution, a large quilt commemorating the 1975 Bicentennial of that war, or a complex geometric pattern crafted in silk like this one, each quilt in the Concord Museum collection has a story to tell about the makers, the communities they lived in, and the era in which the quilt was made. During the Victorian era, the log cabin style quilt became popular and women on the forefront of fashion often chose to make…

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