Dance on Saturday 16th at Martha Clara Vineyard

Shorecrest Bed and Breakfast will be part of the North Fork Bed and Breakfast Association’s Summer Event, a celebration of tourism and agriculture which takes place this coming Saturday, July 16th.
I’ve been working hard in the Shorecrest garden getting it ready for the visitors who have bought tickets for the garden tour part of the day’s activities. Visitors with the garden tour ticket can start their day with a visit to the Cornell University Extension experimental gardens on Sound Avenue in Riverhead, NY. If you garden on Long Island and would like some great ideas on what will do well here, this is a good place to start. Do you have a sick plant or strange looking insects eating your veggies? These are the people to call or even send them a leaf in the mail; they will get back to you with an explanation and possibly a cure. Cornell is a great resource for both farmers and gardeners.
The tour of the gardens continues in the afternoon from 1pm to 4pm with visits to six bed and breakfast, each of whom will be hosting a local farmer or food producer. Sang Lee will have a stand at Shorecrest and we will be serving fresh mint tea and mint flavored lemonade using our own home grown mint leaves. From 4.30pm to 6.30pm, visitors can purchase tickets for a prix fixe dinner, choosing from one of 9 North Fork restaurants: The Old Mill Inn, Jamesport Manor Inn, The Portly Grape, Scrimshaw, Skippers, Sound View, and Porto Bello will offer their chef’s signature dishes to diners. To end the days with a bang, the NFBBA will be hosting a dance with the music of Trevor Davision at Martha Clara Vineyard from 7:15 to 10:30 p.m.
The bed and breakfast association is donating part of the profits of the summer event to Cornell Cooperative Extension, which supports gardening and agriculture on Long Island and is part of the association’s longstanding commitment to strengthen business on the North Fork while supporting agriculture and tourism.
Tickets can be purchased on line for all or just parts of the event through Brown Paper tickets. To find out more about activities throughout the year, check the association’s website at nfbba.org.
Related Topics: Cornell Cooperative Extension, Martha Clara Vineyards, and North Fork Bed and Breakfast Association

Relaxing in the Shorecrest Hammock under the Honey Locust Trees

Our apologies for taking so long to update our blog, but we have been blessed with wonderful weather so far this summer, and with the wonderful weather comes a great deal of things to do! We have been quite busy with the influx of the summer season guests, but thought we would take a moment over the next few days to update North Fork visitors with all that we have going on our here for the coming summer months.

The North Fork, like the rest of Long Island, has been experiencing one of the hottest summers on record, but here in Southold, surrounded by the waters of the Long Island Sound to the North, the Atlantic to the East and Shelter Bay to the south, the temperatures are always moderated, both in summer in winter. If it is 90 degrees in Manhattan or just a few miles west of us in the more developed part of the Island, you can be fairly sure it will be 10 degrees cooler here.

Shorecrest is located just to the right of the narrow strip of land at the top of the photograph

And this has been great swimming weather. Our guests have been taking advantage of the clear warm waters of our own beach on the LI Sound, just across the street to cool off or get some exercise.  Another favorite beach activity is to catch the sunset sitting, with a glass of wine, in one of our waterside Adirondack chairs, waves lapping at ones feet while watching the last evening hunt of the Ospreys before they return to their nests on the inlet for the night.

There is so much to do during the summer to suit every taste. For those who love the outdoors, kayaking on the inlet behind Shorecrest Bed and Breakfast has become very popular. Brian of Bay View Kayak tours and Bike Rental will bring Kayaks to our own Bay Inlet beach for our guests to rent by the hour or he will conduct a guided tour of the inlet with them.  He will also launch Kayak tours from his base in The Port of Egypt Marina, in Southold Bay two minutes south of Shorecrest, and conducts guided Sunset/Wildlife Tours at 5.15 pm every evening and Sunrise tours too.

The meditation garden at Shorecrest BnB

If you are not feeling that energetic, reading or dozing in the hammock under the shade of the Honey Locust trees in the wooded glade to the east of the house is a very relaxing way to spend a lazy afternoon. The enclosed and secluded flower garden behind the house makes a wonderful spot to meditate and relax, listen to the birds and smile at the clouds of butterflies that mob the blooms of the many varieties of plants that flourish here; a perfect spot to enjoy the peace, beauty and tranquility that is the North Fork of Long Island and our special corner of it.

In our next posting we will be talking about the myriad of activities that the wineries will be hosting this summer, including music, comedy shows and wine and food events. We look forward to welcoming you to Shorecrest Bed and Breakfast soon, or to one of our four waterfront rental properties suitable for family groups, some of which also welcome that very special member of your family, your dog. For more information please visit our Property rentals website www.shorecrestpm.com and click on the Properties Managed page that you will find  in the navigation tabs to view the houses. Links on those pages will also take you to the reservation calendar for the houses or you can call me, Marilyn, at the Shorecrest number, 631 765 1570 and I will be happy to help you

Wishing you all a great summer and keep an eye out for our next blog full of news of winery happenings.

Marilyn Marks, Innkeeper, Shorecrest Bed and Breakfast

Daffodils on the berm in early April at the Shorecrest

Early harbingers of spring, daffodils wave to passers by on route 48 in Southold

Part 1

The Passionate Gardener

This is going to be a section of my blog devoted primarily to gardening. I hope to add to it weekly during the season. There are lots of things I want this blog to be about but one aspect of life I am most interested in and passionate about , is the beauty and wonder of nature, and particularly the artistic pleasure of harnessing those wonders in creating a garden

I feel so fortunate to be living and working on the North Fork of Long Island. With its rich soil and (fairly) agreeable climate for plant health, it is a fine place to grow a garden and I count my lucky stars every day as I cross the road from my BnB to the beach, walk by the waters of the Long Island Sound and if I time it right enjoy a glorious sunset.

My last three houses were purchased  largely because of their location on a parcel of land with  potential  for a  garden. I have ‘built’ or ‘created’ gardens throughout my life wherever I have lived. As an art student living in a rented ground floor ‘flat’  in East London with only enough money to buy a dozen or so packets of ‘four o’clock’, marigold, lupine and nasturtium seeds to spread around a bare patch of earth in the forlorn looking back yard, a carpet of color was created that lasted from Spring until Frost.

Instant gratification; pansies can be planted in April for early color in the flower border

When I first moved to New York I took a summer rental in the Catskills so that although I was living in a Manhattan apartment with no garden  I could spend my vacation days double digging flower beds and ambitiously planting climbing roses and every variety of annual I could find for an ‘instant gratification’ garden. The landlord was quite happy to have me do the work and beautify his cottage, but obviously thought I was quite mental!

I grew up in England and one of my earliest memories is the garden my uncle made when we moved from the city to the countryside when I was 5 years old. Our house was literally built on what a few months before had been a cow pasture. I ‘helped’ him lay out the flower beds and lawns, double dig the vegetable patch, and use a giant hand sieve to remove stones and pebbles from the less than perfectly loamy soil. I was fascinated when he turned an oil drum filled with cement and the handles and axle from an old baby carriage into a giant roller to flatten and grade the soil before planting grass seed for a lawn that could have served as a putting green it was so perfect.

Species tulips return every year

Every day I walked to school past the gardens of my neighbors, all apparently committed horticulturists and took a great interest in the health and progress of their dahlias, roses, chrysanthemums et al. In England almost everyone is a gardener; it seems to be in the blood, but it probably also has a lot to do with being blessed with an almost perfect climate for a wide variety of flowering plants. We never had to contend with the humid but overly warm nights that you find in New York (bliss for fungus diseases, awful for plants prone to downy mildew and black spot) or a sudden inexplicable hail storm on an otherwise perfect June day with hail stones sharp as knives and the size of quarters that can decapitate every bud on the roses and hydrangeas; or Lyme ticks lurking in the shrubbery! But the North Fork of Long Island and my spot in particular, surrounded as it is by the moderating waters of the Long Island Sound and the Ashamomaque inlet of Shelter Bay is much more temperate and better suited to growing things than almost any other area of New York State. This, and the remarkable richness of the soil is why there are so many wineries and farms here also.

Flame colored hybrid tulips compliment red maple leaves in the Shorecrest meditation garden

What follows is the story of my current garden at the Shorecrest Bed and Breakfast. It is a work in progress as all gardens are and in my next post I will explain how it came into being. Hopefully you will follow along with the trials and tribulations of combating voles, sudden late frosts and all the drama and pleasure that go along with the job of taking care of a garden.

Meanwhile I have included photographs here of the garden as it looked earlier in the season as it just awoke from its winter sleep, in March and April.

Until the next time…..