Psst! It's Open. Pass It On.

I'm doing a walking tour on trees next Thursday in North Easton Village. I'm discovering that the nice familiar trees I'm used to at Sheep Pasture are not very common in the area around the library. Yesterday, I went looking for some easy trees and discovered this sign on the Governor Ames Estate.

It seems that the Trustees of Reservations have done the long rumored soft opening of Easton's newest open space. Lately, they have been busy putting up fencing to delineate the edge of their property on the Island and to block the Olmsted Bridge into Mrs. Oliver F. Ames' property, but I didn't expect the welcome sign when I drove onto the property yesterday on the Fourth. Driving in may have been a holiday special since the rumor mill indicated that the estate would be closed to cars for a while until the Trustees get the parking situation sorted out.

For those of us who haven't been trespassing for years, the Ames Estate has much new to offer. There are a number of specimen trees including many large beeches an at least one sweetgum. A really fine little Japanese maple is next to the entryway of the mansion. Behind the mansion's historic carriage house is a frog pond that by the sound yesterday is full of bullfrogs. Aside from the road that runs through the estate and the long driveway to the mansion there are no really delineated paths at present. Visit now and you'll get the feeling of walking about your own estate. Well, what your own estate would be like if the McMansion didn't fill up the whole acre. Finally, t      he bank of Shovel Shop Pond on the Trustees side is much better for fishing than the Pond Street side, but watch out for poison ivy along the edge.

I bumped into a neighbor who was out for a walk and decided to check out the car that invaded the park. He noted the Trustees may have a problem with kids who park at 50 Oliver Street and then invade the new park after dark. Hopefully, a live-in caretaker will some be in place.

This reminds me of a story told by my preacher cousin about his days as a youth pastor in the late 1960s. He was chaperoning an evening event when he realized a young couple had disappeared. A little quiet investigating revealed they had been overcome by teenage hormones and were making out beneath a headstone in the adjoining old cemetery. "I resolved to let the Good Lord punish them," my cousin said, "when I realized they were sitting in the only poison ivy patch in the whole cemetery."


Maggie has been a little disoriented with the lack of a daily visit to Sheep Pasture. She's a girl who likes to stick to a schedule because she seems to think that all her sniffing and peeing is necessary to bring order to the world by asserting her Alpha personality. The Ames Estate isn't very large and it doesn't have the variety of habitats of Sheep Pasture, but it looks like a great spot for a daily walk!