Pleasant Living Magazine

Brook trout named an indicator for restoration of Mid-Atlantic streams

It is difficult to find a healthy population of native brook trout in the Mid-Atlantic. But the little fish were recently extended a big helping hand in a report designed to restore a water body in which they will never swim – the Chesapeake Bay. Brook trout are the region’s only native trout, and according to a recent study they have vanished from nearly half of the Mid-Atlantic watersheds that once supported them. Now, a strategy to restore the Chesapeake calls for upgrading brook trout habitat in 58 local watersheds from “reduced” to “healthy.” The deadline for this goal is 2025. Brook trout advocates hope that momentum and funds will follow. “If brook trout had a vote, they would be excited about the Chesapeake Bay executive order (they order that prompted the restoration strategy),” said Mark Hudy, aquatic ecologist with the USDA Forest Service. Efforts to restore the bay have long included goals for restoring crabs, oysters, and migratory fish that move between freshwater rivers and the saltier Chesapeake Bay. The new brook trout goals are the first to address an upland fish species that will never swim in the waters of the Bay. Leopold Miranda-Castro, supervisor of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Chesapeake Bay Field Office, said “Brook trout have been kind of forgotten in the last two decades.” The new goal makes the trout an official measure of the progress of restoring the headwater streams  that feed the region’s big rivers that in turn flow to the bay.

I get a kick out of people who say they wouldn't live in the country because there's nothing to do. Holy mackerel!  All you gotta do around here is just go out the back door, and you'll end up somewhere—in a pasture of cattle, a fallow field, the woods, a swamp (good for taking the pigs for a walk and to catch turtles and snakes), a small town (better in the morning for a hot cup of coffee and fresh pastry), a vineyard (best on wine-tasting days), an old barn, parks, the beach—you name it.

Unlike city dwellers, country folk live their lives by the seasons, remaining in step with nature's cyclical pageant. In the fall, we're sweeping the chimney, putting away for the winter, taking stock of the vegetables and fruits we've canned, digging sweet potatoes, freezing greens, winterizing the house and boat, cutting and stacking wood, collecting walnuts to crack around the Christmas tree, and picking the last of late crabs for eating crabcakes on a snowy winter's day.

The following article appeared in the March April 1993 edition.  Ruby Lee Norris, still an ongoing contributor to PL, is available to answer your gardening questions at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

A Perennial Garden of Flowers, Vegetables, and Herbs:

A Practiced Gardener Tells How Hers Grew and How to Make Yours Thrive

By Ruby Lee Norris

Roses, asparagus, strawberries, peonies, day lilies, iris, chrysanthemums—all growing together in a perennial garden. This is our garden. Like Topsy, it and our knowledge of gardening “just grew.” Beginning as a usual vegetable garden, it eventually evolved into a perennial garden. We have no training in gardening except having grown up on a farm. As if by osmosis, we have always known certain things about planting, hoeing, weeding and feeding. Not until we were grandparents did we decide to plant some vegetables. We wanted our city-bred grandsons to plant some potato “eyes” and have the thrill of digging the matured new potatoes, to watch while cucumbers swelled overnight into green oblongs and to wait for days to see tomatoes ripen from green to red.

We were amazed to find that during the years between childhood and grandparenthood our “mental computer” had safely stored much of what we absorbed as youngsters. As we planned our garden, we welcomed suggestions from the local Southern States store personnel, from gardening columns, leaflets and neighbors. Let us suggest that the best of all these sources is a neighbor.