This fall once again Shirley families will be busily bustling about with their cleat-clad soccer players at the Parker and Wilde Rd. fields.  Shirley Recreation’s Shirley Youth Soccer (4 years old through 2nd grade) and Ayer-Shirley Youth Soccer (3rd through 8th grade) games begin on Saturday, September 12th. The weekday practices will be decided per team by their coaches. While initial registration is currently closed, there is still time to be placed on a waitlist in case a spot becomes available. Attached is a photo from one of last year’s winning teams. Who knows how far this year’s teams will go? Here is the link to register your player: https://secure.adminsports.net/shirleymarec.  If you have any questions, please email recreation@shirley-ma.gov. 

Text & photos by Juliet Silveri When I first saw the land, its farm-like beauty had a feeling that I wanted to keep. To me, a farm is a home that is comforting, peaceful, and is full of fields, meadows, stone walls, birds and beasts, and has plenty of land. Now that I have the land—my desire for visual, audible, touchable, smellable, feelable, peaceful beauty has started me on this journey through a landscape development project. When I moved into my new house in February 2022, I knew a fair amount about plants, having been a busy gardener for thirty years. After a season of working with a landscape designer, I realized I knew very little about landscaping. In vague terms, I knew what I wanted to create, but it was difficult to visualize exactly how it would look. So my journey started. My land is almost two acres, with most of the property in back of the house. Before I turned my attention to the back, I needed to improve the small front yard that borders on a busy road; it contained a dead cherry tree, an ungainly but healthy rhododendron, and a long equestrian-style fence in need of repair. There was also a five-foot tall weigela, with quite a bit of poison ivy, in the other front corner, next to the road. A large Norway maple is on town land, right outside the fence, bordering the street. The front of the property runs 140 feet wide, and there wasn’t much appeal there when I moved in. My landscape designer suggested the daring but exciting idea of transplanting three 15-foot-tall arborvitae to a corner where the cherry tree had been. I was skeptical whether they would live after the transplant, but decided to try it. In early September I had a tree company move them, and the results are imposing and stately. After the transplant, I insisted the tree company stake them with large stakes to hold them straight. Those arborvitae now define the feeling of that corner, which is up against the street. Too noisy to sit in, the 10 x 10-ish area will hold a small vegetable/cutting garden, at the suggestion of the designer. Pumpkins, nasturtiums, eggplants, and radishes will grow there, with enough southern and eastern sun. And I really needed a ‘Limelight’ hydrangea, so I planted one without my designer knowing, not far from the arborvitae. The corner now feels like a small formal and lovely room (See above for image). In a line along the front we planted eight aronia melanocarpa ‘Autumn Magic,” or black chokeberry shrubs, which are native to eastern North America. This line has softened and of course improved the front of the property. In full sun they bloom with white flowers covered in bees in spring. Walk along beside them and you will smell a thick cloud of honey, all the way down the line. Black berries replace those flowers, and bright orange/red foliage appears in the fall. I wanted two pure white lilacs to frame the sides of the driveway. “Are you sure? Asked my designer “Lilacs tend to defoliate and get powdery mildew.” I expect to regret my decision, because my designer is always right, but I have planted two old-fashioned white lilacs with country charm at each side of my driveway. We fixed and painted the fence a light luminous gray, which will work with any landscape design. As for my rhododendron, early on I revealed my plans to cut it down. (My main objection to this type of rhododendron is its large leathery leaves and the pink color of its blooms.) I whined to my designer: “It’s just a big, sprawling mess.” “I know,” she said sympathetically, “but it’s healthy, evergreen, does well here (under the shade of the Norway Maple), is a good privacy screen, and remember, it only blooms (a hideous shade of pink) for two weeks out of the year. Don’t murder it yet. You can always prune it back.” So I started by pruning it back, and found—quite an interesting, wavy shape to the trunk that I like looking at. Because of that, I have granted it a temporary stay of execution.  This is only a portion of the front yard. The rest is under development, as is the much larger back yard—a woodland front entrance garden, two stately Patriot Elms, an allee of trees, a large perennial garden…more to come, if you will accompany me on this journey. Juliet Silveri has been a gardener for 34 years, and is a member of both the Groton Garden Club in Groton and The Gardeners Exchange in Shirley. In addition to constantly designing and creating her landscape, she is currently pursuing her degree in Horticulture from the University of Massachusetts-Stockbridge School of Agriculture.

By Bill Oelfke & Meredith Marcinkewicz The Annual Town Election of May 5, 2015 was the first election in the Town of Shirley to utilize our current Imagecast Precinct Optical Scan Tabulator machine. This replaced the Hand Crank Ballot boxes that were used for over 250 years. Currently the voter totals from each election in the Town of Shirley are calculated by pushing a few buttons on the Imagecast Precinct Optical Scan Tabulator, which generates a paper tape report of the election results of each race that is on the ballot. This machine is just a tabulator that reads the marks made on the ballot. It is not hooked up to the internet. This process can take 10-15 minutes at the most. When the Town of Shirley utilized the Hand Crank Ballot boxes, the process to determine the vote totals from each race on the ballot was a lot more complex. At the close of election (8 p.m.), the election worker volunteers would gather in the voting area to hand count each ballot submitted during the Election Day. There would be up to 10-20 Election Workers sitting at tables in the room, in teams of two sitting across from each other.    The first step of the process was for a “runner” to give the Election Workers the ballots, one pile after another, for the Election Workers to count out into piles of 50 and give them back to the “runner.” The “runner” would then give out a tally sheet to one person of the team, with all the races and names of candidates or ballot questions on it and give a stack of 50 ballots to the other team member sitting across from his/her team member.    The Election Worker with the ballots would then read the results of the first ballot, race by race, to the other Election Worker with the tally sheet who would put a mark next to the candidate that got that person’s vote, and on and on for the remaining 50 ballots of that pile.  That team would then add up the vote totals for each candidate for each race for those 50 ballots on that tally sheet and hand them to the Lead Tally Person who would write down the results from each team’s 50 ballots onto a single tally sheet.  This process was occurring for each team of Election Workers. After each team was done with their first 50 ballots, they were given the next 50, and so on. This repeated until all ballots were counted and tallied by one of the teams and given to the Lead Tally Person, who would then generate the total vote counts for each race for the entire election. This process could take up to three-six hours depending on the number of voters that voted at that election. As of noon on August 27th, we received 332 mail-in votes and 81 early voting walk-in ballots. These are currently locked up in the town vault and will be run through the Imagecast machine on election day. Note that the state determines how many days and hours for early voting are required, depending on the number of voters in the town. Town Clerk Bill Oelfke expects 500 – 700 of them to vote in person on Tuesday, September 1st.