BAR HARBOR, Aug. 15, 2023 - I’m pretty certain that I will not be building my own post and beam structure soon.
But there he was, Tom McIntyre, hammering away last week on a new garden shed for his wife after co-opting hers for his tools and various accoutrement of a lifetime of self-made projects, including much of the work on their own house.
I’m also pretty sure that I will not be making miniature sea shell and stone fairy houses out of used juice containers as Jan and her granddaughters did when they were tots.
At the core of their pastoral enterprise in dense woods just five minutes from the Trenton Bridge is a lifelong commitment to preserve habitat for their neighbors - birds, insects, otters, frogs, minks and even an occasional eel making its way to the pond they created.
The couple was featured in the summer 2023 issue of Maine Homes. The photos of the property were so mesmerizing that I had to see it for myself.
The centerpiece is what Jan believes is the largest collection of heaths and heathers in Maine. The single genus of heather, Calluna vulgaris, is surrounded by the many species of the genus Erica, she said.
She fell in love with heathers when she saw them at a nursery in Cape Cod, where her parents had retired. After buying the Bar Harbor property in 1988 and building the house in 1994, she began planting the heathers and heaths. “It’s a lot of work,” she said.
He was a teacher and she was a dental hygienist in Nashua, N.H., before they retired and moved exclusively to the property here in 2010.
The property has been certified as a wildlife habitat by the National Wildlife Federation, said Jan McIntyre, who is the horticulture chair of the Bar Harbor Garden Club and is always thinking about the four pillars - water, food, cover and space - of any habitat.
“Water is, of course, critical. Space to raise the young. Cover to hide and to be sheltered in bad weather. Food like berries, seeds …”
Not all her plants are native, she said, “but I try to make that (the four pillars) kind of my core.”
Even with her best effort, it’s an uphill fight with climate change and too much pesticides in our midst. She observed fewer bees this year in the garden and has not seen a single Monarch munching on her milkweed.
But the McIntyres are sentient beings of a different kind. Where most of us see leaves, twigs and nature’s debris, Jan McIntyre sees art, like the little house she made with a moss roof and a mixture of cement, peat moss and perlite called hypertufa.
Spending time on the two acres of the McIntyre property is a dreamy, contemplative experience with undeniable take-aways. I’m hoping this year’s entomological and ornithologicial declines are ephemeral. I’m also checking the true promises of all my “green” garden products and questioning whether any of them are necessary.
David Balkin
Sentient is the magic in all creatures, for the most part sapient not so much to not at all. Kudos to the McIntyre's they give sapient a good name and frankly that's hard to do these days.
Sentient is the magic in all creatures, for the most part sapient not so much to not at all. Kudos to the McIntyre's they give sapient a good name and frankly that's hard to do these days.