A couple hundred people and several dozen pumpkins lined the banks of Davenport Creek in Dorchester's John Paul II Park late this afternoon for the annual pumpkin float. Two volunteers guarded the estuary to keep pumpkins from escaping into the Neponset.
Jamaica Plain has the annual lantern festival and now Dorchester has the annual pumpkin float:
Join BNAN and MA DCR to see the salt marshes of the Neponset River in Dorchester develop an eerie orange glow as illuminated jack-o-lanterns float down Davenport Creek.
Saturday, Oct. 16 at 5:30 p.m. You bring the carved out jack o'lantern, they'll supply the candle and the float.
The Dorchester Reporter goes on a tour of land along the river that might be used for a trail; notes issues, including fear by some Milton residents that a new footbridge would leave the town wide open to criminal elements.
Mike Ball takes us on a trip.
Earlier:
Kayaking on the upper Neponset.
The Neponset River Watershed Association is once again looking for volunteers to raise galerucella beetles in their backyards so they can be released along the Neponset to cut the evil purple loosestrife down to size.
Found yesterday in the water on the Dorchester side of the river, according to the Suffolk County District Attorney's office. No immediate signs of foul play, but the body of the man, 51, will undergo an autopsy, according to the DA's office, which has not released his identity.
Mike Ball reports on a ride along what will someday be the Neponset River Greenway bicycle path in Hyde Park and Mattapan:
... Like so many of the Boston-area bike projects, this one is stuck out there, largely isolated from both other cycling/walking futures and the larger city. Yet, this is another neighborhood that will benefit. Plus, this is the Neponset River Greenway and they are building it not coincidentally where the river has always been.
Judy Lehrer Jacobs describes and photographs the annual Neponset River release of Galerucella beetles, which, if they live long and prosper, will begin to eat away at the purple loosestrife that is choking local waterways.
While Worcester desperately tries to eradicate one beetle species, a group in eastern Massachusetts is looking for volunteers to help raise another species.
The Neponset River Watershed Association is looking for volunteers to help nurture Galerucella beetles, which eat purple loosestrife, to help control the pretty-yet-destructive invasive weed now choking off marshes across the state:
You can almost picture the cows just on the other side of that hill. But this isn't Vermont - it's Milton, down at the Neponset River, across from Pope John Paul II Park in Dorchester. About 300 feet to the left of the houses are three radio towers - and next to those sit a couple of office buildings (in Quincy). But that's one of the cool things about the park: Sure, you can look one way and see the Southeast Expressway, and turn around and see the Red Line, but then you turn again and see views like this.
Above: What used to be the Mother Brook, from the Hyde Park Avenue bridge.
Anybody know why the Mother Brook in Hyde Park is being diverted into three pipes from the Shaw's to the Neponset River? General de-mucking and wall repair, or are they looking for something (Jimmy Hoffa's body)?
Bonus fun fact: The brook is the oldest canal in North America, built in 1639 to power mills in Dedham (although the manmade part only went from the Charles to a point just on the other side of what is now Washington Street, where it connected to a Neponset tributary called East Brook).
Dedham chimes in: Brian on myDedham wonders if Dedham should try to enforce the 170-year-old court decision under which at least up to one-third the Charles is supposed to be diverted into the brook; currently, it's only about a fourth.
Apology: To anybody who remembers when that song managed to top the charts. The river part popped into my head when I saw the brook bottom and now I can't get it out of my head and misery loves company, right?
Neponset Village is so large it would actually make Boston physically bigger.
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