Gardening

The Mount Kisco Child Care Center – A Home Away from Home ‘Nurturing the Whole Family’

November 10, 2023 by Ella Ilan

One of the most fraught moments of being a parent is entrusting the care of your precious child to someone else. A visit to the Mount Kisco Child Care Center (“the center”), which I fell in love with on my recent visit, can put any reluctant parent’s mind at ease, should they be lucky enough to make it off the long waitlist to enroll.

From the moment you walk into the center, you feel the warmth in this “home away from home.” Peeking into the infant rooms, where babies range in age from three months to 18 months, I can’t help but feel joy and giggle in response to several little ones who look and smile my way.

“It’s a beautiful thing to see the smiley babies every day,” says Executive Director Dawn Meyerski. “If I’m frustrated with work, all I need to do is spend an hour in the preschool and I remember why I do this.”

“It’s a lot of fun to work here,” says Victoria Rivera, infant supervisor, and head teacher. “I get to snuggle all the babies and it’s amazing to see the connection we make with each family and the difference we make, working as a team with the parents.”

In the toddler program, for those 18 months to three-years-old, the focus is on language acquisition, self-help skills, social skills, and, of course, potty training. Meyerski estimates that in the center’s history, they must have potty trained close to 7000 children.

The programs are designed with intention and thoughtfulness. For example, in the preschool classrooms, the three, four, and five-year-olds are purposefully combined so that their activities are geared towards where they are developmentally versus chronologically. So, if a three-year-old is ready for more advanced activities, they can pursue them, but if a four-year-old isn’t ready, they are not embarrassed since everyone in the class is doing different things.

The directors and teachers work together to support the children and families when needed. A social worker on staff helps families navigate more complex resource needs for special developmental services or subsidy reimbursements, as well as things like the death of a pet, a parent loses a job or becomes sick, really anything that the family encounters.

The belief at the center is that for the child to succeed, the whole family needs to be supported. The before and after school programs provide a true safety net for working parents, letting parents feel secure that their child has a place to go after school while they are at work, even when school lets out early for a snow day. For vacations, the center offers full day programming so parents can work. In the summer, they provide full day summer camp programming, including martial arts, swimming, field trips, and more.

Throughout the pandemic, the center stayed open, easing the burden for many working parents while their school age children completed remote learning at the center. “We had 40 kids from seven different school districts using all different learning platforms. Those after-school teachers were incredibly adaptive…

“We made it happen,” says Meyerski.

Feed Me Fresh

One of the biggest reasons people choose the center is the food services. Mostly everything is prepared on site in the kitchen and they try to use as little processed food as possible.

In addition to feeding the kids, the center encourages the children to understand where their food comes from with their signature Feed Me Fresh program, a comprehensive garden-to-table nutrition education curriculum. All the classrooms have their own raised bed gardens where they plant and harvest the same food the kitchen uses to make their lunches. The center combines gardening teaching units with cooking classes and related activities. If they are harvesting zucchini, they will come in and make zucchini boats. Later, when zucchini shows up on the lunch menu, they recognize it and are far more willing to eat it.

“One of my favorite gardens that we plant is the three sisters garden,” says Meyerski. “The school age kids plant corn, the toddlers plant squash, and the preschoolers plant green beans. They are companion crops that grow better together than they do apart. We use this to talk about the importance of working together. I love it because it’s symbolic of who we are and how we support each other.”

When the kids are on the playgrounds, they walk right past and pick snap peas off garden beds and eat them. In a display of pride and ownership, they independently check on the status of their growing vegetables.

“What I love best about it,” says Meyerski, “in a world where you can have anything you want in thirty seconds, where instant gratification is so real, you cannot make a carrot grow any faster than a carrot grows. They have to slow down and nurture it.”

Funding the Center

About half of the enrolled children pay the full tuition to attend the center. Tuition for the infant program runs nearly $2500 per month. The actual cost of care for infants and toddlers exceeds the tuition charged, but charging a higher rate would price out most families. The other half of the children are on scholarship, based on their family income. The center works with the Department of Social Services for some subsidies, but the bulk of their funding comes from donations. The center runs as a nonprofit and raises funds to support the children. It is their critical fundraising efforts that allow them to offer quality childcare to middle and low-income earning families, providing peace of mind to working parents.

Naturally, one of their biggest fundraising campaigns, the annual Feed Me Fresh gala, incorporates the center’s focus on fresh food. This year’s event took place at Ivanna Farm on September 23rd. This event started 19 years ago with incredible support from local restaurants who donate an evening of delicious, fresh, and inventive food. “Despite the rain this year, everyone showed up!” reported Paula Backer, the center’s Director of Development. All the restaurants, our sponsors and all our amazing supporters, came out despite the weather. We really felt the love of the community coming together around us in support of our families and what we do. It was beautiful and the food from our restaurant supporters was the best ever!”

Meaningful Lessons to Remember

Despite their newest challenge of finding enough qualified teachers in the current labor shortage post pandemic, the center provides amazing programming.

A good teacher knows that kids learn best when they learn about things that are meaningful to them, so the staff at the center strives to create memorable lessons. If the kids are eating pizza for lunch, they will follow up with a walk down to the local pizza parlor for a social studies lesson about their community. Upon their return to the center, they will set up a pizza parlor and sell slices for a dollar apiece and learn about fractions as they cut the pie. As they make the menu, they learn their letters, and when they make the pizza and learn how to make cheese melt, they learn about science. Something as simple as pizza can prompt multiple learning opportunities.

This year, the center is collaborating with the STEM Alliance to bring in STEM programming for the preschool classes. The center is very grateful for a grant received due to the support of New York State Assemblyman Chris Burdick for in-house STEM training for the center’s teachers for next year.

Meyerski hopes to bring back their cherished intergenerational programming, in which senior citizens from My Second Home, a senior living provider, used to rent space at the center and interact several times a day with the children in organized activities. The program has not resumed after it was paused for safety reasons during the pandemic.

Extended Family

“MKCCC is a special place and I consider the adults who work there extended family,” says parent Stacey Cafaldo. “My daughter lost her confidence at another center and from the moment she started at MKCCC they made her feel strong and assertive. They reignited her love for learning and brought out the absolute best in her. Their unconditional assurance and support helps each kid develop into the best version of themselves possible.”

“It’s like a family here,” says toddler supervisor and head teacher Vanessa Kardos, who has worked at the center 21 years. “My first group of children are walking across the stage graduating college right now – seeing them become these amazing, mature and wonderful adults coming back as volunteers sometimes makes me so proud that I laid that foundation for them. Between the family feeling here and having so much fun with 2-year-olds all day and the love we get from them when we walk into a classroom, it makes you forget anything negative in the world. You’re giving so much love and getting so much love all day long.” For more information about the center, please visit mkccc.org.

Spring Gardening: What to Plant & When

February 25, 2023 by Ella Ilan

With spring around the corner, we reached out to some local gardening experts for guidance on what you can plant in your garden that will bloom this spring and summer. Whether you naturally have a “green thumb,” or you are newly interested in growing vegetables or flowers, we have you covered!

Lisa Eichler, a talented garden designer in Westchester County and proprietor of Legarden Designs, recommends using a “sequence of blooms” to keep your garden blooming beautifully all season long. When designing and installing gardens for her clients, Eichler likes to use a mix of evergreens, flowering shrubs, perennials, and annuals to ensure the garden stays aesthetic throughout the season. Annuals need to be planted every year, while perennials are planted once and last for multiple years.

Planting Before the Frost Date

According to Eichler, any planting done before the “frost date” of May 10th is called spring planting and is subject to freezing. Thus, it is best to choose hardy, cool weather flowers, which can be found at your local nursery in late March. In a spring container, Eichler may include pansies, which she loves for their “colorful and happy little faces,” as well as sweet alyssum and hyacinth, both of which have a lovely fragrance. She also recommends nemesia, which come in a wide range of colors, and ranunculus, which has both annual and perennial varieties. If one wants to add daffodils or tulips to an early spring container, these can be purchased already sprouting from the nursery. When these cool weather flowers start to wither by mid-June, they can be pulled from the garden and replaced with summer flowers.

Early flowering perennials, such as phlox, can also be purchased from the nursery and planted in early spring, but they have a limited flowering time, as is the case with most perennials. Some favorite perennials that Eichler loves to use are “creeping Jenny” (botanical name: Lysimachia nummularia), which is a yellow vine that lasts the whole season, and hellebores, known for their rose-like blossoms and green foliage.

Planting After the Frost Date

After May 10th, gardeners can begin their summer planting. Some deer-resistant summer annuals include ageratum and begonias. Eichler also likes to include colorful grasses, commonly known as fountain grass, to add dimension. One of her favorite plants is coleus, which offers lovely foliage.

Trees, Shrubs, and Perennials

Tom Roth of family-owned Roth Nursery, which has been in Armonk since 1948, supplied us with helpful information on flowering bushes and evergreens that can be planted in early spring. Roth has worked at his family business since he was a young man and works alongside his brothers, Carl and Walter, and his son, Tommy Jr.

Some deer-resistant, flowering evergreen shrubs that Roth recommends planting after the ground thaws in early spring include broadleaf evergreens like andromeda, which produce white flowers, P.J.M, which sprout purple flowers, and certain species of holly, like American holly and Dragon Lady Holly, which produce red berries. His recommendations for deciduous flowering shrubs include viburnum and spirea. Boxwoods, while they do not flower, are also a great choice for deer-resistant evergreen shrubs. As for bigger evergreens, Roth suggests Norway spruces, Green Giants, and white spruces.

Perennials that Roth suggests planting in early spring include bleeding hearts, ferns, Russian sage, catmint flowers, and any herbs. He recommends keeping things moist while they get established, which usually takes a season.

Planting Your Own Vegetables

Armonk resident Wendy Rosen of Homegrown Gardens, Inc. designs and builds beautiful vegetable gardens for her clients. Rosen had been in film production for many years when the pandemic hit, slowing the industry significantly. Rosen had her own vegetable garden for 20 years, so curating beautiful gardens for others was a natural next step.

“I needed a new creative outlet and Homegrown Gardens was born,” she said. “Producing a garden is similar to producing a TV commercial; it’s all problem-solving and finding solutions.”

Rosen teams up with carpenters and masons to build enclosures and sets her clients’ gardens up from soup to nuts. She finds it especially rewarding when clients text her pictures of their harvests throughout the year.

“One thing I’ve always loved most about having a garden is sharing our harvest. Most people bring a bottle of red to a dinner party, I bring a squash!” she says.

For spring gardening, Rosen recommends planting cucumber seeds outdoors in mid to late March, carrot seeds in late March, and beans in mid to late April.

For summer gardening, she advises planting peas outdoors in early May and tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, squash, zucchini, and basil all on Mother’s Day.

For fall gardening, Rosen says fennel seeds can be planted outdoors in late July, radishes and peas in early August, carrots and kale in mid to late August, lettuce in early September, and spinach in mid-September.

Replacing and replanting new vegetable plants ensures a long growing season. Each season, Rosen recommends rotating everything in your garden as each variety takes different nutrients from the soil.

Each of our experts was a treasure trove of information and had plenty more to share. To contact Lisa Eichler, visit her website at legardendesigns.com. Roth Nursery is open to the public and is located at 42 N Greenwich Road in Armonk, phone # (914) 273-8399. To contact Wendy Rosen, visit her website at homegrowngardensinc.com.

A Season of Hope

February 25, 2023 by Lynda Baquero

Spring is a time for hope, and every year I hope that my garden will overcome my challenge of trying to develop a green thumb.

I was so excited when we moved to Northern Westchester about seven years ago, eager to finally have a proper garden. In my Manhattan apartment, I planted hearty annual flowers every spring, hoping they would survive the winds of our 9th floor balcony. Here, I would have plenty of space to plan and plant flowers, herbs, and vegetables.

I spotted an area in my yard that received a healthy dose of sun and could be watered by our sprinkler system. I bought two 4’x4’ raised garden beds made out of wood and loads of healthy organic soil and planned what I would grow. Since we have plenty of colorful flowers around the property, I figured I’d concentrate on fresh vegetables and herbs I could use in my cooking.

As a reporter for WNBC-TV in New York City, I research news and consumer stories every day, then cultivate sources and head out with a photojournalist to gather elements and learn new information about our topic. I took a similar approach to gardening: scouring magazines for ideas and choosing to grow tomatoes, basil, rosemary, among others.

My amateur ambition pushed me to start them as seeds, indoors. After securing a couple of disposable aluminum roaster pans (very fancy) and a drip tray underneath, I was thrilled when the first pops of green sprouted through the soil. Whew! First part down.

Now, it’s time to transplant them…well, you win some and you lose some. The survivors were showered with my attention, albeit admittedly mostly on weekends, but there were several mornings where I was able to dedicate some time to nurture my new growths before my morning editorial meeting in the newsroom at 9 a.m. Those first few hours of the day are always so peaceful.

That first year, as I explored new dishes in which I could incorporate those fresh herbs and vegetables, I didn’t plan on our neighborly woodland creatures to nourish themselves on my vegetation. Lesson learned; my husband, Richard, who runs his own luxury interior design firm, advised me to get a wire fence around the garden bed for the second year and offered a design for it. Thank you, Richard!

The next time, I was determined to have more success. After all, I help people solve their problems every day in my role as a consumer reporter on TV. I should be able to solve some problems in my own backyard–literally.

Well…the tomatoes did come in very nicely that summer. Except maybe too nicely. I hadn’t accounted for having a couple pecks of tomatoes from these sprawling vines. Even though I love salads, and my family loves their tomato and mozzarella, there’s only so much extra tomato sauce you can make and use. Richard and our two teenage daughters, Illeana and Carolina, urged me to rethink quantities for the following year. Just as any budding journalist works to hone their skills over the course of their career, I was getting an education in the challenges of gardening.

The following year, there were adequate–but not copious–tomato plants, and we added carrots, lettuce, lavender, and cilantro. Yummy! However, I had also planted mint; no one warned me about their invasive roots. Another lesson learned. In writing this article, I discovered that one way to help control the roots is to grow mint in a container in your soil. I’ll try that this year.

Subsequent spring and summer seasons saw me add a variety of peppers to my garden, especially jalapeño and shishito (some shishito sauteed with olive oil and coarse salt until they blister–super tasty!) I no longer felt the need to prove that I could start from seedlings, and then take a risk by transplanting them. I occasionally used a short cut and bought some “mature” plants in a container and transplanted them into the garden. Those always survived; problem solved.

Then, we were all locked down in our homes. It started in the spring of 2020, the one year most of us can remember where the season didn’t translate to hope. Instead, despair sent us searching for new ways to find strength, courage and tenacity. It would seem that many found them in home gardening that year, because you couldn’t find seeds anywhere!

For some reason, 2022 was my “Annus Horribilis.” I don’t know if it was the lack of rain, perhaps combined with my lack of focus, that didn’t provide the fruits (and vegetables) of my labor.

This season, however, hope springs eternal. Every year, as we do in life, we learn from our successes–and our failures. I hope the spring of 2023 will serve up the best garden yet.

InterGenerate: Gardens That Give

August 25, 2022 by Ronni Diamondstein

Butterfly drinking nectar on Coneflower
Photo by Ronni Diamondstein

In the heart of the Chappaqua hamlet, at a community garden edged with a row of blooming native plants, community members tend their little plots. This community garden on the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps (CVAC) property is one of the original InterGenerate community gardens that does so much more than provide a space for neighbors to grow produce.

InterGenerate, a food justice non-profit was founded in 2009 by Rev. Peggy Clarke and Roseann Rutherford who recognized the need for families to have access to both sustainable food and sustainable communities. “Food security is even more precarious today than it was, but luckily more people are aware of our vulnerabilities,” says Rev. Clarke. “When we started, we had to explain what a community garden is and why it would benefit them. Today, the term ‘community garden’ is part of our national and local lexicon, and most people in Westchester have the option to join one, likely near their home.”

Suzi Novak, Vice President of InterGenerate is the Coordinator of Community Gardens and the Food Justice Programs. “Community gardens were our first project, but we always knew there would be giving gardens, and a portion of our food would be given away,” says Novak. Their philosophy was “garden together, we’ll get to know each other.”

Joan Basile tends the giving garden in Chappaqua
Photo by Ronni Diamondstein

InterGenerate began with four gardens: Chappaqua, and three others in Mount Kisco, a teaching garden and Chicken Co-op at the John Hay Homestead in Katonah and then Millwood. The only remaining are Chappaqua and Millwood. The Chicken Co-op is still in existence and operates separately.

Novak plans to retire from InterGenerate at the end of this growing season so the Chappaqua and Millwood gardens will become independent of InterGenerate. Members of the Chappaqua community garden plan to operate under the umbrella of a new not-for-profit being formed by current gardeners and led by Joan Basile, who has been with the Chappaqua garden since 2015. “The garden has thrived under Suzi Novak’s leadership for ten years,” says Basile. “This new not-for-profit will honor her efforts as the garden flourishes.”

While they no longer have the teaching garden in Katonah, gardeners of all ages are educated at the Chappaqua site. Basile runs a Kids Garden Club where the former school psychologist and teacher gives lessons on all aspects of the garden ecosystem and coaches them in garden activities. Basile also shares her knowledge with beginning gardeners, helping them learn how to grow vegetables following the “Seed to Supper” program that she was trained in at the Cornell Cooperative Extension. Basile says, “The model for donating produce has shifted a couple of times over the years as we experimented with how to achieve the best method for maximum donations.”

Four years ago, a more purposeful branch of InterGenerate began. They wanted to build a relationship with people and started a weekly Community Supported Agriculture program with Neighbors Link from mid-June through mid-October. Twenty families signed up the first year. “The idea was a subscription where each family pays $15 a month. “It was lovely, we got to know them, and then the pandemic hit. They asked us if we could now start feeding 50 families,” says Novak.

Bee drinking nectar and transferring pollen on Zinnia
Photo by Ronni Diamondstein

InterGenerate needed produce so Novak called the Westchester Land Trust and asked for more garden space. Two people associated with the Westchester Land Trust offered their private gardens and InterGenerate was able to feed the fifty families. “We delivered those two years,” says Novak. “It was a huge undertaking and we’re proud of what we did. Now we are back to the subscription model hoping to feed 25-30 families.”

Another source of produce for InterGenerate is the Town of New Castle funded garden at Wagon Road Camp in Chappaqua. In 2020 Pat Pollock, joined the town’s Council on Race and Equity and was assigned to the events team with two Greeley graduates, Dylan Marcus and Emily Nobel. The teens wanted to grow food for people who were food insecure. Gardening was not Pollock’s expertise, so she reached out to Suzi Novak for assistance. “Without hesitation, she joined us and taught us,” says Pollock. They teamed up with Vince Canziani at Wagon Road (a Children’s Aid facility in Chappaqua,) built twelve beds and recruited community members to help them. “As we prepare for our third year of distribution, we will again reach out to senior citizens and families in New Castle, as well as the families we distribute to in Mount Kisco,” says Pollock.

InterGenerate has left its mark on the concept of community gardens by creating a model for what they can be by reaching across traditional social boundaries, bringing people together to grow food locally and sharing the work while deepening ties to each other.

Novak reflects on her experience and the work of the community garden: “During the pandemic knowing that I was getting my hands dirty feeding people, it was the only thing that was sane in a world that was crazy. If you asked most of my volunteers, they would say the same thing. There is something so elemental about feeding people. It’s an honor to do it.”

Chappaqua Pollinator Garden

A glorious rainbow of native flowers and plants welcomes you to the Chappaqua InterGenerate Community Garden on the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps property on North Greeley Avenue in Chappaqua. This pollinator habitat was started by Chappaqua community gardener, Joan Basile in 2021.

“I’ve wanted to build a pollinator strip on the grass outside the garden fence on the street side,” says Basile. “In addition to providing food and habitat for pollinators and other native critters, I wanted to create a demonstration garden to show home gardeners how to include native plants in a landscape while still enjoying favorite non-native annuals.”

Basile was helped by fellow community gardeners Lisa Johnson and Ajaib Hira. Hira dug out the space and cleared and terraced the back of the garden, where they have established a native shade garden which they will be dedicating to the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps. Johnson helped plant the garden and tends it with Basile. A community member also donated peonies and a variety of bulbs including tulips, daffodils, and crocus to bloom in the spring.

They have been able to end the spraying of herbicides on the nearby grass to show how beautiful and pollinator friendly the white clover, dandelions, and creeping Charlie are when they bloom. They also provide food for insects in the spring when there are very few food sources available for native pollinators.

“I wanted to create a place of beauty and discovery for passers-by. Every day there is something new blooming, and we’ve become a neighborhood destination for many who come by on their daily walk,” says Basile. “I hope to eventually get permanent signage–a kids’ version and an adult version–to help explain what we’re doing at the garden and how it restores the land.”

Fun Fact FYI: The Town of New Castle is an affiliate of BEE City USA and encourages residents to create and enhance pollinator habitats.

–Ronni Diamondstein

Lifelong Learning Through Chappaqua’s Continuing Education Program

August 24, 2019 by Deborah Raider Notis

For more than 40 years, Chappaqua Continuing Education has created a unique community for ongoing learning. As one of the only community-sponsored, school district run programs in Westchester County, Chappaqua’s Continuing Education program invites Chappaqua residents to come together and take enriching classes on the campus of Horace Greeley High School.

Every year, about 1,200 people take classes through the Chappaqua Continuing Education program, which is a nonprofit organization run in conjunction with the Chappaqua Central School District. “Originally, the program was designed to be a give back to the community and a thank you to empty nesters for sticking around. Their children graduated, but they still lived here, and we wanted to keep them involved in the community,” states the Director of Continuing Education, Maura Marcon. The program evolved into a community-oriented opportunity that spans all ages and crosses over to people in nearby communities who do not have access to this type of programming.

An Array of Options

“The Chappaqua program is unique because it’s community based and supportive, providing a wide range of classes for just about everything,” notes Katie Goldberg who has taught art and Mahjong classes through Chappaqua Continuing Education for the past 25 years. Goldberg is right about the range of classes. This fall, Chappaqua Continuing Education will offer 90 classes in everything from art, cooking, and dance to gardening, exercise classes, finance, and foreign languages.

According to Marcon, the 10-week Spanish, French, and Italian language classes are extremely well-attended. Many people who take Spanish joined the class as beginners and have taken all four levels of Spanish together, developing friendships with one another and with the instructors. “They even socialize outside the class, going out for drinks or dinner with the instructor.”

The most social classes, the games classes, which include Canasta and Mahjong, often bring groups of friends together who want to learn something new. And the finance classes, covering topics from retirement planning and Medicare to understanding estate taxes and financial planning for women, are particularly popular with empty-nesters.

Empty-nesters and people in their late 50’s and 60’s are the most frequent participants in the program. Senior citizens from Chappaqua can receive up to a 50 percent discount on certain classes, and Chappaqua Continuing Education even offers some free classes. The single session, 90-minute classes are favorites of many 30- and 40-something residents, who take advantage of these $30 classes as a plan for an entertaining, educational night out.

Artist and art teacher Quincy Egginton isn’t only a teacher in Chappaqua’s Continuing Education program, she is a 35-year resident who raised her two daughters here. “It feels like home when I go to Greeley to teach,” says Egginton, who enjoys running into her daughters’ teachers and credits the Greeley custodial staff with supporting the work of the program.

Egginton, whose favorite class to teach is watercolor painting, is one of several local residents who teaches in this program. Even the Chappaqua Volunteer Ambulance Corps runs a class on American Heart Association Family and Friends CPR. Marcon encourages any interested residents to submit proposals for classes, as she encourages the community to get involved in any way possible and is always open to new ideas and creative classes.

Making Lifelong Learning Accessible and Fun

“I love the positive feedback that I get from people about our teachers, classes and wide array of class offerings,” says Marcon, who loves her creative, people-oriented position. Goldberg and Egginton agree that their students are extremely positive about their experiences. “Many of my students have told me that I’ve made complicated, intimidating subjects easy and fun by breaking things down into enjoyable ‘bite-sized nuggets,’” said Goldberg.

Chappaqua Continuing Education offers classes from September through December, January through February, and March through June. Classes meet Monday through Thursday evenings for one to two hours. For more information about Chappaqua Continuing Education, visit their website, ccsd.ws/district/departments/chappaqua-continuing-education, or check out one of the seasonal catalogs that are regularly distributed throughout Chappaqua, Millwood, Armonk, Bedford, Briarcliff, Mount Kisco, and Pleasantville.

Gardening