Articles written by Kathy Mellott
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Christmas in the Cove Around the Corner
It may not been a cooked goose or a plum pudding, but if it's the holiday season, many of us want to cook and have friends and family over to share holiday joy. Many are tuned into social tradition,...
Dairy Farmer Recalls Winter Bee Trips to Florida
As the temperatures turn decidedly cooler and Old Man Winter rears his head signaling he is taking over, the thoughts of a retired dairy farmer living in Southern Morrisons Cove turn to his younger...
Famous Woodbury Tree Lit up For Holiday
Motorists traveling south on Route 36 first spot it about a half mile outside the tiny community of Woodbury. The blur of red, green, yellow and blue lights to the right slips out of view as the road...
Prepare for Winter; Check Out November Garden
"If you would have a mind at peace, a heart that cannot harden, go find a door that opens upon a lovely garden." - Author unknown It may seem silly to talk about a lovely garden in mid-November in...
Curfman's Tour of Roaring Spring Ends
This week wraps up the last leg of the walk around Roaring Spring that lifelong resident Larry Curfman is sharing with readers in his own words. The memories start at “back to Cherry Street.” --------------------------------------- During the war...
How to Store Your Produce Through the Winter
This past growing season was one with a little too much rain and little too much dry, but by and large, a look around any farmer's stand is proof positive that most crops provided a bountiful harvest....
Curfman Resumes Journey Around Roaring Spring
Larry Curfman, a Roaring Spring resident with lifelong love for his hometown this week continues his walk down memory lane, a recollection we are using in his own words. Curfman, 84, with a sharp memory for detail and emotion has heard from a host...
Prediction: Lots of Cold and Snow This Year but a Brown Christmas
The warm noonday sun may still be thawing the frost on the pumpkin, but old man winter is quickly scheduling his attacks on the region and experts are predicting 2022-23 will serve as a reminder of co...
Larry Curfman Takes Us Through Mid-20th Century Roaring Spring
If you ever want to know anything about the history of Roaring Spring and its environs, it might be worthwhile to head over to Robinson Avenue and spend a little time with Larry Curfman. Curfman was born in Roaring Spring, at the original Nason...
Discovering Dahlias: Late Blair Co. Gardener Knew the Tricks
Paul Kurtz was an educator much of his lifetime, starting as a classroom teacher then Blair County superintendent of schools. This means a lot of people knew Kurt, but few knew him when it came to...
Getting Around in the Bygone Days
As we jump in the car for the quarter-mile trip to pick up bread and milk, it’s difficult to imagine the days prior to car and truck or even bicycles, but for many Morrisons Cove residents of the past, if a horse was not around it meant exercising...
Leaf Peepers Will See Changing Colors Early This Year
This spring and summer has been one of too much rain at times and not enough at other times in the region. Despite a fickle precipitation mix from Mother Nature, fall is shaping up to be a noteworthy...
Cozy, Comfortable: Cove Businesses Give Homeowners Recommendations
Years ago when country decor was the rage, a popular saying was "Home is where you hang your heart." While the adage may be old, the thought remains true, as evidenced by a growing trend to make a...
'Margie' Ferry and her Model A Ford
She was a simple woman who led a simple life in what would be by today’s standards considered a shanty at the base of Lock Mountain, Piney Creek Road. Yet mention of her name, Marjorie Gertrude Ferry, brings pleasant memories to many Martinsburg...
Mum's the Word: Looking at Chrysanthemums Around the Area
Without looking at a calendar or spotting a harvested corn field, it's clear fall is marching headlong into our lives with evidence outside most grocery and big box stores. Chrysanthemums, commonly...
Driving Decisions: Remaining Independent After Giving Up a Car
An invitation by AARP urging the recipient to take a state-approved driver safety course serves as a sobering reminder of one’s age and the potential disaster posed behind the wheel as senses and reaction times are affected by a naturally slowing...
Gardening Tips as We Near the End of Summer
The microclimates that comprise Morrisons Cove can make for interesting conversation, especially when counting inches of winter snow fall or summer storms and rainfall. It is these microclimates that may be cited for the vastly differing reports of...
Commercial Corn Cannery in the Cove
A half century before the world was available through a touch to a keyboard, someone, somewhere heard that farmers in Morrisons Cove where pretty good at using their prime farmland to grow topnotch sweet, juicy corn, opening the door to a commercial...
Corn Days in the Cove
For many of us, it all starts about the first of July and starts winding down around Labor Day. Those two months are filled with great prospects of that first crunch into the buttery, salty golden...
The Tragic Fall of Stultz
It was a time of heroes with the likes of Babe Ruth and his baseball bat and Richard Byrd flying over the Arctic and a good-looking, likable Williamsburg boy flying with a pretty lady across the...
Bee Aware: Who Are The Pests And Who Are The Helpers
Life often boils down to perspective, even when it comes to nature, gardening and insects, especially bees. Staff of the Morrisons Cove Herald has fielded telephone calls in recent weeks with some gardeners concerned with what they view is an...
'Stultzie' Celebrated as Blair County Hero
Wilmer Stultz was just three years old when Wilbur and Orville Wright made their first controlled flight south of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, yet in a few short years he would develop a fascination for aviation putting him on a notable path for...
Keeping Plants Alive: Watering Tips for the Summer
It’s the perfect storm. Excuse the pun. The tomato plants are ripening and the zucchini flowers have already formed shiny, dark green fruit. The frequency of rain and amounts of precipitation are diminishing and the temperatures are heading toward...
The Cove's Fourth of July Celebrations Over the Years
Change can be tough, but it's a fact of life. A break away from the decades-old Martinsburg's annual July 4 celebration being pushed forward a week might be a good opportunity to roll with the new...
A Little Help from Volunteers
The term “volunteers” can conjure up any number of images, including thoughts of free helpers at a library, nursing home, local fire company or a blood drive: all commendable ventures. But maybe we can look a little closer home to draw attention...
Bean Hill's Past, Present, and Future
It’s black leather and measures five inches by nine inches, with a firm clasp along the top rim and is filled with a host of things depicting the life of a teen age girl in the 1950s. The dusty clutch bag was found secreted away in an opening of...
Looking Out for the Lawn
It is with some hesitancy I admit that at 71 years of age, I have never mowed a lawn. Dad and the boys did it when I was a kid and no grass came with the patch when I moved out on my own. Hubs, who hated cooking, said he would do the outside...
More on Morrison Cove High School: Fun Historical Facts
The many words that have been spoken and the stories that have been written pale to those of one young man who spent six years at Morrison Cove High School in a most unusual capacity. Don Grabill of Martinsburg lived at the old Brownstone, a three-st...
New and Old: Gardening Tips for All
As certain as the seed catalogs start arriving every December to January, a large number of Morrisons Cove residents have already or will soon trudge out into the yard, spade a patch, sow some seeds...
Morrisons Cove High School Grads Recall What School Had to Offer
The girls hugged and cried while the boys laughed and punched each others shoulders as pomp and circumstances played for the last time at the Morrisons Cove High School. The year was 1960 and the commencement ceremony held the usual milestone...
Growing, Planting Veg: A Veteran View
Sunny days and warm breezes are making the garden soil pliable and ready for planting, but despite the calendar, an unexpected cold snap has brought more than one basil, tomato or cucumber plant to...
One More Time for Musselman's Grove
It had been a while since Sandy Davis thought about her days scampering around Musselman's Grove in Klahr, but mention of the place brought a laugh from this Martinsburg-area woman and a flood of...
Mother's Day Baskets: Potting, Planting and Pampering
For anyone who has been on Mars or some other exotic place, Sunday is Mother's Day, a day when some grit their teeth while others revel in honoring the woman who gave them birth. The last year I had...
The Key to Finding Lime Kilns in the Cove
Referred to at times as silent stone sentinels, lime kilns, once essential to sweeten Morrisons Cove’s farmland, are but a faint memory to many of our oldest residents. But a closer look at the countryside shows evidence that there were dozens of...
What Blooms to Expect the Next Few Weeks
The Easter ham and coconut cake may be just fond memories but the pots of daffodils, tulips, lilies and hyacinths will continue to thrive for a while, happy on the counter getting that occasional...
Lime Kilns Still Burning in the Cove
As certain as warm breezes will move through Morrisons Cove this month drying excess moisture brought by winter snow and spring rain, farmers soon will begin preparing thousands of acres of fields and pondering the condition of the earth they depend...
Spring: A Time for Opening Up
An individual with a modicum of intelligent emotion once penned that happiness is a way to travel, not a destination. To me that thought is a passport to find everyday happiness in big things such as...
