This week we launch the inaugural “Midcoast Matters,” a weekly column that will highlight, and celebrate the natural world of Midcoast Maine.

In October 1972, our church started, with high hopes and enthusiasm, to take apart an old camp building in Jefferson. Now, after nearly three years of great cooperation and effort by so many persons, and with continuing leadership by Pastor Chapman, we rejoice today in the dedication of this beautiful building to the greater service and glory of our Lord.

I had been working in my last column which I never got ready to send. I am sure you all have been looking for my column the whole month of August, but Aug. 6 I got up very ill. I was rushed to Pen Bay Medical Center in Rockport by Northeast Ambulance.

The river is already quieter now. More boatless moorings. Seasonal boaters have squeezed out the last of summer’s gaiety. Through the pines lining our river bank, we see the occasional white sail slipping silently by, heading to a safe haven for a winter “on the hard.” A few leaves are starting to turn. And the hummingbirds will soon disappear, commencing their long migration southward after taking their last long sips of nectar. Some of us retirees will keep our boats on the water as long as we dare, until the chill fall air makes inevitable the decision to haul them out. It has been a good season on the water.

“But why not, Mrs. Dunn?” Pickles asked.

September is National Service Dog month, and to help celebrate these highly trained “dogs with jobs,” it seems only fitting to discuss what a service dog is (and isn’t) and to elucidate the role of anyone who might find a service dog in their midst.

Farmers markets at this time of the year brim with mounds of bright red tomatoes with contrasting purple and variegated eggplants in their vegetable stands. And yet, in plant classification they are fruit and by botanical definition berries. Both are well known as edible, even though they belong to the nightshade family of plants, with some deadly relatives.