KINGSTON — With every genre of literature represented, the Stillwaters Environmental Center turned the page on a new book sale yesterday, offering up wonderful treasures and fun reads. The sale, which benefits the center’s general fund, stretches over almost an entire month and this year will also boast a plant sale.
“The plant sale is new this year,” said Stillwaters administrative director Naomi Maasberg. “We’ll have it Sept. 21 and 22. We’re really focused on nature each day, we thought a native plant sale would be a really good idea.”
The sale will allow residents to choose from different native plants that thrive during the fall and winter months, or that can be grown inside. It is purely experimental this year, but if it does well, it will return next year.
The books themselves are varied and interesting, Maasberg said. The sale will be organized a little differently than in years past, placing more of the books indoors where it is warmer and hot drinks are available. In previous years, certain fiction sections were showcased outside under tents, leading some shoppers to steer clear of the event on rainy days. The sale dates were also pushed forward from October to September in an attempt to avoid such weather.
“It seemed like one middle weekend we had hardly anyone here,” Maasberg said. “It was pretty drizzly last year and we started Oct. 1 and went to the end of October.”
The sale is open from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 15-16, Sept. 21-23, Sept. 28-30 and Oct. 5-7 at the center on Barber Cut Off Road. The plant sale will share the same hours.
“We have everything under the sun as usual,” she said. “We have a lot more old and rare books, a lot of cookbooks, more than we’ve had other years. We’re going to have a bigger fiction section than other years also.”