Blaine residents suspected in firearm theft

s The original C Shop in its first year of opening in 1971 on Birch Bay Drive at the present day location of the Jacobs Landing condominiums.

Courtesy photo

C Shop ...

From page 1 candy and concessions.

Sons Keith and Burton, three years old and six months old at the time, would be helping their parents run the shop within a couple of years. “1975 is when we have photographic evidence of my parents’ child labor law violations,” Keith said, smiling and pointing to his nametag that reads “C Shop crew member since 1975.”

“If it’s a family member, it’s OK,” Patricia retorts.

But the two boys didn’t really start working at the shop until 1980, when the café opened. By that time, they had moved the shop to the current location at 4825 Alderson Road. Serving only bakery items, bread and cinnamon rolls, Patrick said opening the café was one of his regrets because it took him away from candy making.

The store, however, continued to grow, and after a year they added take ’n bake pizza, sandwiches and a salad bar to the café menu. Only decades later would they see a need to cut items.

Upon reopening this year, after remaining closed to in-person shopping last summer due to the pandemic, the shop is no longer making pizza or sandwiches. The interior has also been rearranged to have separate entrance and exit doors.

With summer hours in full swing, The C Shop is open daily from 1 to 8 p.m. Masks are required for customers who aren’t vaccinated.

It’s easy to tell when shopping at the store which chocolates are The C Shop originals because they have yellow labels, while those made by other chocolatiers have a white label.

Some of The C Shop original specials include peanut butter yumms, which are white chocolate-covered peanut butter bars, and C-foam, a chocolate-covered combination of brown sugar, honey, baking soda and apple cider vinegar.

Keith, who is now a co-owner and main candy maker, has a Tupperware full of legal pads, each with its own candy recipe. With notes on every batch he makes, he is always trying to improve the quality of the candy. Reading that people have a tactile response to the crunch in potato chips, Keith has adjusted C-foam over the years to achieve a similar crunch. “Now, when you bite into it, sometimes it sounds like your tooth broke,” he said.

Keith runs the day-to-day operations of the shop with his partner Saara Kuure. Patrick and Patricia still live in the adjoined house above the shop and can be found making candy in the back and interacting with customers.

“I really enjoy the other people involved in and around The C Shop,” Keith said. “We get satisfaction from their satisfaction.”

s Keith Alesse, 7, stirs candy while his brother Burton, 5, watches. The

photo is from 1975, when the Alesse boys started helping their parents

with the family business. Courtesy photo s Keith, Patricia and Patrick Alesse outside The C Shop at 4825

Alderson Road on June 22.

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8The Northern Light • June 24 - 30, 2021

Home A monthly special section in The Northern Light&Garden Pesky culprits in the garden and what to do about them

B y r HI annon a llen

Damn deer! Blasted squirrels! Nefarious voles! Sometimes gardening is a battle. Who’s your most infuriating nemesis?

In my previous garden, the main mammalian culprit was the two-legged kind. The kind that steals your flowers and actually digs up entire plants, or takes off with your garden hose when you are not looking.

For years, my primary opponents here were raccoons. They rummage in your garden looking for tasty bits or sometimes just for a bit of fun. Is there fresh, open soil? Well then, something tasty must be under there. You get the drift.

Same thing with those pesky non-native Eastern gray squirrels. I keep telling them that they are invaders – more recent arrivals here than humans – but they just don’t listen. They don’t listen to the scolding of our native chickarees (Douglas squirrels) either. I’ve taken to armoring my tulip bulbs in underground baskets and mesh to protect them

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from gray squirrels. Too bad that doesn’t stop them from chewing the buds and flowers once those emerge. But I must admit that I was touched and amused one spring to notice that some squirrel had left a delightful offering of shredded tulip petals at the foot of my Buddha statue. A peace offering, perhaps?

Neither squirrels nor raccoons can resist fruits that tempt us also. Figs often disappear just before they reach that perfect plump ripeness. I also figure that squirrels must be color blind because I am constantly sweeping up bits of unripe strawberries that they spit out. Last year and this year, I covered my entire strawberry patch with 30 percent shade cloth netting – dense enough to thwart squirrels but not open enough to entangle birds. Last year, the strawberry plants even seemed to thrive with the less direct sunlight and greater soil moisture retention that the shade cloth netting provided.

One thing I’ll grant squirrels is that, without opposable thumbs, they don’t carry things very far. Not like raccoons. I swear that, one day, I will find a raccoon’s treasure chest of stolen garden ornaments, pump filters and other small objects left unattended in the garden.

The other four-footed fiends? Well, the local bush rabbit (most likely eastern cottontails) is not usually a pest. But they do go after succulent leafy greens if they are in easy reach. Since I grow most of my edibles in raised beds, I consider them innocuous garden companions. However, some of my friends beg to differ. I admit that sometimes I wonder what happened to some of my seedling herbs and veggies when there are no signs of marauding squirrels or raccoons thrashing around – not that delicate nibbling is their style anyway. Perhaps I should stop blaming slugs and wood lice, and keep my eyes open for fluffy pests.

My other pint-sized peeve is the creeping vole, particularly in population boom years. Short, tubby, mouse-like rodents, I hear the little devils squeaking and moving under ground cover. Unlike the aforementioned pests, voles are surreptitious and almost never seen alive. They spend their time underground and undercover, preferring to eat plant roots under the cover of darkness or soil. I have lost many treasured rockery plant to them. But I consider myself more fortunate than a friend who lost his entire beetroot crop to them one summer. And other friends found a large stash of hijacked species tulip bulbs in a hidden vole nest.

Like their Arctic near-cousin the lemming, voles have boomand-bust cycles. I have not kept track, but my suspicion is that we are working rapidly toward a boom year. If not this year, then next. In their last boom year, I did a lot of research on vole control. The eventual answer? Get an outdoor cat. Our boys are indoor cats, but I have high hopes for our new neighbor’s ace predator cats. (Please, just leave the birds, snakes and chickarees alone!)

You might have noticed that I have not mentioned deer, which are the bane of many gardeners.

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Hello Blaine Residents!

It’s spring cleaning time and we need your help!

Common complaints we receive this time of year relate to:

• Overgrown grass • Plants growing over sidewalks • Windfall debris • Dumping of household items on sidewalks Overgrown vegetation and illegal dumping can lead to fines.

Please do your part to control vegetation and clean responsibly this spring and summer.

(See Garden, next page)