The Provincetown Independent

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Stephen Orr

Sometimes you just know when a place is the one. It was 1978 when Anne Webb Johnson and her husband, David, found themselves looking at an unusual house on Hughes Road in North Truro. It was the home of two prominent local artists, Helen Sawyer and Jerry Farnsworth, who were in their 90s and wanted to sell. “I walked through the back door, through the sail loft, and into the living room. Helen was sitting on a sofa there,” says Webb Johnson.

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Stephen Orr

[Hidden behind a rustic wooden fence tiny spring treasures abound: Nodding bluebells, arching ferns, dainty forget-me-nots, and self-sown alexanders in a glowing shade of chartreuse, all knitted together like a tapestry. This exposed seaside location above Cold Storage Beach in Truro is hardly the spot where you’d expect to find a jewel box of delicate spring ephemerals tucked underneath the rough cedars, but here they are.

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | William von Herff

Every day, before I head into work, I go to see what’s swimming around MacMillan Pier. In the winter, this mostly involves looking at ducks, checking on that one thick-billed murre, and keeping an eye out for Iceland gulls. Now, as these winter visitors begin to depart, they are being replaced by swarms of double-crested cormorants. There were just one or two each day in mid-March, but their numbers are quickly climbing. On March 20, there were 11 roosting on the breakwater.

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Christine Legere

TRURO — It was a close vote, but the planning board will support a proposed overlay district encompassing the town’s 70-acre Walsh property when it is presented to voters at town meeting on May 3. At the end of a 90-minute public hearing and debate on the proposal on April 9, planning board vice chair Anne Greenbaum and members Ellery Althaus, Caitlin Townsend, and Virginia Frazier voted to recommend it, while chair Rich Roberts and members Jack Riemer and Paul Kiernan opposed it.

1 week ago | provincetownindependent.org | Paul Benson

TRURO — At a groundbreaking ceremony for the 43-unit Cloverleaf affordable housing project on April 11, the mood was equal parts festive and frustrated. Construction is expected to be complete by February 2027, according to project developer Ted Malone — but plans to build affordable rentals on the surplus state land date all the way back to a town meeting vote in 2016 and a visit to Truro by then-Lt. Gov. Kathryn Polito in 2015.