Passers-by on Main Street have by now noticed that preparations for the Ladies Village Improvement Society’s annual lawn fair are well underway. Gates open at 10 a.m. on Saturday, with a suggested donation of $5 for admission.

    New at the fair this summer is a magic show, on-the-spot caricatures by Don Duga, a well-known cartoonist, and coloring books depicting East Hampton Village scenes, as drawn by Ernest Fox.

    Among the raffle items is a bird house replica, above, of the one-room schoolhouse adjacent to Clinton Academy made by James Brooks of East Hampton.

    The list for a silent auction fairly groans with choices, including lunch with the television and publishing personality Martha Stewart, cocktails with Ina Garten of “Barefoot Contessa” fame, and tickets to everything from a Met opera to a Justin Beiber concert, as well as trips abroad, and selections of wine, art, clothing, and fitness classes. Online bidding at lvissilentauction.com will remain open through noon tomorrow.

    For the children, expect the usual games, face painting, pony rides, slides, and a carousel. A wide variety of food, preserves, and beverages will be on sale, as will be a selection of top-quality vintage clothing. Copies of a newly released history of the society will be available for $10.

    From 4 to 7 p.m. the East Hampton Lions Club will serve up barbecued chicken — with the supply donated by Whole Foods. The cost is $8 for kids, $18 for adults. Takeout will be available upon request starting at 3. Upbeat music by Just Good Friends will be performed; dancing will be just fine by the ladies.

    Tony Minardi has worn many hats, but the one he began wearing three years ago may well make him a hero of the gardening set, as well as those with tick phobia. It also has the potential of making the former science teacher, coach, and seafood entrepreneur a fair amount of jing. 

    Mr. Minardi has spent nearly three years conducting a controlled experiment to test a formula he is calling Deer Away. A recent visitor to his house on Cove Hollow Road in East Hampton saw the fruits of his research in two groups of rhododendrons growing side by side. One group was stripped where deer that trotted across Montauk Highway from a horse farm had feasted. Beside the bare plants were rhododendrons whose leaves had been sprayed. Not a nibble was visible.

    Mr. Minardi said his research began after he watched thousands of dollars’ worth of plantings be devoured by deer. “I bought this,” he said, pointing to a little black box that emitted a high frequency sound. “It made the dogs in the neighborhood bark; the village said stop.”

    With years of accumula ted knowledge as a biology and biochemistry professor at Southampton College and Syracuse University, as a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, and while teaching in the East Hampton schools, he set about creating a magic potion. The idea was to develop a spray that was not only safe to use, earth-friendly, and easy to apply, but that really worked.

    Aware of the attributes of cellulose and other polysaccharides, substances found in plants that are difficult to digest, he looked for plants that contained them. Water hyacinths were a possible source, and he tried out a formula using them. “It didn’t work.”

    He then went in another direction, which is, at this point, proprietary. “It’s based on their nutrition” was all he’d say.

    The spray Mr. Minardi has concocted has to be applied in dry conditions, and only on the tops of leaves. He said it was an easy task that had to be repeated every two or three weeks.  “It’s a natural process, no chemicals, not toxic.”

    Mr. Minardi has started the process of applying for a patent on his potion. He said that perhaps even more important than making plants unappetizing to deer was the absence of ticks on his property.

    “It works 100 percent, and there’s no ticks. I think I zeroed the tick population.”

    Mare Dianora said on Tuesday morning that she wanted chickens to be “available to everybody” in the Village of Sag Harbor, which is why she helped write an amendment to the Sag Harbor Village Code that took effect on July 12 of last year allowing the keeping of chickens as a “special exception accessory use.”

    Before the amendment, village code specified that “the keeping of any horses, farm animals, or fowl shall not be permitted as accessory uses.”

    With Ms. Dianora’s help that changed, but after working to see that her fellow village residents could keep chickens in their yards, she found out earlier this month that she herself may still be prohibited from doing so.

    At a planning board meeting on May 22, Ms. Dianora was prepared to submit her site plan and special exception application to keep chickens in a 74-by-39-foot coop. To her surprise, prior to her turn at the podium, she was pulled aside by Denise Schoen, a village attorney, who told her that her property was too small to meet the code requirements.

    The code amendment passed last year provides that people can keep 6 chickens per 20,000 square feet of lot area, but never more than 18 on any one parcel.

    Additional requirements written into the code to protect neighbors included the prohibition of roosters and the commercial sale of poultry, as well as setbacks and regulations for outdoor pens. They are limited to 100 square feet, must be in a backyard only, and must be at least 20 feet from rear and side lot lines. Fencing is required, too. The zoning board cannot grant any variances, except to the minimum lot area requirement.

    With a 13,000-square-foot lot, Ms. Dianora cannot build the chicken coop she wants without first obtaining a variance from the zoning board.

    Ms. Dianora said on Tuesday that she thought to herself, “I wrote the code. Why would I exclude myself?”

    She had modeled the code after that of the village of North Haven, she said, “and we have much smaller lot sizes.” Requiring a minimum of 20,000 square feet, or about a half-acre, would exclude most residents of the village, she said.

    She wants her 3-year-old son, Finny, to know where his food comes from, she said Tuesday, as he ran around the back yard holding and kissing a stuffed chicken. “He has them named already.” She plans to use them for eggs only, adding that she likes to “know our food is safe, too.”

    She and her husband, Claes Brondal, a jazz musician, own their house on Grand Street, which once belonged to her grandparents. “Maybe they had chickens,” she said. “Many people in the village grew up with chickens, rabbits, and ducks.”

    She and her husband enjoy growing their own food, she said, while showing her son that the carrots were ready to be pulled from their garden. There are peas, carrots, strawberries, asparagus, and garlic planted, too, to eat themselves and share with neighbors and the Sag Harbor food pantry. The garden is also part of her son’s education, she said. Ms. Dianora is a teacher who provides art instruction to the terminally ill.

    Ms. Dianora spoke with Robby Stein, a village trustee, last week, and he agreed, she said, that it was never the intention of the trustees to exclude anyone who had less than a half-acre, which is how the current code is being interpreted by the building inspector.

    “I think there will be a resolution at the next village board meeting,” she said. “We’re excited to get them and to get started.”

    “I want chickens,” Finny said.

    Memorial Day, although specifically a day to honor those who died in battle, has become a time to wax nostalgic about those who have gone before.

    The East Hampton Ladies Village Improvement Society, which keeps up the approximately 3,800 trees that grace the streets of the village, offers an opportunity to pay homage to a loved one while helping to defray the nonprofit group’s tree maintenance expenses. A plaque can be placed by an existing tree, or accompany the planting of a new tree, for $750. 

    “We have memorial plaques that go back to 1938,” said Olivia Brooks, the head of the L.V.I.S.’s tree committee. “The big hurricane was an impetus to raise monies after the loss of trees.”

    Ms. Brooks also stressed that a dedication is not just to honor someone who has died. “It can be bought for a birthday, an anniversary, a family celebration,” she said. “It’s a great way to celebrate and give back a piece of green to this beautiful village.”

    The $750 covers the cost of the plaque along with the “adoption” of a tree, and if anything happens to either the plaque or the tree, the L.V.I.S. will make replacements at no additional charge. “The $750 is like an insurance policy,” Ms. Brooks said. If the interested parties want the plaque paired with a particular tree, “the cost is a little more,” said Ms. Brooks. “We try to give people choices of tree sites before they select one.”

    The brass plaque is secured into the top of a monument and sunk into wet cement by a professional mason. This year, Ms. Brooks said, there were about 30 plaques lost or damaged by storms, and the mason is replacing those.

    Over 530 dedications already grace the trees in East Hampton, whose yearly upkeep, split between the L.V.I.S. and the village, can run around $300,000.

    In May, libraries celebrate National Flower Month, National Latino Book Month, National Family Wellness Month, National Backyard Games Month, and National Get Caught Reading Month, all of which are keeping Julie Anne Korpi, the Montauk Library’s new children’s librarian, very busy.

    “There are a lot of national months that people don’t know about,” Ms. Korpi said.

    It is the first time the library has had a children’s librarian, something Karen Rade, the library director, has always wanted. When a few longtime employees retired recently, she saw her chance. “I didn’t want to replace all those positions,” she said. “I wanted to hire a children’s librarian.”

    Ms. Korpi has already initiated several changes. The Monday morning story hour, for example, now includes songs, pasting and other crafts, games, and coloring. “I’m a singer, so I love to sing songs with them,” said Ms. Korpi, who performed in high school and college musicals and has received professional voice training.

    She is also sprucing up the stacks in the children’s section and putting more books out on display. She recently led a Latino story hour and hopes to get more books in Spanish as well as graphic novels for teenagers.

    “What we have is already a good program. I’ll be building on what we have,” she said the other day at the library, sitting in a child-size chair at a round table.

    She has a master’s degree in library science from Long Island University and is certified in elementary and special education. She has worked at other libraries across Long Island and not long ago moved to East Hampton. She vacationed in Montauk with her parents when she was a child.

    The new librarian, who started in April, said she believes the library should be used by all ages. She is looking to institute a Mother Goose story hour for infants to 2-year-olds — a basic story hour with props, pictures, and songs.

    “I’ll never forget the first time an infant smiled at me during a story and I realized that she was getting it. She got very animated.”

    She also hopes to make the library more fun for kids and plans on offering a scavenger hunt and a trivia question of the week, in which young patrons must use the library’s research sources to find the answer, winning a prize for doing so.

    Holidays are to be big, with appropriate book displays. And youngsters she finds reading at the library this month during Get Caught Reading Month will receive a surprise.

    The position is full time, and Ms. Korpi will be there every day except Sundays, when the library is open for limited hours, and Thursdays, when it is closed.

    On Sunday Montauk will rock Earth Day with a full schedule of activities for all ages. The hamlet will get a spring cleaning sponsored by the Concerned Citizens of Montauk. Participants can pick up bags in front of the Montauk Movie Theater from 9 a.m. to noon. Mickey’s Carting has donated a huge Dumpster that will be stationed there until 2 p.m. Residents can choose to spiff up any area they wish.

    For the little ones, Sima Freierman will be posted at the Montauk Playhouse Community Center from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. to tell tales and oversee a craft session in which children have been invited to supply their families’ own reusable grocery bags for decorating and to help eliminate plastic waste. Children must be accompanied by an adult.

    At 1:30 p.m., people can meet in the Camp Hero parking lot with Gene Genova and Ron Russ, president and vice president of the Long Island Mineral and Geology Society, to walk along the ocean path to the Montauk Lighthouse and learn about rocks that have been left behind from the ice age. Hikers will be able to view a large geographical map that includes an overview of Long Island. All events are free.

    When Lona Rubenstein, an East Hampton woman who used to excel at table tennis, checked into the Foxwoods Casino in Connecticut on March 23 to play in the Foxwoods World Poker Classic, part of the World Poker Tour championship tournament, she started out hot.

    That night, she played in a no-limit hold ’em tournament, placing 15th, earning $550, “which covered my entry fees to play the rest of that weekend,” she said this week. “I only play in tournaments; I don’t play in cash games.”

    After getting knocked out of a ladies event over the weekend, she considered heading home, but decided to stay at the hotel, where she took it easy on Monday. On Tuesday morning, she checked out, but then changed her mind, opting to stick to her original plan of staying through Wednesday.

    “So I checked back into the hotel,” she said. “And not only did I check into the hotel, I entered the HOSE tournament. And I won it.”

    The HOSE tournament is a four-game event for men and women, its acronym standing for the first letter of each game played: Hold ’Em Limit, Omaha High Low, Seven Card Stud: high only, and Seven Card Stud: high and low. One round of each game is played, with the betting stakes increasing. Seventy-five players started out in the game. At 78, Ms. Rubenstein was the oldest in the tournament.

    At 3 a.m. on Wednesday, after 13 straight hours of play, only Ms. Rubenstein and one other competitor, George Fotiadis of North Windsor, N.Y., remained.

    “He suggests to me, ‘Why don’t we chop?’ ” Ms. Rubenstein said this week. To “chop” means to end the game, taking first and second prize in the tournament and splitting the proceeds.

    “It could have gone on for another 13 hours, when you’re playing head-to-head. The fatigue factor was a much stronger factor for me,” Ms. Rubenstein said.

    “I thought for three minutes and I said, ‘Fine, we’ll chop.’ ”

    “He’s a young pro, and I’m an old lady. I wasn’t lucky, and I wasn’t unlucky. I played well. I’m very proud of how I played.”

    Ms. Rubenstein took a $6,155 prize, and Mr. Fotiadis took home $6,156. In addition, she won a commemorative watch and gave him the trophy. “I had the choice because I had more chips than he did. I’m 78, and I beat the kids.” 

    A former table tennis champion who played on the U.S. women’s world team, Ms. Rubenstein found a new pastime when she aged out of table tennis: playing poker online, before it was outlawed in the United States.

    “It was the competing,” she said. “And now here I was 60-something and this online poker thing was a chance to compete. And it was great because they couldn’t see I was old, and they couldn’t see I was a woman.” Her online successes earned her an invitation to the World Series of Poker championship in Las Vegas, where she won $14,000 several years ago. “When online poker became illegal,” she said, “I was forced to play in casinos.”

    In 1997, Ms. Rubenstein published “Getting Back in the Game: Finding the Fountain of Youth in Cyberspace.” It was not, she said, a how-to on poker, but “about how in my late 60s I was able to compete again. Because I wasn’t a great poker player,” she said. “I’m a great competitor. I don’t give up.”

    On Friday, the high school French Club held its second annual fashion show to support the Retreat. Students’ families, teachers, and friends were invited to the school cafeteria, where a runway was set up, to watch students strut their stuff. Local stores such as LF, Lilly Pulitzer, Kai Lani, the Retreat Boutique, and others provided clothing for the models to wear.

    Guests helped themselves to snacks and “mocktails” while bidding in a paper auction. A speaker from the Retreat spoke about her own experiences with domestic violence and encouraged students to seek help if needed (the Retreat had pamphlets available) and welcomed volunteers to join. The night concluded with a “Masquerade” theme. Admission was $10, and all proceeds went to the Retreat.    By Aoife Ford

    A glimpse into the diverse kitchens of the Sag Harbor community is now available within a new cookbook, the result of a school festival. The “Multicultural Cookbook” celebrates the varied cultures that have co-existed since whaling days, when many dialects and traditions converged in the village.

    Cheryl Bedini, owner of the Java Nation coffee shop and a skilled cook herself, said that when her daughter Chiara was in kindergarten, she attended the school’s decade-old multicultural festival, but thought it could use a bit more diversity. When she shared her thoughts with the PTA the following year, the group asked her to take the lead, and included a generous budget.

    Her call for volunteers brought a tremendous response, and the multicultural festival that year included specialties from over 20 countries. The food turned out to be “outstandingly good,” Ms. Bedini said. Many parents agreed that a cookbook made sense. Brian Halweil, the editor of Edible East End and a Sag Harbor parent, offered to underwrite the cookbook, she said. Lindsay Morris, Edible East End’s photo editor, signed on to do pictures, and it all fell into place.

    “I e-mailed parents participating in the festival and asked for recipes. We were only collecting about 30, so we quickly got our quota,” Ms. Bedini said.

    The “sweet and sophisticated” cookbook is filled with comfort food, such as “truffled mac and cheese,” said Lauren Chattman, a chef with a food column in Newsday who also writes “Sag Harbor Days,” a local food blog. “Sag Harbor is a “community of incredible cooks,” she said. Ms. Chattman volunteered to edit the recipes in what she calls “not your average school cookbook.” 

    “People are really cooking interesting food around here,” she said.

    From Korean dumplings to Russian potato beet salad, the cookbook offers something for all tastes, as well as basic soups, stews, and chili with international flavor. Among the countries represented in the book are Brazil, China, Finland, Poland, Japan, Morocco, and Scotland.

    The cookbook was released at the multicultural festival at Pierson High School last month to the tunes of live music from around the world, with a side of international games, dancing, and souvenirs.

    The festival provided not only plenty of culinary delights, but gave students an introduction to some of their classmates’ cultures.

    Ms. Bedini’s husband, Andres, took charge of two tables, Argentina and Peru, the countries where he grew up. “I do the cooking, and the kids help out,” Ms. Bedini said. This year, their daughter Chiara emceed the musical portion of the event.

    Last year, the festival raised money for Wings over Haiti, with donations totaling $745. This year’s suggested donation of $5 netted $2,200, some of which went toward supplies for the school’s garden, and the remainder to charity:water.org, which provides clean water wells to communities in developing countries.

    Cookbooks can be purchased at Java Nation through April 15. They can also be reserved by sending a $15 check made out to the Sag Harbor PTA to 200 Jermain Avenue, Sag Harbor 11963, then picked up at the school.

    After 30 years as a fixture in Sag Harbor, first on Main Street and then on the corner of Bay and Division Streets, Provisions Market is planning to expand a little bit farther down Bay Street into the neighboring space most recently occupied by the Style Bar.

    The renovations to the natural foods market and cafe are expected to begin shortly, with the lease on the space scheduled to start May 1.

    When the plans were discussed at the village planning board meeting on March 27, it was decided that a public hearing could, and would, be waived in order not to delay the process by an extra month.

    The market currently occupies 2,450 square feet, according to Dennis Downs, the applicant’s attorney. In order to eliminate the need for a special exception permit, a storage closet is planned in the former spa, to reduce its available square footage by 105 feet. The extra space would have resulted in a great expense and necessitated traffic studies, among other things. Mr. Downs said that certain requirements for such a permit, such as adding affordable housing upstairs, were not an option, as the market will only lease the ground floor.

    Although the cafe will be reconfigured, it will still have 32 seats as it does now, meaning that the owners will not need to pay for additional parking spaces or undertake septic system upgrades.

    Neil Slevin, the planning board chairman, said that since the square footage is under 3,000, a site plan review could be waived. Richard Warren, the village’s planning consultant, said that he would like the plans to be reviewed by board members and discussed at the next meeting on April 24, with the potential to move forward at that time.