Author: Susan Tischler

Susan Tischler is the former editor of CapeMay.com and Cape May Magazine.

Secret Gardens of Cape May: Among the Stopping Points

Sshhh! I just came back from the Secret Garden Tour. Of course I can’t tell you anything because, duh, it’s a secret. But listen, I’ve been trying to learn a thing or two about Victorian gardening from the Emlen Physick Estate (1879) gardener Hope Gaines. She told me about how the Victorians loved creating stopping points in the garden.

Women and Their Art

“There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into sun.”

Training Day

Don’t bother me, please. I’m in training and I’m very busy. After all, the World Series is only a few weeks away. No, not that World Series – the World Series of Birding (WSB). It’s hosted by the New Jersey Audubon Society and this year will be held on May 15th. So I must pump… Read more »

Cape May Before Victoria

Way before the city folk of overcrowded Philadelphia conceived of the resort notion in the late 1700s, the Kechemeches (Kech-ah-mech-ees), a sub-tribe of the Lenni-Lenapes, made New Jersey and Cape May County their seaside respite, along with the Tuckahoes.

Cape May on Fire

Cape Island, NJ, Nov. 9, 1878 — Fire broke out yesterday morning in the summer city of Cape May around 7 a.m. in the attic of the new wing at Ocean House on Perry Street. By the time the flames could be contained, some 11 hours later, 40 acres of prime property lay in a pile of charred ruins. Arson is suspected. No one was injured.

What if it all burned again?

The fire that started on November 8, 1878 and spread from the Ocean House on Perry Street to engulf 40 acres of hotels, stores and houses in flames was one of the most devastating and furious fires of the era. If the same acreage were destroyed today, what would no longer exist in Cape May?

On Safari…the Cape May Way

The other night, I took a sunset Salt Marsh Safari on “The Skimmer,” a 40 ft. pontoon which skims the waterways just like the bird it was named for. Admittedly, I wouldn’t have thought to go on it if I hadn’t been an assignment. Why, you ask? Because birding is a huge component of the safari and birders intimidate me.