Staff Blog

Last week I undertook a yearly ritual known to many in Vermont. I went out to the garden and harvested anything that looked even remotely edible. Green tomatoes, underripe peppers, tiny baby greens, and undersized corn cobs all ended up in my bucket. The reason for my garden purge, of course, was the forecast of frost the following evening.

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Our garden has had a tough year. Between heavy spring rains, Tropical Storm Irene, powdery mildew, and our local groundhog, keeping the garden going has been a challenge (though we have been rewarded with a great deal of cucumbers). Here in East Middlebury, we narrowly avoided a frost in late September, but the end of the growing season is very close. The first hard freeze of the year is coming to Addison County.

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By coincidence, this year as the Jewish High Holidays approached I have been reading "Dead Man Walking," Sister Helen Prejean’s personal witness against the death penalty. Her account of her journey into the lives of death row inmates and their victims’ families is riveting. She quotes philosophers and criminal justice experts, cites statistics and Catholic doctrine to support her arguments for opposing the death penalty. But for me what is most timely and moving is her unrelenting focus on forgiveness, in Hebrew selichot.

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Since its opening in December 2010, Vergennes Laundry has become a hotspot for locals, with its flaky croissants, tarts made with local tomatoes, fennel and other seasonal vegetables and loaves of bread straight from the oven in the afternoons.

One of the standout items on the menu is the Petits Pots a l'Absinthe, which are light, creamy, imbued with licorice flavor and topped with fresh berries. They come in small white cups with accordingly small spoons, which make the experience last all that much longer.

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