Ways of Seeing: Paid by the apple

At age 31, I’d never worked with my hands. I experimented with hand tools as a kid at my father’s cellar workbench when he was working.

Community service in the garden

When classes resumed in late August at Beeman Elementary School in New Haven, it was time for pulling potatoes.

Take time to visit a pollinator garden

The writer Henry James has been quoted as saying the loveliest phrase in the English language is summer afternoon. I say add a visit to Monkton’s and Charlotte’s pollinator gardens on such an afternoon.

Ways of Seeing: Salvaged mementos tell a story

Imagine this: The five-year-old squats in damp dirt under a shrub willow. Her safe spot in the leafy stems was part of a hedgerow backed up against a neighbor’s wooden fence.

What to do about invasive plant species

Some arrive in our gardens as invited guests, others on roadsides and riverbanks as stowaways. 

Letter to the editor: Keep your lawn friendly to pollinators

Mowing high, set to 5 instead of 3, allows wild plants in pesticide-free mowed areas to thrive under the cutting blade.

Starksboro projects aid pollinators and other wildlife

A white clapboard church sits on Route 116 in the center of Starksboro village. At the front steps of this Baptist church are two container gardens, now home to pollinator-friendly plants. 

A Weybridge garden is put to bed for pollinators

If you’ve passed the flower garden at the Weybridge end of the Pulp Mill Bridge recently, you may have thought it looks unkempt, even dead. Not so, exclaim its gardeners.

Monkton gardeners help pollinators

“There’s something calming for me about getting my hands in the dirt,” Jenne Morton told me recently.

Afghan student fears for family back home

When Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, fell to the Taliban on Aug. 15, Jamila stayed up all night in Bridport, watching the news and talking to her family.

Letter to the editor: COVID vaccines needs promotion

The killing of Osama Bin Laden and family members included one setback — the credibility of vaccinators. As one of the thousands who served in the World Health Organization’s smallpox eradication campaign decades ago, I experienced over and over the resis … (read more)

Letter to the editor: Vermont could lead with Peace Corps

On March 15, the Peace Corps ordered all volunteers to evacuate as soon as they could find a flight back to the U.S. This included 51 PCVs from Vermont along with over 7,000 others. Federal funding provided evacuation costs, two months of healthcare and a … (read more)