Jill Vickers
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Ways of Seeing: Why so much time in the garden?
Most mornings, I step out the back door to check the weather, coffee mug in hand. Inevitably something in my garden beds cannot be left another minute.
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Take time to visit pollinator gardens
June 20, 2025, with over 15 hours of daylight, is the official start of summer and a peak of abundance. With other ways you may have to celebrate…
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Middlebury Co-op transforms its garden space
What’s going on in front of the Middlebury Natural Foods Co-Op this month? It looks as though plants have been pulled up and carted away. Is the outdoor…
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Letter to the editor: Spare your lawn for biodiversity
The air will be filled for hours with the enchanting buzz of neighbor lawn mowers. It’s so tempting to get outside to tidy up the yard with a…
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Letter to the editor: Pollinators must thrive for us to
Happy Pollinator Week June 17-24. Yes, another way to celebrate our heroes, this time butterflies, moths, beetles, hummingbirds and, most importantly, the bees.
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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.
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Community service in the garden
When classes resumed in late August at Beeman Elementary School in New Haven, it was time for pulling potatoes.
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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…
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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…
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What to do about invasive plant species
Some arrive in our gardens as invited guests, others on roadsides and riverbanks as stowaways.
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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.
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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…
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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…
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Monkton gardeners help pollinators
“There’s something calming for me about getting my hands in the dirt,” Jenne Morton told me recently.
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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.
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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…