Welcome to My Green Vermont
I was born in Barcelona, where I went to a school run by German nuns, studied solfeggio, and played the violin. When I was ten, my parents and I moved to Ecuador, where I had a number of exotic pets and strange adventures. Four years later, we landed in Birmingham, Alabama. None of us spoke English, and the strange adventures continued. (Many of these appear in My Green Vermont.)
Survived high school. Got B.A. in French and Biology, Ph.D. in Romance Languages (French and Spanish). Gave up the Church and the violin, got married, had two daughters, taught at a liberal arts college in Maryland. Also grew veggies, made bread, kept chickens, milked goats, and wrote for newspapers and magazines. I got bored with teaching, took up running, and went into higher ed administration. I was diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome (ME/CFS), and learned to live in a totally different way.
I started My Green Vermont when we moved to that state. For ten years I lived with my spouse, three dogs, twelve hens, two goats, and assorted passing wildlife in a house on a hill, surrounded by fields and woods. In 2014, we moved to a cottage in a continuing care residential community near Lake Champlain. Gave up livestock and vegetable gardening in favor of wild birds, honeybees, a little red dog, and a gray cat.
My Green Vermont is a fertile compost pile made up of stories about the weirdness of growing up in three countries and three languages; portraits of beloved animals, both wild and domestic; and reflections on aging, being kind to the earth, and staying as calm as possible. I hope you will visit often, and add your own stories and reactions.
My Green Vermont
Latest Posts
The Trees And Me
The leaves are down and the snow hasn’t yet come to stay: it’s stick season in Vermont. When you look at the woods, all you see is sticks–gray, taupe, brown–sticking
Adventures in Taxidermy
#1–Quito, Ecuador, 1955. From one of our forays into the Amazon, we bring home a sloth. On those trips, we are often approached by locals wanting to sell us various
The Blogging Life
Sometimes, as I rush to do a final edit of my weekly post, or fight with the scanner settings for the illustration, I think, why am I doing this? There
Dog Story (continued)
I am not the kind of woman who says no to a man who wants to give her a puppy, so when for my 26th birthday my husband told me
Dog Story
Bisou may well be my last dog. If I’m lucky and she lives to fifteen, I’ll be eighty, probably not a good age for me to start a relationship with
Kissing Cultures
As an infant, I swam in a universe of touch as I had swum in my mother’s amniotic fluid. I was held, hugged, patted, and kissed by relatives ranging from
The Birds Are Back!
It almost broke my heart, this past July, to take down my bird feeders. A bear had been seen entering our community, and although I would personally have welcomed his
Of Shoes, the Season, and the Sea
Those who know such things have advised me to replace the ballet slippers that I often wear for walking with something more supportive. I can use all the support I
My Green Vermont
Latest Posts
The Trees And Me
The leaves are down and the snow hasn’t yet come to stay: it’s stick season in Vermont. When you look at the woods, all you see is sticks–gray, taupe, brown–sticking
Adventures in Taxidermy
#1–Quito, Ecuador, 1955. From one of our forays into the Amazon, we bring home a sloth. On those trips, we are often approached by locals wanting to sell us various
The Blogging Life
Sometimes, as I rush to do a final edit of my weekly post, or fight with the scanner settings for the illustration, I think, why am I doing this? There
Dog Story (continued)
I am not the kind of woman who says no to a man who wants to give her a puppy, so when for my 26th birthday my husband told me
Dog Story
Bisou may well be my last dog. If I’m lucky and she lives to fifteen, I’ll be eighty, probably not a good age for me to start a relationship with
Kissing Cultures
As an infant, I swam in a universe of touch as I had swum in my mother’s amniotic fluid. I was held, hugged, patted, and kissed by relatives ranging from
The Birds Are Back!
It almost broke my heart, this past July, to take down my bird feeders. A bear had been seen entering our community, and although I would personally have welcomed his
Of Shoes, the Season, and the Sea
Those who know such things have advised me to replace the ballet slippers that I often wear for walking with something more supportive. I can use all the support I