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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. Got bored with teaching, took up running, and went into higher ed administration. 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.
You remember what Robert Frost says about April: \”You know how it is with an April day….A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,A wind comes off a frozen peak,And you\’re
Man, am I frustrated, perplexed and bewildered! Ever since I decided to have a clean yard, I have been pooper scooping faithfully once, sometimes twice, a day. Armed with a
It was in the low thirties and sunny this morning, balmy for these latitudes, where the sap has been running and the bright blue tap lines festoon the maple trees
Sometimes I\’m visited by inspirations that leave me gasping, such as the wattle fence. When we moved to our Vermont house, I was fixated on the idea of having goats
Here\’s the story as my mother tells it. I was born at home because my parents were, as she puts it, so romantic that they didn\’t want the event to
Beginning with earliest infancy: \”Chew your food well.\” I\’ve always bolted my food, probably as a result of the neonatal deprivations with which I may regale you some day. Turns
Let me be clear: this is not the real mud season. This mud, these balmy temps–they are the mere Braxton-Hicks contractions of the year. When the real mud season happens,
I found Barbara Pym\’s first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, in the used books section of the local bookstore, and am rereading it now, as I reread her books whenever I
You remember what Robert Frost says about April: \”You know how it is with an April day….A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,A wind comes off a frozen peak,And you\’re
Man, am I frustrated, perplexed and bewildered! Ever since I decided to have a clean yard, I have been pooper scooping faithfully once, sometimes twice, a day. Armed with a
It was in the low thirties and sunny this morning, balmy for these latitudes, where the sap has been running and the bright blue tap lines festoon the maple trees
Sometimes I\’m visited by inspirations that leave me gasping, such as the wattle fence. When we moved to our Vermont house, I was fixated on the idea of having goats
Here\’s the story as my mother tells it. I was born at home because my parents were, as she puts it, so romantic that they didn\’t want the event to
Beginning with earliest infancy: \”Chew your food well.\” I\’ve always bolted my food, probably as a result of the neonatal deprivations with which I may regale you some day. Turns
Let me be clear: this is not the real mud season. This mud, these balmy temps–they are the mere Braxton-Hicks contractions of the year. When the real mud season happens,
I found Barbara Pym\’s first novel, Some Tame Gazelle, in the used books section of the local bookstore, and am rereading it now, as I reread her books whenever I