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
My Mother Says… (continued)
I don\’t know why my mother was so different from the other people of the village, my mother says, but she was, and so was my father. This gave me
My Mother Says…
After so many years, the boundaries start to blur. Mothers, granddaughters, daughters, grandmothers–the skein of talk and memory passes from one to the other and grows more tangled with each
Last Week Was Really Something
Over a five-day period, thirteen members of our family came together right here in Vermont to celebrate (in more-or-less chronological order): –The publication of her first novel by my daughter
Hiatus
Hard times have come to our family, times that will take all our courage, patience and love to get through. I am not yet ready to write about this, or
Dog Walk in the Gloaming
Wolfie had one of his bad-limp days on Sunday, and I was thinking maybe he shouldn\’t come on our evening walk. But when it was time to leave, my husband
Prong
You may recall my recent fruitless attempts to teach Bisou to give up her sled-dog ways and walk nicely on leash (http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2014/06/country-dogcity-dog.html ). The only weapons in my arsenal were:
Warrior Pose
The average age of the women in my yoga class at Wake Robin is, I\’m guessing, somewhere in the eighties. And because she announced it proudly as she introduced herself
Verging on Vegan
Having just watched Forks Over Knives for the second time, I\’m verging on going vegan. The stars of the film are Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn. Silver-haired, ultra-fit, and bursting with
My Green Vermont
Latest Posts
My Mother Says… (continued)
I don\’t know why my mother was so different from the other people of the village, my mother says, but she was, and so was my father. This gave me
My Mother Says…
After so many years, the boundaries start to blur. Mothers, granddaughters, daughters, grandmothers–the skein of talk and memory passes from one to the other and grows more tangled with each
Last Week Was Really Something
Over a five-day period, thirteen members of our family came together right here in Vermont to celebrate (in more-or-less chronological order): –The publication of her first novel by my daughter
Hiatus
Hard times have come to our family, times that will take all our courage, patience and love to get through. I am not yet ready to write about this, or
Dog Walk in the Gloaming
Wolfie had one of his bad-limp days on Sunday, and I was thinking maybe he shouldn\’t come on our evening walk. But when it was time to leave, my husband
Prong
You may recall my recent fruitless attempts to teach Bisou to give up her sled-dog ways and walk nicely on leash (http://mygreenvermont.blogspot.com/2014/06/country-dogcity-dog.html ). The only weapons in my arsenal were:
Warrior Pose
The average age of the women in my yoga class at Wake Robin is, I\’m guessing, somewhere in the eighties. And because she announced it proudly as she introduced herself
Verging on Vegan
Having just watched Forks Over Knives for the second time, I\’m verging on going vegan. The stars of the film are Drs. Campbell and Esselstyn. Silver-haired, ultra-fit, and bursting with