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
Confessing Sadness
(My mother died a few days ago, and I am not yet ready to write about that. What follows is a post I was working on before the news came
Faberge Eggs
It\’s four in the afternoon, and practically dark outside. In a minute I\’ll go to the chicken house and turn on the light, something I do at this time of
The Nymphs of Vermont
The landscape of ancient Greece teemed with nymphs, the protective spirits that dwelt in particular places. Glens, pastures, meadows, valleys, mountains and grottoes each had their own nymph species. There
Iris Murdoch On Relationships
Conventional wisdom has it that taking a loved one for granted leads to loss. Instead, we are taught to constantly \”work\” at relationships lest they wither before our eyes. This
All That Hair
\”When you were born,\” my mother used to tell me, \”you had so much hair that as soon as the midwife cleaned you up she put a bow in it.
Nuns, Absolved
Get into conversation with a lapsed Catholic like me, and before long we\’re rolling up our psychological sleeves and showing off our scars, the result of wounds inflicted by nuns.
The Angel of the Killing Frost Comes By
Last night he descended on our hill, and with a touch of his icy blade felled the peppers and the eggplants and the nicotiana, and turned the unripe figs to
“Spanish”: A Rant
O.k., here is a rant I\’ve been repressing since the fall of 1958, when I first landed on these shores. It has to do with what Americans mean when they
My Green Vermont
Latest Posts
Confessing Sadness
(My mother died a few days ago, and I am not yet ready to write about that. What follows is a post I was working on before the news came
Faberge Eggs
It\’s four in the afternoon, and practically dark outside. In a minute I\’ll go to the chicken house and turn on the light, something I do at this time of
The Nymphs of Vermont
The landscape of ancient Greece teemed with nymphs, the protective spirits that dwelt in particular places. Glens, pastures, meadows, valleys, mountains and grottoes each had their own nymph species. There
Iris Murdoch On Relationships
Conventional wisdom has it that taking a loved one for granted leads to loss. Instead, we are taught to constantly \”work\” at relationships lest they wither before our eyes. This
All That Hair
\”When you were born,\” my mother used to tell me, \”you had so much hair that as soon as the midwife cleaned you up she put a bow in it.
Nuns, Absolved
Get into conversation with a lapsed Catholic like me, and before long we\’re rolling up our psychological sleeves and showing off our scars, the result of wounds inflicted by nuns.
The Angel of the Killing Frost Comes By
Last night he descended on our hill, and with a touch of his icy blade felled the peppers and the eggplants and the nicotiana, and turned the unripe figs to
“Spanish”: A Rant
O.k., here is a rant I\’ve been repressing since the fall of 1958, when I first landed on these shores. It has to do with what Americans mean when they