Yeah, it’s cold out there sitting on a bucket with a jig rod in your hand, trying to entice a fat perch to take the bait. Some people think ice fishermen are, you know, a little bit off. I mean, why would a sane person go out on a cold winter’s day on a big lake to try to catch fish? I used …
Two chipmunks vie for seeds on our front lawn. One lives directly underneath the bird feeder. Another hails from the far side of the house, address unknown.
How could I have guessed that, traveling to Arkansas and Texas during the Christmas holidays, I’d come face to face with mammoths? Or having hinted I’d rather not get gifts that would increase the weight of my luggage, I’d in response get a great gift card to my favorite restaurant? Or, in m…
Anyone from babies to senior citizens can be at risk for developing glaucoma. Without initial treatment, glaucoma can cause permanent blindness. The good news is, while glaucoma can’t be cured, early treatment can control it.
Finding things to place in vases now, in winter, is not easy. It takes some imagination, but there really are some nice stems available.
It is no secret. Kids today are getting further and further from the reality that is the outdoors. We are all to blame. Parents are too busy and often because they are trying their hardest to provide for their children. Youngsters are raised on a wide variety of electronic devises, things th…
I’ve always found slender, sharp, yellow-ochre beech leaves alluring, and it’s endearing how they cling onto saplings late into the fall. However, Fagus grandifolia, the American beech, tends to get a lot of flak from foresters. The trees are plagued with beech bark disease which ruins any t…
Happy New Year! Have you thought about quitting smoking and living a tobacco-free life? If so, congratulations, this is the first step toward a healthier you.
It’s cold outside, and nothing is happening in my garden. Well, I guess deep beneath the soil surface there are microbes and worms and moles alive and doing whatever they do in winter. But I am doing nothing in the garden, so this is a time to read about gardening.
Winter Solstice
It’s that eerie period between darkness and light. At this stage, I will have to pass on any deer because, in low light, it is too risky that what looks like a doe could very well be a buck with short, straight spikes emerging from its head and often concealed by its very large ears. You wou…
A couple of decades ago, I spent several winters living in Crested Butte, Colorado, where I learned to peer into the cottonwood trees between Route 135 and the East River on the rare occasion when I needed to travel south to the closest “big” town. There, just downstream from the local fish …
People send and give me books. All are presumed to be “right up my alley.” Some, in fact, are.
This past year was, overall, a good one in the garden. It started off cold and wet in early summer, but then turned hot and dry. Most vegetables and perennial flowers did fine for me. I finally splurged and got an Itoh hybrid peony, one called “garden treasure,” and it bloomed gloriously. It…
Are you pregnant and using tobacco products? As 2019 ends, many of us are making New Year’s resolutions to improve our health. One of the best resolutions you can make for you and your baby is to quit smoking.
Vermonters are growing increasingly concerned about our changing climate according to a recent poll conducted for Vermont Conservation Voters in which 76% of respondents expressed concern, with more than 60% indicating they are “very worried about global warming.”
Domaine Bousquet
About a quarter-past six on Friday mornings, the lights go on in the dining rooms of the Wayside Restaurant, straddling the boundary between Berlin and Montpelier. A waitress maneuvers three or four tables into a line on the Montpelier side and shortly, a group of diners of a certain age fil…
Tucked behind a stone wall on the edge of a hardwood forest, my 6-year-old students and I spy on an Eastern gray squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis) as it climbs out of a tree cavity and scurries down to the ground. There is a dusting of snow. My students, bundled in vibrant snowsuits, are the o…
What with Christmas right around the corner, it must be time for the latest Camp Swampy Catalog. This year, we have some real winners for the discriminating (if not always legal) hunter out there.
As we enter cold and flu season, more and more people may find themselves visiting health-care providers. And with the changing and growing health-care landscape, there are numerous options available to people seeking care. These range from primary-care health providers, specialty clinics, u…
During the holidays, I try to take time from the humdrum of festivities to sit quietly and reflect on how happy and grateful I am for my life here in rural New England. Much of what I appreciate is linked to a life that allows me to spend time in my garden, raising some of the food I eat and…
It’s a strange, confused, depressing, hopeful time of year, these weeks between our Thanksgiving and our year-end holidays.
With our holiday season upon us, our thoughts turn to cozy fireplaces, friendly gatherings in winter sweaters and long, cold, snowy nights. The winter season creates new opportunities to try winter sports, start a new indoor hobby, or simply slow down to a contemplative pace and enjoy your r…
Winter’s short days and long nights can be festive, busy, stressful and lonely all at the same time. With the first full day of winter officially on Sunday, Dec. 22, it’s time to prepare for the changes that impact every one of us, as well as our friends and family members.
Black-capped chickadees are one of the most frequent visitors to our bird feeders in winter, but do we really know them? This common bird exhibits some remarkable behaviors and winter survival strategies.
First the werewolves came. Then we had to deal with the zombies. Now we have the attack of the wild turkeys.
As we enter cold and flu season, more and more people may find themselves visiting health-care providers. And with the changing and growing health-care landscape, there are numerous options available to people seeking care. These range from primary-care health providers, specialty clinics, u…
Winter’s short days and long nights can be festive, busy, stressful and lonely all at the same time. With the first full day of winter officially on Sunday, Dec. 22, it’s time to prepare for the changes that impact every one of us, as well as our friends and family members.
You may think the planting season is over. Not for me. I recently planted eight giant red oaks. Or, I should say, potentially giant oaks. I planted eight acorns. I’m hoping at least one will begin growing next spring, and will eventually provide shade, food for wildlife and beauty for all wh…
Bread & Butter
Everyone in Vermont likes to talk about the cold weather. You know, how cold was it?
I know people who say we shouldn’t be cutting down trees just to brighten our homes for the holidays. Trees are, after all, sequestering carbon and making our environment cleaner, greener and all that. I disagree and will cut a fresh tree from my neighborhood tree farmer. I say Christmas tre…
The first and most important step in avoiding the flu this year is to get an influenza vaccination.
Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone! ...A squeezing, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck generous fire.
Walking through the woods on a crisp December day, I spotted a flash of green among the rocks, snaking up through the snow. Greenery in a forest full of gray and white is a treat, and so I stooped to study the fern frond that was firmly attached to a rock.
If I ever heard that Hal Holbrook was going to be performing “Mark Twain Tonight” anywhere that I could get to, I got there. It was invariably a superb invocation of the old man himself, complete with white linen suit, handlebar mustache, and a Havana cigar. I remember it taking him about te…
The trees, especially the evergreens, are laden with heavy snow and the whips in front of me, as well as thick bushes, are ornamented, actually covered, in frozen ice. We may as well be hunting on an alien planet.
The blast of a gunshot: a deep bass roar she feels in her chest, followed by a treble ringing in her ears. The buck drops. The hunter remains in her crouch, watching the animal’s last breaths through her scope. When he is still, she rises, trembling from the cold and the moment, and approaches.
“Divining”
November is Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month. In the war against cancer, one opponent has proven especially difficult to vanquish. Pancreatic cancer is difficult to detect early, which makes survival much less likely. Doctors are working hard to learn more about this malignancy — and how to…
Bad news: I hear you can’t depend on Santa to deliver presents to your favorite gardener this year, as he is vastly overworked — and pretty cranky. Last I heard, he is planning on giving coal to almost everyone over the age of 8. But here are some of my recommendations you could give to your…
Early wintry weather has brought a sense of urgency for many Vermonters to consider how to balance having a comfortable home with an affordable heating bill. Efficiency Vermont’s “10 ways NOT to save energy this winter” consumer guide takes a lighter approach to exploring this question, whil…
Famille Hugel, 2017
The countdown to the holidays has begun. Thanksgiving gatherings later this week officially kick off the season: time to enjoy family and friends, celebrate, be grateful and reflect on what’s important.
BURLINGTON — Dr. Ann Hazelrigg, University of Vermont Extension plant pathologist, recently returned from Nepal, where she worked with farmers to help them manage clubroot, a destructive disease of brassicas, a plant genus that includes cabbage and other cruciferous vegetables.
“The Book of Common Prayer,” it’s called. It was on my wife’s bed table for as long as I can remember. She was baptized, confirmed, married, prayed for and buried by the prayers within it. It sent her off with words she would have cherished: “... a sheep of your own fold, a lamb of your own …
By now, most of us have put our gardens to bed — or done as much as we will this season. The morning of the first snowstorm, I finished cutting back the perennials in my last two flower beds. Whew, just in time. The vegetable garden has long been cleaned up, weeded and mulched with fall leav…
British soldier lichens are among the first wild things I remember being able to identify as a child. I loved spotting this lichen during forays into the woods — on a giant boulder or atop a decaying stump — its tiny, bright-red caps seemed whimsical and somehow happy. I still love to find B…
The buck season is just about half over and, with a little more than a week left, that buck tag remains un-filled.
