By Mary Ellen Shaw Well, how did your garden grow this summer? Did you try anything new? Experimenting with new plants is one of my favorite things to do. When the calendar tells me that Labor Day has arrived I know that the gardening season is coming to an end. Summer goes by way too…

By Mary Ellen Shaw When I submitted my column to Polly recently I added a comment about how much I dislike hot weather. I told her I had much rather have it cold. I also gave her permission to remind me of those words when freezing temperatures come back to bite us! Polly responded that…

By Mary Ellen Shaw Many of us had pets growing up. Dogs and cats were the most common pets but goldfish, turtles and birds also had a place in many of our homes. On my street three of my closest friends had dogs and I had a cat. The dogs wanted to spend time with…

By Mary Ellen Shaw I realized that I am “stuck” in the '50s when Venetian blinds are still my choice for privacy and keeping out the sun. Apparently, the majority of consumers have moved on to more modern options! About a year ago my husband picked up a replacement blind for one of our living…

By Mary Ellen Shaw As adults we have occasions to observe how small something actually is that seemed large to us when we were children. That happened to me just before the school year came to an end at Christ the King School. I drove by as students were taking part in an activity on…

We recently had some work done on our car and one of the staff members said that he had tried to reach me but the call “didn’t go anywhere!" I asked if he had dialed 802 before our landline number and he said he did. The only logical explanation for a call that “didn’t go…

By Mary Ellen Shaw When I was a kid “back in the day” and the school year ended many of us recited the phrase, “No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers’ dirty looks!” We were free at last. We had been planning how we would spend our summer days long before that last…

By Mary Ellen Shaw I get to take a trip back in time whenever I stand at the counter of Beauchamp & O’Rourke Pharmacy on Woodstock Avenue in Rutland. To the right of the register is a photo from 1959 of the store owners, Fred Beauchamp and William O’Rourke, as well as the pharmacists who…

By Mary Ellen Shaw I met some friends for lunch recently and one of them brought some old photos from the '80s... '90s. Among them were pictures of events showing people we had worked with. You know that a vast amount of time has passed when you don’t recognize some of the people! All of…

By Mary Ellen Shaw If you have been waiting for color in your gardens that time is here! It will only get better as the weeks move forward. The first blossoms we see are from bulb flowers. They offer wonderful and varied colors. They begin to pop up and bloom in April and continue into…

By Mary Ellen Shaw I recently came across an online article in which various people wrote about the way they remembered life from the 1930s into the '50s. The general consensus is that everything was a lot more work back then. Today’s conveniences make many of the routine things in our lives easier but I…

By Mary Ellen Shaw It’s always fun to open up my email inbox and find pictures and stories that take me back in time. A friend recently sent me an email with pictures that definitely said, “Remember when?” One was a picture of a book … not one you read, but rather a "book" of…

By Mary Ellen Shaw Well, we are inching closer to seeing some blooms on plants, shrubs and trees. When they appear it will mean that garden season is just around the corner. Every March I look for the first blossoms in my garden and snowdrops never disappoint me. Their green stems poke through the snow…

By Mary Ellen Shaw I was listening to "The John Tesh Radio Show" recently and one of his topics was phrases that were used “back in the day.” When I heard some of them I realized that I still use a few. A young person probably wouldn’t know the meaning of many of them. I…

By Mary Ellen Shaw We pretty much know that in this day and age “screen time” takes up a good portion of a person’s day…even in their spare time. But how did people spend their free time back in yesteryear? Hobbies filled the spare time of many people. Today’s technology has changed our hobbies, even…