When May rolls around I am very anxious to spend time in my flower gardens and have fun playing in the dirt. As we mature, we acquire a sense of pride in our property. We want our yards to look nice. This involves more than just cutting the grass. An attractive landscape around our home…

In the second half of May, colleges let out, and graduation ceremonies are held—it’s commencement speech season. I’ve long had a particular interest in this genre of essay, if it can be called that, in large part because, like wedding toasts or newspaper columns, commencement speeches seem inherently doomed by the nature of their format…

  By Laurie Morrissey Did you ever use your hands to scoop the air toward your nose when someone takes a pie out of the oven? Snakes are doing the same thing when they flick their forked tongues. “They are manipulating the air, bringing chemicals from the air or the ground closer so they can…

By Steven Faccio Hikers and climbers can help nesting peregrine falcons by avoiding 12 Vermont cliff areas this year. Hiking Vermont’s hillsides is a great way to enjoy a spring day, but the Vermont Fish & Wildlife Department and Audubon Vermont recommend you check to see if the area you’re planning to hike or climb…

Praise the lord and pass the mashed potatoes, this has been one of the best weeks of my life. On Monday, May 9, I hiked Superstar and skied through POWDER! Leaving my windowless concrete bachelor bunker (free Radon!) for my morning hike-ski, I noticed a dusting of snow on the ground. No palpitations, just some…

By Daris Howard The spring after I finished college, I was determined to spend more time with my little girls enjoying the farm life we had chosen. As I was outside one evening, I could see the lights of the lambing sheds in the distance, where the sheep herders worked around the clock helping the…

Summer is rapidly approaching—well, technically, at the normal speed—and, thus, lemonade season, too, is just around the corner. For my money, fresh homemade lemonade is possibly the world’s best-tasting beverage in its bright refreshing simplicity, its sweetness perfectly offset by its tartness. As a man in my 20s, however, I feel that spending my time…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a late Virgo, just about ‘Void-of-Course,’ and soon-to-be Libra Moon, that will be on its regular roll by 1:30 p.m. Projecting out toward the end of the week, the Moon will be full in Sagittarius by sundown on…

By Dom Cioffi Like so many other people, I arrived at work on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, thinking my day would be fairly routine. Within a few hours, however, the world as we knew would be permanently changed. I worked for a military veteran at the time so when the magnitude of the…

By Meghan McCarthy McPhaul We noticed the first robin in our yard this year in early March. Normally these famous spring harbingers, who move in comically stilted hops across our front lawn, don’t show up until at least April Fool’s Day. Their earlier-than-usual arrival made me wonder how robins decide to begin a spring migration.…

If you’re a longtime reader of this newspaper, you might occasionally wonder: is Brett Yates ever going to leave us alone? Won’t he ever run out of opinions? Reader, I share your concerns. In a recent fit of anxiety, I combed through the “Generation Y” archives in order to determine whether indeed I’ve already covered…

By Brady Crain It has finally happened—I’ve transferred to the uphill season! As I write this, I have completed 173 days of skiing, and I have hiked Superstar four days in a row. My legs, once rubbery testaments to my sedentary winter lifestyle, are now once again carved from iron. Starting May 1, Killington Resort…

Most likely we can all come up with expressions that are clearly associated with our parents. It’s also likely that these expressions will be heard by future generations. After all, “they”say that we turn into our parents at some point in time. When I was in elementary school I used to go to my Cousin…

Courtesy of Dave Hoffenberg APPLESEED COLLECTIVE When people ask me what my favorite band is, it’s tough to say because I like so many. When they ask me what my favorite kind of music is, I can’t narrow it down to one but what I can say is that I love remixes and when a…

By Cal Garrison, a.k.a. Mother of the Skye This week’s Horoscopes are coming out under the light of a Void-of-Course, Gemini Moon. No matter which coast we live on, by the time we sit down for our morning coffee, the ‘free-for-all’ energy that shows up with every Void-of-Course (VOC) moon will be alive and well…