Musings on horticultural therapy and the soothing effects of plants and nature
The church bell in St. Albans rings nine and we start our way to Canada on a cloudy and cool morning. This trip is only 38 miles so we should be able to handle it easily. It’s a quiet Sunday with only a few people walking the trail and even fewer cars on the roads […]
Rain, rain take a hike. Erik wants to ride his bike. This was the refrain going through my head this morning as we woke up to varying intensities of precipitation that continued until 10 am, delaying our start. The sky spits at us as we mount our bikes, coasting down to the LVRT. We take […]
After a great breakfast at the Danville Restaurant and Inn (Ted had blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup), we start our 49-mile day by entering the trail next to the old Danville train station. The morning is sunny though unseasonably cold in the 50s. Our tires crackle as we pass through a grove of white […]
Much like Blanche DuBois, Ted and I have very much relied on the kindness of strangers when we find ourselves in a pickle during one of our road trips. That happened again today when we experienced four flat tires between the two of us. I led off the puncture parade two miles into the day […]
For the eighth time in nine years, Ted and I leave our homes to hop on our bikes for the great unknown. This time it is a cris-cross through northern Vermont with a brief visit to Canada. We will be biking nearly 250 miles over five days on the Lamoille Valley Rail Trail (LVRT) and […]
Blueberry season is overlapping with strawberry this year. It sneaked up on me so fast that I wound up putting up the blueberry netting at the start of the current heat wave. I found out the hard way in past years that without netting, there would be no blueberries for us to eat. For some […]
In less than few days, the weather has flipped into high gear and hot temperatures. With this change comes the need to harvest tasty and pungent garlic scapes, which have exploded in the last few days. They are the by-product of hard-neck garlic and pre-date the harvest of the bulbs by about a month or […]
With a cool and wet Spring, I can only hope for warmer days ahead. But the damp and cold did not stop Charlotte and Olivia from harvesting strawberries on the first day of their summer with us. After a trip to the library, they were ready to attack the two strawberry patches and grab as […]