Do you enjoy spending time on Lake Champlain? Do you care about water quality and habitat? Join Lewis Creek Association and volunteers as we manage European frogbit and other aquatic invasive plants in Shelburne and Charlotte this June!
Charlotters have been quietly leading the movement to bring electric vehicles (EVs) to Vermont’s roads. On a per-capita basis, there are now more electric cars—60 in total—in Charlotte than anywhere else in Chittenden County. Several of those EV drivers brought their cars for display and joined a group of 30 to listen to a presentation by Dave Roberts from Drive Electric Vermont last Wednesday evening at the library.
There’s been a lot of talk about Charlotte’s Town Link Trail, which will eventually connect Mount Philo with the Charlotte Beach, but did you know that Charlotte has several other well-developed trail systems just waiting to be explored?
My old Toyota truck rolls merrily down the highway on a late afternoon. The sun is shining brightly. The temperature is at a perfect setting—no one complains that it is too cool or too warm. It’s perfect. It’s one of those days that we bank on all winter.
I am obsessed with the weather. It controls all that can or can’t happen on the farm and the margins are incredibly delicate. If the weather is cooperative and you time your actions just right, you can save yourself a ton of work. However, if you miss a detail in the forecast or the forecast is wrong or changes suddenly, bad things can happen. Such a fine line it is.
Thriller! Spiller! Filler! Have you heard this phrase? Some have and it might be new to others. It’s the design idea behind container planting. Containers can be window boxes, clay pots, beautiful ceramics or a feeding trough. They’re valuable in our summer gardens for filling in spaces, adding a pop of color or replacing some of those ephemerals we spoke of in the last column.
Forestry is the practice of managing forested ecosystems. However, since forests seem to be able to take care of themselves, do we really need to manage them at all?
In my work at the Conservation Commission I reviewed a subdivision application in which two state agencies, another town committee, and a not-for-profit all held interests aimed at compliance with federal guidelines. Add to that a concern for global climate stability, and these layers of complexity, while necessary, are frustrating and often counterproductive.
I recently spotted something remarkable at the Denver Botanic Garden: an atmospheric water harvester. What, you say? Denver receives from eight to 15 inches of rain in an average year; Vermont about 37. (For the record, Colorado experiences 300 or more days of sunshine each year while Vermont averages about half that number.)
My wife and I attended a film festival in Middlebury recently. It was the 10th Annual Fly Fishing Film Tour on Friday the 13th. For almost a decade now I have been attempting to educate the public—both the hunting/fishing sector and the non-hunting/fishing sector—about the healing qualities of participating in the outdoors.
Now you see them, now you don’t. I’m speaking of spring blooming ephemerals that will be showing along Vermont’s roadsides and, if we’re fortunate, in our own gardens very soon.
I don’t know who started it, but at some point a lot of people started talking about timber harvesting in two categories: “clearcutting” and “selective cutting.” When I describe my job to laypeople, they often ask if I do “selective cutting,” perhaps trying to ensure that I’m not one of those “bad guys” associated with “clearcutting.”
Ah, springtime in Vermont! The grasp of winter ever so slowly relenting and allowing us to consider that perhaps soon we’ll be without snow banks, icy walkways and frosty windshields every morning and will instead be out strolling through the garden with bare feet.
Mud season is upon us. It may not be muddy at your house, but as snow and ice melt, first in the valleys and later at higher elevations, it’s good to have some ideas for spring outings. Also a Plan B for days of April showers.
Throughout Vermont, people interested in our environment are increasingly concerned about the health of our forests and the current development trends. People come here to visit or to settle down, largely because of the magnificent mountains and pastoral scenes that surround our highways and towns, and, of course, because of the people.
How would you react if you received a notice that said your home property would be bisected by a new highway? You would likely go to your town, county and state officials, hire a lawyer, form a neighborhood group to defeat this issue, and, in the end, maybe even try to physically obstruct the process. You have rights, and you voice your objections to this incursion. Now ask yourself, how can wildlife express their distress when their home and ability to survive is threatened by a new road, by developments that fragments forests with spread-out houses and by the addition of domestic predators? The unfortunate truth is they can’t.
The natural world is awakening. March entries from my garden journal prepare me for the vicissitudes of the month, when lions and lambs interact frequently. From 1998: Snow cover generally gone since early February. Huge snowstorm on March 22. In 2001: Town Meeting Day Storm cancels Town Meeting and dumps 30 inches of snow on Burlington, fourth greatest snowfall on record. Also three snowstorms after March 25!
Tonight I am packing my dark-green duffle bag and my backpack with all of my favorite toys: duck and goose calls, turkey box calls, slate calls, turkey wing bone calls, turtle shell calls, crow and peacock calls, owl calls and all my late-season ice fishing gear. I will stuff the large green duffle bag with my favorite base layers and chamois shirts, my old Carhartt coveralls and my “camp pillow”—a chamois shirt stuffed with fleece vests and jackets.
When trying to manage for healthy forests, you must first consider how to gauge forest health. After all, if we don’t know what condition we’re shooting for, it’s hard to know when we’re headed in the right direction. Is a healthy forest, one filled with trees growing quickly and efficiently? Or one without disease? Does it include high-quality wildlife habitat, or should forest health be measured solely on the condition of trees?
The Vermont Department of Forests, Parks & Recreation (VTFPR) and the Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Foods & Markets (VAAFM) report that an emerald ash borer (EAB), a destructive forest insect from Asia, has been detected in Vermont. Officials with the USDA Animal & Plant Health and Inspection Service (APHIS) have confirmed the identification of a beetle recently found in northern Orange County, Vermont. The insect was reported through the vtinvasives.org website.