Observing differences

There is much that is similar between NZ and VT, but much that is different. This blog post is a collection of random things that have surprised me, in this first month of our stay in Vermont.

Coffee. I'm no coffee drinker, but Bruce, and our friend Kathy (who has just returned from a Fulbright in Wellington) deplore the coffee here. "What would I give for a decent flat white" they murmur, as they sip what passes for coffee in the cafes in Vermont. which leads me to...

Cafes. 'Cafe' means something different here. On our first day in Burlington, looking for a light lunch, we sat down in a cafe and ordered a sandwich each. We were a little bemused by the fact these sandwiches could only be located on menus, and had to be served by a waitress - but hey, they do things a little differently here. Imagine our surprise, then, when the waitress returned, carrying four large dinner plates containing huge and complex sandwiches accompanied by fries and salad. Any one of them would have served all four of us. We've learned to order two and share. Cafes here serve predominantly or solely full sized meals, with full bar services. Asking for a cup of tea invites some slightly odd looks.

But the lack of NZ cafes does present us kiwis with a problem. What do you do when it's 3pm and you're in a strange town and you just want a snack? I still don't know. I tend to walk down the street, studying the shops, muttering "All I want is a cup of tea and something small and sweet that is not a muffin the size of my head! Is that too much to ask??" Mostly it is. I imagine my counterpart, walking down Lambton Quay, glancing at cafes with cabinets of sandwiches and slices, snarling "all I want is a decent sized lunch. How can these miniscule slices of bread-and-something possibly feed anyone?"

Flags. I love the way there are American flags flying everywhere - lines of them down the main streets, jutting out above the porches of both big gothic houses and mobile homes (by the way, I always thought mobiles homes were like caravans or camper vans. But they're not - they're closer to our prefabs). But what intrigues me most of all, is the way flags are tucked into flowerpots and centrepieces on dining tables and in pots of chrysanthemums by letter boxes.

I think about how someone, some time, planted those petunias, looked at that  pot and thought "what we really need here, just to finish it off, are some flags" and then went out and bought them, and added them to their arrangement. I cannot imagine the thought processes. Is it a desire for, or expression of, patriotism? a desire for a little more colour? Or is it just "how things are done here" and therefore doesn't require any thinking at all?

Language. While the girls are having a lot of fun comparing accents at school, I've been thinking about the words we choose. My favourite word in American is:

You see it everywhere on the road signs, and it always makes me smile. It's so much more evocative than "Give way". It seems more confrontational, and conjures up, in my mind at least, images of men with swords and plumed hats, or maybe in full body armour.

The NZ word that seems to surprise people most here is 'kiwi". Over and over again, I have this conversation:

"You're from New Zealand! how exciting! What do you call someone from New Zealand?"

Me: "A kiwi".

Question marks fill the silence.

Me (helpfully): "after the bird - not the fruit".

With a sigh of relief, " oh! right! I wondered there for a.....there's a kiwi bird???"



Irony: Vermonters seem to me to have an ironic sense of themselves, and how they're seen by the rest of the country. We recently bought this bumper sticker for our car:

This is one of my favourite tshirts:

The hillbilly group singing in Church Street have a sign saying "Keeping Vermont boring" on their guitar case.

Safety. It takes some getting used to, the feeling of safety and security here. I commented to a colleague about the way kayaks and canoes are tied up by the lake, oars loosely laid on the beach - and bikes are left on porches without a padlock in sight. No-one would do that in NZ, I said, they'd be stolen. He laughed. "It's just the way we live here", he said,. "My biggest security problem is locating my house keys when I'm going on vacation, when I haven't used them for 9 months".

Courtesy: People say that New Zealanders are friendly, and that may be so. I tend to think we're a little reserved too - or maybe that we're not extroverted in our friendliness. The people we've met here also seem to have that reserved air, but combined with a remarkable courtesy and generosity. I don't want to generalise - we've been here for only a month! - but amongst the people we've met there is a kind of quietness, a holding back. As a very stressy, driven person, I find it unusually restful and relaxing. I find myself....calming down.

The hills are alive....

So, with a whole day to play with ("Why can't be school on EVERY day" moaned Emily), we had a choice: the South End Art Hop or a visit to Stowe, which is famous for being both the place the Van Trapp family emigrated to after their escape from Austria and the home of Ben and Jerry's icecream. By democratic procedures (I was outvoted 3:!), we made a choice, and headed off to Stowe.

We shall draw a veil over the problems getting there. Stowe is a very cute town - picture perfect, quaint.

On the way there, we visited the famous-in-Vermont cider mill, to drink hot apple cider and taste their apple donuts.

Hot apple cider is heaven. It is non alcoholic, and both sweet and tart - I plan to drink it every day in apple season!

We got lost in a corn maze

And walked along the Stowe hiking/biking trail

 In the stream, there seemed to be a tradition of making rock sculptures

So, of course, the girls had to make some of their own:

All in all, we thought Stowe was quaint and old fashioned. Maybe a little touristy, like Taupo, but nice. Then we drove into the mountains. And the scene certainly changed. Huge, luxurious ski resorts stood amongst the forest and the magnificent mountains. Some of them (resorts and mountains) took our breath away - the sheer size of them was unlike anything we'd seen before.

It was hard to get a photo that fully conveyed the vastness and wealth of these resorts

In the absence of snow, Bruce and the girls ventured up the ski lifts

By this time, it was getting late, and so the ice cream factory will have to wait for another day (cries of outrage from the girls!).  But we liked Stowe, in all its diversity: its combination of the quaint, the historical and the magnificent. We will visit again. And for the skiers among you (I'm looking at you, Sue Fordyce!): I'm no expert, but the ski fields looked glorious: buy your tickets and start planning your winter holiday!

The end of summer?

The weather changes quickly here. For over two weeks we've had temperatures of around 29 degrees almost every day, with only a few degrees drop in temperature at night. Then a few days ago, a huge night thunderstorm, which lit up the lake, cooled the air, and we had the sense that Fall was on its way. This morning the temperature was 3 degrees; the air as crisp and dry as frost. I looked out of my bedroom window and saw the rising sun over the mountains.


Still in my pjs (note to self: buy warmer sleepwear!) I dashed downstairs, grabbed the camera, and ran over to the lake. To this.

I was there for only a minute or two. By the time I turned back to the cottage, the mist was rolling away.

Time to put the kettle on and wake up the girls for school.

This morning's walk

Every morning, I try to take a walk - and I make it most days. Walking was a challenge in the heat of the last week, but now that the mornings are cooler, it is all pleasure. Every morning I see something new.

These webs are everywhere

And they hold hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny grubs. What are they?

Houses are tucked into the farmland in the shadow of Mount Philo

and there are red barns in the farm yards

Cows seem to be a theme in Vermont

There are critters at my feet

And wherever I walk, Lake Champlain, with the shadowy Adirondack Mountains behind it, is a constant companion.

In our garden

Spot the humming bird

I think it's likely that birds will feature prominently in this blog. As we planned the trip to Vermont, I was looking forward very much to seeing the local birds. During our stay in Michigan in 2007, I spent much happy time watching the cardinals and blue jays in our back yard, at the bird feeder. I studied a book about birds in New England with a sense of anticipation.

It was something of a disappointment, then, when we got here to find few birds in the garden. No cardinals, no blue jays. "Perhaps they'll come in the winter" said Bruce philosophically. However, I have never been one to just see what happens (why wait when you can make something happen??), so we decided to take matters into our own hands, and ventured into a hardware shop to buy bird feeders.

There were about 100 different kinds of bird feeders and racks of different varieties of bird food. What to choose? How to choose? I went to the young man at the counter and asked for help. It was an interesting interchange. He thought we were insanely stupid. 

"I was thinking we might put a table out on the lawn and put a feeder on it, so the cardinals can land," I said.

He gazed at me blankly. "But the squirrels will get in" he said.

There was silence. "You see, we come from New Zealand,' I explained, " and we don't have squirrels in New Zealand." An even longer silence. "So we don't know how to feed birds but not squirrels". More silence. Completely incredulous silence.

If he thought we'd led a strangely sheltered life, I privately thought he couldn't read. "So which feeders are appropriate for which birds?" I asked. "This is a feeder for squirrels" he said, pointing "No", I said, "it says "squirrel-proof feeder, which means it won't feed squirrels. So shall we get that one? Which birds would feed from that?" Silence.


In the end, we just assembled every kind of bird feeder - a tray to hang from a tree, a wire funnel, and a red syrup feeder that I had read was good for hummingbirds - and huge bags containing a range of feed. "Buy mealy worms," volunteered our young friend unexpectedly. "it's like...um...peanut butter for birds". This time I provided the pause. I hate peanut butter. "They like it,' he translated.

When we had wrestled everything into the car, Bruce discovered he'd left something in the shop, and dashed back. He came out laughing. He said all the shop assistants were standing round and saying "they don't have squirrels? But they have koala bears, don't they - but they're not real bears, right?"

So, anyways, as they say here, we came home and made syrup and filled our feeders with a range of seed, and put the mealy worms on the tray. And the very next day, the tree was alive with birds.

The humming birds are entrancing - you hear them before you see them. And they're so tiny

The woodpeckers like to chew the tree before they get into the seeds

There are finches galore

And we've seen chickadees and goldfinches, and one beautiful cardinal, all alighting on our tree.

As I go on my morning walk each day I spot crows, turkey vultures, and Canada geese rising up in flocks on their migration to the south. Because Fall is coming.You can feel it.

ps you might like to click on the images to see the birds more clearly.

Happy Father's Day!

Vermont's 2013 Father of the Year today took his his family on a day trip to a wildlife sanctuary, where they discovered various creatures,

(including snakes!),

drove home in the heat, and then celebrated his day with one of his favourite beers

And a barbeque (which he cooked himself)

Happy Father's Day, Bruce!

Exploring another life

Montpelier - a city nestled in a forest

About 39 years ago,  for reasons I've never been clear about, my parents decided to emigrate from the UK. This is especially surprising when you think they'd never been travellers - they'd never been to Europe (except when my father was doing his military service before I was born), or even to Scotland. My father has always had a wanderlust. But my mother not so much. When I asked her recently how she came to move to New Zealand, she said "I think I just didn't realise how far away it was." Geography has never been her strong suit.

As my father tells the story, he applied for, and was offered, jobs in Athens, in Napier, NZ, and in Montpelier, VT. I don't think the first was ever seriously considered, but I remember the debate: New Zealand or Vermont? Obviously, he chose the Napier option - and so our lives have unfolded. But I have always been curious about the life I might have lived, and indeed that was one of the things that led me to Vermont for this Sabbatical.

My closest friend, at the school I attended in Duffield, was Julian Gumley. When we left England, when I was 14, I missed him terribly. His family emigrated to Canada, only a few months after we left. And for 39 years we have written to each other - shared our lives, first through long letters that took weeks to travel across the world, and more recently through emails. We have documented, for one another, our school years, our travels, our growing families (Julian is now a grandfather) and the memories we've made for our families, relationship breakdowns, hopes and dreams. Maybe some years there were only a couple of letters or emails - at other times, when our lives were full of news or difficulty, we've written more. While I have lived in one place for most of those years, Julian and his family have travelled and shifted, as his job with the Canadian military has taken him all over the world.

This week, these two elements of my life have come together. Julian arrived at our cottage on Thursday night, laden with gifts: Canadian wine and whisky, Canada tshirts for the girls (that should confuse the issues at school!), Canadian maple syrup, chocolates, and doughnuts:

yummy Canadian chocolate!

But best of all, he brought his own physical, tangible self. And it was effortless: the three of us (Bruce was lured away from his computer) sat up talking late, and I don't think we stopped talking for the two days he was here.

On Friday he and I drove to Montpelier, to visit what might have been my home town. Montpelier is the capital of Vermont, but it is tiny city, maybe only 9,000 people, nestled in a deep, dense forest. There are two streets in the centre of town, which seem to be made up of cafes and bookshops and churches, and a miniature state building (where, I read recently, the most pressing topic of debate is likely to be the grading of maple syrup!).

We walked the streets, ate delicious seasonal food, stopped outside the school I would have attended

and drove up and down the hills to choose the house my family would have lived in.

Julian reckoned this would have been our house - and it's all neglected and lost because we didn't get to it!

But maybe we would have lived in the city centre in a house like this?

Or even better...a house in the woods

So it has been a poignant couple of days - joyful and intriguing. Visiting an unknowable life in the company of my dear and oldest friend.