Stowe and Morristown, Tuesday, July 29, 2025
We got up fairly early and went for a swim before the pool got too crowded. I swam fewer laps than I wanted: my allergies are the worst in years and I was simply too congested to enjoy the water.
We spent the morning reading and then, after lunch, struck out for another garden. Not too much information was available regarding Cady’s Falls Nursery in Morristown, so we didn’t know what to expect. Don and Lela Avery opened the property as a nursery, again focusing on rare plants. The nursery was run out of the enormous barn on their property. At some point in the recent past they closed the nursery and now maintain their magnificent garden on a donation basis. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves; suffice it to say that this is, acre for acre, one of the most remarkable gardens we’ve ever visited.
The garden is remarkable for a number of reasons, not least because it is maintained by just the two owners. But a tall post at the entrance points to another factor: in the horrible floods that swept through northern Vermont in 2023, the Lamoille River flooded, immersing the garden in almost four feet of water, and leaving a thick layer of silt, rock, and debris behind. None of that is evident today.
Back at the ranch, we beat the heat with a quick dip in the pool, joining the hordes of young folks with the same thing in mind!
Our guesthouse is, for some reason, enormously conducive to reading; it isn’t like we don’t have time to read at home, but we simply devour books up here. I’ve read a biography of Ed Abbey, reread his masterpiece, Desert Solitaire, and am now reading volumes of his essays. Abbey has been a long-time interest, and not just because he lived in Tucson. Although my thoughts on the environment are never as radical as Abbey’s, with his arguments for the preservation of natural areas barred of all human access, those thoughts serve as a kind of measuring point for me. And it has been wonderful to be reacquainted with his non-fiction. I’ve tried, too, to reread The Monkey Wrench Gang, his most popular work, but, even on repeated attempts, I find that and his other novels unreadable.
It’s perhaps worth noting the instigation for this return to an earlier reading self: it was a conversation with our brilliant plumber Kyle. A couple of years ago we had a long talk about Schopenhauer; earlier this year it was Rudyard Kipling and Virginia Woolf; and, with our air conditioning on the fritz just before we left for Vermont, Kyle mentioned casually that his favorite author was Ed Abbey!
We had a really nice meal on the Patio at The Whip, the restaurant of the Green Mountain Inn. Simple but perfect: mussels followed by lobster rolls with slaw and fries!
Our table had been early. We parked the car to charge outside the Trapp Outdoor Center in the twilight and were treated to this view of Round Top.
