Invasive Honeysuckle Management - Mills Riverside Park - Photos

Please join us for invasive plant

 cutting at Mills Riverside Park.

The 2025 event will be held on

May 9, 2025, 10 AM to 12 PM

Each year, we clear up and free up a new section. Did you notice the pond view as you walk up the trail to the upper loops? Before the invasive cuttings, the pond view was entirely blocked. Help us restore more of Mills Riverside Park. Come for whatever amount of time you wish; we are grateful for even small incremental improvements in R.M. Park habitat. 

Our butterflies, fireflies, birds, and other creatures need the plants they evolved with to thrive. Let's give those native plants a better chance at success by cutting down the invasive plants.

See photos of the 2023 event below.

May 18, 2024, 10 AM -12 PM

 

May 20, 2023, 10 AM to 12 PM

Volunteers

Invasive Honeysuckle Management - Mills Riverside Park

Organized by Jericho Families in Nature (JFiN)

Left to right, 

Maeve Kim, Sean Reilly, David Wheeler,

 Jane Sandberg, John Warner, 

not in the photo, Bernie Paquette

                              Livy Strong, Jericho Underhill Park District - Chair

The honeysuckle behind Livy in the photo above is near the bridge. This section was not cut down as it acts as a barrier to the steep decline/bank. Perhaps a fund could be created through donations to the park to purchase plants that could replace the honeysuckle, and allow their removal while adding a native planting to serve as a barrier. 

BEFORE 

Invasive  Honeysuckle (the non-native species) if left unmanaged, 

forms dense thickets, blocking sunlight and out-competing native plants. 

This is not what a natural Vermont woodland looks like.

Learn how to recognize invasive vs. native honeysuckle easily.  

Save our woodlands - manage invasive honeysuckle mechanically. 

AFTER 

We did a little Green Up work at the same time. 

This native dogwood was growing horizontally

 to try to reach sunlight from under the invasive honeysuckle. 

This apple tree was becoming overgrown and shaded by invasive honeysuckle.

There are dozens of native dogwoods, and some maples, cherry, and other native trees uncovered and now able to more easily access sunlight. 

 

The pond can now be seen from the trail. 

Maeve asked Dave, "So when you were back in high school is this what you thought you'd be today? 

To which he replied, No. I wanted to be an engineer. I went to a space camp. I wanted to build rockets. But sometime during college, I had the thought that this, where we live is a pretty good spaceship. And I switched majors to work on protecting it. 

David Wheeler is Deputy Director of Water Resources, City of South Burlington, and the SB NRCC Staff Liasion. He resides in Jericho, Vermont. 

There is a good deal more Invasive honeysuckle at Mills Riverside Park. Contact Bernie Paquette or Livy Strong if you are interested in volunteering at the next Invasive Honeysuckle Management event. We need about three more folks to volunteer in order to stage the next one. 

Help keep our park and its forested areas ecologically healthy for people and a biodiverse set of animals and native plants. 

Thank You to Maeve, Jane, John, David, and Sean for your volunteer invasive honeysuckle management work at Mills Riverside Park. 

Footnotes 

Cutting these massive invasive honeysuckle bushes does not kill them. However, it does prevent them from spreading by seed for now. And in future years management will be the equivalent of mowing the lawn once a year.  

Native plants now have more time and resources to grow in their place.

We did not add any poisons (herbicide or other) to the plants or soil in this project. 

Emailed comments:

Thank you! We walked the trails with our daughter today and she noticed the work done and so did we. Thank you! Mariann

Wow! This hard work really shows. Sometimes I think if we just let people know that honeysuckle and barberry increase the tick populations maybe they’ll be more aggressive about removing them! Excellent work, that dogwood looks so happy now!

 Best, Cristine 

Hi Bernie.  

Thank you so much for doing this project on behalf of the park and all of the visitors who come each day to enjoy the space. We are lucky to have committed and enthusiastic neighbors like you and the group that worked on Saturday. We need a lot of extra hands to help maintain the park and appreciate what you’ve accomplished. - Bruce B. 

Dear Bernie,

I came home and promptly visited the park. I was amazed by the amount of honeysuckle that you and your able helpers cut and piled. WOW!  Was that just several hours of work?  How many came to assist?  What tools did you use?  Very impressive!! I want to thank you and all those who attended. Hard work for sure. The park is better for it and you have demonstrated how effective a concentrated effort can be! Thank you! - Livy

One Summer Night - Love strikes at Jericho, VT bowling lanes

One Summer night in Jericho, Vermont

   It was as warm a summer night as ever there was in Jericho, Vermont. The crickets sang out for the home team in white noise* to screen out all environmental injustice and inequities**. The bowling alley parking lot lights flickered, while inside twilight barely broke, just enough to soften the creamy pins and black obelisk supports spaced sparingly in between lanes. Vermont-brewed beer flowed from a stream of taps like water over boulders, splashing and foaming, rising over the banks of mismatched glasses. 

   He rested his chin on her grey silk collar trying to recall where he had met her. It didn’t matter. So it was for her, just that he was tall and thin in the frame, thick and stout where it mattered, sweet and kind of heart when the fat popped and sizzled in the pan.  

   He didn’t nuzzle or move. She no more melted than hot fudge on hard ice cream. 

One of the bowlers stepped up to and over her looking down upon the head resting upon her like a sparrow atop an eagle’s nest. Some chide comment to her about cuddling near the bowling lanes. The bowler needn’t have bothered, nothing could pull them apart and out of this enclave of serenity amidst the bustling of splintering fifteen-inch high forested pins. 

   She looked up briefly at the onlooker, then back to the top of his curly-haired head. He lifted not an eyebrow and the interloper moved on without saying a word that would have been lost in the turbulence, and never would have come close to the deep silent trough it sought to pierce. 

Time walked in the solstice of gestation. He lingered and longed for a cabin, a tract of land, dark skies at night, quiet loud enough to hear footsteps, the smell of pine and spruce, shadows of oak, maple, and birch, fireflies, and native solitary bees without honey or need of large families. 

She knew the dependence, the fortitude, the bedrock she offered could if he wanted last forever, or as long as forever lasted these days. She also knew children only tie to their mother’s aprons for a short time before they are off on their own chasing kite strings, Ferris wheels, and rolling the dice to see what comes next. 

Still for this moment, with hundreds of six to sixteen-pound red, green, purple, and black cannon balls gyrating towards steadfast resistance of hard rock maple, the silence about to be extinguished, buried, washed away; the reticence of the force between them held fast. 

Sometimes the spark, the explosive fireworks are the pinnacle of the night, while seldom, yet not unwanted, the unlit gunpowder is more than enough to not only charge the cannons, but to heat them up to a molten burning simmering that cares not to boil, or blast. Sensation that rides neither forward nor back, feels no constraints, no want, and has no beginning or end in sight. 

His breath warm, pulse sure and slow, her hair wispy and comforting blanketing his face. How could turbulence surround yet not enter, and where could one find such a portal of time and place to last what was left of a lifetime?

What past did he carry with those big strong hands? How many trysts and shenanigans had he maneuvered through to grow all those lovely curls of thick brown hair sautéed in silver and white spicy strands?  

How far would this quiet stream carry him, how long could he swing on this braided long cord of silken hair? How could such a tender gentle delicate frame (hers) hold up this outdoorsman with scales of hardness equal to a red oak?

Do those curls lead to deep brown pools of smiling eyes that set up the morning with expectations and explorations into the wonders of nature?

If I climb up this silky collar and hoist myself higher than I have ever been, will I find bluish-grey eyes that sparkle even on the cloudiest of days, that light up with the first rays of morning sunrise?

Who is this tender robust unconventional man suddenly so close to me yet so unknown to me that I dare not awaken him or myself, for fear I will know the answers before the mystery has rooted itself deep enough to grow in full daylight? 

Whereupon did I fly, did I float, did I amble to reach such blissful repose, such calm deep waters, such a comforting supportive nest?

Must night always be followed by day? Must tomorrow always come after today? This one summer night in Jericho will last forever in our minds. But must we leave it now, or can we extend the bliss, stretch out the quaint dirt roads with their grit and pose matching both the vulgarities and pleasantries of weather in Vermont?

Let's walk those roads together, one rambling path at a time. Cross the streams and small rivers that crisscross this valley in the eyes of the great Mount Mansfield as it stares down upon us without encumbrance or impediment. 

First, shall we take rest in the shadows of the steadfast oak on the village green and watch town life as it enters and departs from the Jericho Country Store with coffee, and creemee in hand? Hot and aromatic, soft and sweet, like us close together. 

A climb to the top of Bolger hill awaits us. Have we the fortitude to hill it hand in hand? Shall we first pull a book off the Jericho library shelf, perhaps a child's storybook? They tell life stories through the eyes we once looked through. 

OH, to come down, why must all great heights offering majestic views and dreams and goals, and fancies, why must they all, nearly as soon as one reaches the pinnacle, go down?

What will lift us again? Let us walk the sidewalks of Jericho Center to meet and ask others what more hills we might climb and descend to fill our desires to no end. Alas, what is that but a goat on a hill, a sheep on the sidewalk, a bear on the green? Yes, we are in a rural town, what else might we come upon on our sidewalk stroll?

Will we find ourselves in others? For so long we were lost in each other, your chin on my shoulder, your shoulder my nest. But now we have left that summer night, kicked out of Eden, swept into the foray of life. 

We stroll, we amble, and we stop to look at the tall asters sheltering us from too-fast roads and telling us beauty is wild and unconstrained at its best. 

Bikers and runners, strollers, and battery-powered pint-size kid cars pass us by. We meet teachers and lawyers, students and graduates, storekeepers and shopkeepers, gardeners, farmers, artists, and a stoneworker. We meet neighbors and visitors, new-to-town folks, and new folks born into the town of late. 

We look at each other after each encounter. Who we are changes each time. How young they look, how much older they have become, how spry they are, how carefully they walk supporting each other, how fortunate they have been, how desperate and tired they appear, how much weight they all seem to carry, how some carry it well while others show signs of load bearing shoulders. Regardless, all seem to have morsels of gold, prisms of light, balloons of gaggles and joys, and these they share with us freely and most exponentially.  

We will take this all back with us when we recline into each other's arms for another heavenly summer night in Jericho. 

Footnotes: *White noise is known for being an even, constant sound. Technically, it's when there are many frequencies with equal intensities, for example rain, crickets chirping...

**American society distributes nature’s benefits—and the effects of its destruction and decline—unequally by race, income, and age. People of color, families with children, and low-income communities are most likely to be deprived of the benefits that nature provides. Read more here.

Santa visits Jericho Country Store

I just came back from a lovely trip around Jericho, Vermont.

Stopped off at the Jericho Country Store

And lo and behold who did I find

none other than St. Nick,

 Ole Santa Claus had come to town.

Yup, I can attest, it is REAL. 

The real deal. 

He truly is SANTA.

At first, I could not believe my eyes
yet there is a great big red chair
by the milk and cider and another fare

was the old cheery elf himself

why he even brought along one of his special Christmas wish mailboxes
not to mention candy canes and lots of cookies with colorful sprinkles on top.

He wasted not a minute as he began to greet children of all ages

receiving their Christmas wish lists
some written others told to him verbally.

He read each letter with care,

and listened intently asking for much detail
to be sure he could fulfill as much as possible
and as precisely as possible each child's wish. 

Why even the Grinch was merry, though a bit green from eating too many cookies I did think.

A wardrobe comparison did make me aware Santa looked just like I expected he would, dressed in his velvety red suit with bunny-like stockings at the top of his boots, and a hat just like mine only mine is green and his of course is red. 

As Santa kissed me lightly all the hair did stand on top of my head. 


When Santa told me he knew how good I had been (all year), I beamed with pleasure as the thoughts of sugar plums danced in my head (and some neat toys).

Santa, did you ride your reindeer or take a plane - oh yes please I would like a candy cane. 

"Aside from the typical toys like Nintendo, Nerf guns, etc. on their wish list... just heard from a six-year-old say he wanted a Fitbit, a five-year-old girl wants a 'cleaning set' (to help clean the house), and an adorable six-year-old boy could only come up with a wish for a girlfriend! What a fun time!" ~Santa 

Proud dads and moms thanked Santa for coming to (Jericho) town. 


How indeed do you fit down the chimney Santa?

Why you look just like one of my favorite helpers back at Santa Land. 

Thank You, Santa, and Santa's helpers.












Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. 
~Bernie
For caring and sharing equals community.