Blossom Wellness Center founder Joanie Bégin-Morin. Photo by Erica Getto.
New Movement Space Blossoms in Montpelier
Blossom Wellness Center, an ayurveda and bodywork practice, is expanding into the former Embodied yoga studio at 7 Main Street, Montpelier. The studio will open with Blossom at the helm in late October, after having housed several yoga businesses over the years.
Joanie Bégin-Morin has already been running Blossom Wellness Center on the third floor of the same building for five years along with other Blossom staff. She said the mission of the new studio is “to offer a movement and community space for connection, healing, authenticity, and transformation. The team is a collaboration of teachers, facilitators, and practitioners that you know and love, as well as new faces excited to expand this community.”
Bégin-Morin said the studio will offer yoga classes, workshops, meditation and mindfulness practices, dance and expressive arts, holistic coaching, and ayurvedic wellness, support circles, retreats, and more. The added space “brings us to four treatment rooms, a large movement studio and the smaller studio/multifunction room upstairs (which also hosts MJH botanicals), Bégin-Morin said.
A press release from Blossom Wellness said visitors can expect “a space where … we see each other from the heart, a space where compassion and understanding come first; a community based in wellness, where we support each other by sharing tools and showing up authentically.”
For more information, see blossomwellness.center/.
—Bridge Staff
Cafe NOA — Breakfast and Lunch Cafe Soon Coming to Montpelier
Joe Buley, chef and owner of Joe’s Kitchen at Screamin’ Ridge Farm, known for his seasonal backyard barbecue and commercial soup kitchen, is getting close to opening a new eatery at 8 Putnam Street (off Barre Street) in Montpelier. Visible from Stone Cutters Way, the newly constructed modern space is situated in a red barn-like building adjacent to the bike path (across from Hunger Mountain Co-op).
Buley said his new venue will be a full-service breakfast and lunch cafe with proposed hours from 6 a.m. to 5 p.m. Offerings will be along the lines of local bacon, sausage, eggs, hash browns, and breakfast sandwiches, and coffee, tea, and espresso will be served. Other items on the menu will be the soups and chili Joe’s Kitchen is known for, fresh salads, sandwiches, and barbecued meats.
“We’re also going to offer our own unique version of house-made smoked pastrami,” Buley revealed. Even Buley’s renowned ‘Cans-n-Clams’ may make a reappearance at some point down the road.
One additional menu item worth noting is made-to-order fried donuts.
“I got my hands on this awesome old-school mini donut maker, so we thought wouldn’t it be great to offer beignets and classic cider donuts,” Buley said.
The new venue will be called Cafe NOA — named after Buley’s three children: Nikita, Olivia, and Annik. “Hey, I needed a name and I’m kind of sentimental, what can I say?” added Buley.
If all goes according to plan, look for Cafe NOA to be open sometime in October. We’re keeping our fingers crossed.
—Chris Therrien
A Quilter’s Garden Turns 15
A Quilter’s Garden owner Dee Lamberton in front of one of her quilts. Courtesy photo.
A Quilters Garden opened in September 2009 with a few hundred bolts of cloth at 342 River Street in Montpelier, where it still operates. Today, after celebrating its 15th anniversary, it has over 2,500 bolts with two floors of retail space and another floor devoted to classroom and sewing machine service.
A release sent from owner Dee Lamberton said A Quilters Garden is an authorized Bernina sewing machine dealer.
“I am so happy to have opened up a quilt shop in the heart of Vermont. I have lived in Vermont my entire life and love it here,” Lamberton said. “My mother taught me to quilt over 35 years ago, and to this day we continue to work on projects together and swap tips and techniques. I am blessed to share my passion for quilting with everyone who visits the shop.”
A Quilter’s Garden carries special fabrics only sold to quilt shops, Lamberton said, adding that several of the fabrics are 100% organic cottons or Oeko-tex certified cottons. The store also features current releases of quilting books, patterns, and kits with samples to help with visualizing them. They also sell a wide assortment of notions designed specifically for quilting, and they offer gift registries.
Lamberton said that she plans to offer quilting classes and programs in the style of the old “quilting bees.”
—Bridge Staff
First Stream Wise Award Given to Plainfield Resident
Scottie Harrison. Courtesy photo.
The Friends of the Winooski River organization has been looking for stream-side land that has a wide buffer of healthy plants, and they found such an area in Plainfield where Great Brook flows behind Scottie Harrison’s house. Harrison has left the native trees and shrubs along the brook undisturbed, and when Friends of the Winooski assessed this buffer area, it found that the area qualified for a Stream Wise award, the first in Vermont.
According to its website, the Stream Wise organization engages streamside property owners in the Lake Champlain basin to enhance and protect vegetated stream buffers, increasing flood resiliency and benefiting water quality and natural habitat. It provides resources to those landowners to help them protect and restore stream health.
Harrison said that even though her buffer is in good shape, she still learned a lot from the Stream Wise report on her property. “I’ve been concerned about the trees that fall into the water, and reading in the report that those trees actually provide good habitat in the stream made me think of them in a new way.”
Healthy streams are home to diverse species of fish and wildlife, provide vital drinking water, create endless recreation and relaxation opportunities, protect us against floods, and bestow beauty upon us up and down our mountains and valleys. There is increasing loss of trees and shrubs along streams and rivers, and this has a negative impact on water quality, ecosystem health, and flood safety.
—press release
