BURLINGTON – Several state organizations are hoping for windfalls of money as the season changes. In the event that climate change prevents Vermont from drawing in Flatlanders to see changing leaves, two new entrepreneurial ventures aim to give visitors the colors they seek, weather be damned. Queen City street muralist (read graffiti artist) Ivy Budd, whose venture is called Leaf It To Me, announced that she was inspired by the flags with pot on them she saw sold during the Burlington Pride Parade.
“I really saw them, they looked like this; it was like WTF? My flags are going to have orange, red, and yellow leaves on them,” she said, “not obvious weed plants. I’ll even weave limited addition pennants out of fallen leaves. When asked who would pay for hand-sewn tree leavings, she smiled. “My pennants are locally and organically sourced, just like the homegrown bastion of journalistic integrity called The Winooski, so business will be booming.”
Amber Falls, of the nascent tour outfit in S’nalbans called New Leaf, proclaimed her company had other solutions. A new product called Faux-liage, will sell stickers that buyers can put on deciduous green leaves that refuse to change color. “It’s Yankee ingenuity,” Falls enthused. When some members of New Leaf’s focus group complained that peeling off the stickers ruined their manicures, Falls provided the complainers with sunglasses in different shades of red, orange, and yellow. Happy panel member Leif Erickson exclaimed, “Now everything looks real pretty, like autumn leaves.”
In Enosburg Falls, headquarters of the Baby Boomers group called Runnin’ Retirees (RR), some of the state’s older residents are using the seasonal change to try to get the word out about how falls can increase as people age. Their goal is to increase awareness without being too negative. Organization president Tyree Jones recalled, “Our ‘I’VE FALLEN FOR YOU’ campaign last February was a complete disaster. Nobody came to our Valentines month events and the number of runners with broken hips increased 500 percent.”
RR’s veep, Tyree’s identical twin named Re-Tyree, suggested the slogan, “FALL IN LOVE, NOT ON YOUR FLOOR.”
We here at The Winooski can’t wait to see what befalls our state as the seasons change.
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