Q: Who has that super cool yard with a bunch of neat art projects in downtown Lebanon?

A: Her name is Honor Hingston-Cox, and her Milkweed Mug Exchange is almost as much about the waste stream as it is about spreading joy.

If you’ve walked down School Street near The Little Store lately, you’ve probably noticed the mug exchange, an open-faced wooden box in the shape of a mug with a faux streak of steam rising above. Painted pink, it sits atop a repurposed wooden fence pole and acts as a little free library for mugs. Take a mug, leave a mug. 

Cute, right? But keep looking, because this is not your average Lebanon yard.

You might first see the sea of milkweed and other pollinator-friendly plants, such as echinacea and black-eyed Susans, which rise hip-high and take up the entire lawn. Tune in during the warmest months, and you’ll hear a chorus of grasshoppers and other bugs enjoying the sun. Next to the mug exchange, you’ve probably clocked the little free books library and a welcoming bench for pedestrians. Soon enough you’ll see the poetry magnets below the books, two teeny parking spaces for toy cars made from off-cuts below the mugs, and whatever else Honor—or someone—has left for the public to enjoy. 

“I had someone leave a papier-mâché deer head here,” Honor told me recently, while treating me to tea and pastries in front of the exchange. “That’s crazy. I think that was the weirdest one.”

I’m starting a questions column for Daybreak for the next little bit, wherein Daybreak readers can send me their Upper Valley questions—big, small, bright, or heavy—and I’ll do my best to find them answers. But for the debut edition, I had to start with a question of my own. Because for years I’ve been curious about this beautiful yard on School Street and the person or people behind the scenes.

So I sent an Instagram message to @milkweedmugs, and Honor invited me over for tea.

“The idea that I'm having any impact on other people just does not cross my mind most of the time,” she said, the late-afternoon sun low in the sky. “I'm more thinking, ‘How's it working?’ ‘Are things moving?’ ‘Did I make good choices?’”

Did I make good choices?! Even as she’s charming the pants off passersby, the 44-year-old marketing executive is thinking a lot about trash and what we do with it. In my assessment, the mug exchange is an artistic contribution to the conversation around waste, and a small but real exercise in keeping usable items in use. 

Inevitably, some stuff is gonna end up at the dump (or, in the case of unwanted ceramic mugs from Honor’s yard, the recycling center). Honor, who works at the Montshire Museum of Science and has spent time as a thrift volunteer at LISTEN, estimated she contributes two-thirds of the mugs on offer at the exchange, finding them primarily at thrift stores for less than $1 each or in free piles at local landfills. 

So when she asks herself if she’s making good choices, she’s asking if she chose mugs desirable enough to be saved. They should be durable, appealing, and free from the boring company logos you so often see on unwanted mugs lining thrift store shelves. A good test, she said, is to ask if she would want the mug, which is usually a better barometer than asking if someone would want the mug. 

How did this all start? Honor’s yard—really, her family’s yard, including her husband and two tween kids—has served as an informal gathering place since they bought their School Street ranch in 2017. The sidewalk is a school bus stop, and at times they’ve left playthings like slides in the yard for kids to use. People also often pull over there to use their phones, since it’s an area with good cell service when traveling from Claremont. And of course there’s the milkweed and the rest of the pollinator garden, which Honor said took a surprising amount of planning to get launched.

The debut of Milkweed Mug Exchange last year is perhaps best traced to Honor’s trip to Portland, Oregon, the year prior. Her brother works near the artist Rachael Harms Mahlandt, who created the Worldwide Sidewalk Joy map, tracking the oddball cousins to little free book libraries. At the time, Honor said, she found that the Enfield Little Free Art Gallery was the Upper Valley’s only speck on that map.

Now, Honor’s project is one of 104 mug exchanges on the global list and one of several “sidewalk joy” projects in downtown Lebanon alone (see also: the Little Free Zine Library, the Little Free Craft Library, Phantom Curiosities, and unlisted attractions such as the Chewseum, a nearby stick library for dogs).

But the origins of Milkweed Mug Exchange could also date back to Honor’s youth and the influence of her farmer-mechanic father. Honor, who grew up in the U.K. and moved to Springfield, Vermont, during high school, described her dad as a “big dump enthusiast” who instilled in her some wisdom that I found so interesting I nearly spit out my tea: “Do not buy anything without a plan of how you’re gonna get rid of it.” That could be donating it, recycling it, or something else; the point is to consider the question before you think you need an item, not after.

“It really shifts how you acquire things,” Honor said.

Whether mugs, toy cars, or something else—and please, for Honor’s sake, don’t read this column and leave too much else!!!—Honor watches items come and go. Sometimes she’s able to see people from her window “having a moment” with the displays, but that’s generally as far as the feedback loop goes. 

“I’m like, ‘Hopefully that made someone’s day,’” she said. “But I don’t know! I hope so.”

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Do you have an Upper Valley question you’re itching to get answered? It can be silly or serious. Email me at [email protected]. Please include your name and the town you live in.

Some good prompts:

Here are some great questions Honor asked me to serve as examples:

And importantly: If you know those two cute dogs … I would really love to hear from you. Email me at [email protected].

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Maggie Cassidy is the former editor of the Valley News and managing editor of VTDigger. In addition to creative endeavors in film and other media, she is the marketing manager at KIS Clean Outs and KIS Thrift, and serves as the proprietor of Wilder’s largest salt and pepper shaker museum. She can be reached at [email protected].