The hot weather — 90+ degree highs for several weeks in Denver, in mid-September! — coupled with the continuing isolation of the pandemic has me thinking about the apocalypse. Wildfires ravage the west, leaving destruction, homelessness, haze and foul air across the country and flooding locally. Drought has decimated the Colorado River and dropped many […]
“To listen to trees, nature’s great connectors, is therefore to learn how to inhabit the relationships that give life its source, substance, and beauty.” Maria Popova in The Songs of Trees It’s a special, but not rare thing. I can sit on the patio and hear the whisper of the breeze through the trees […]
“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.” ~ Isaac Asimov “The human race is challenged more than ever before to demonstrate our mastery, not over nature but of ourselves.” ~ Rachel Carson It’s nearly fall, so the weather is turning but still be […]
Superweeds “I’ve never been trained as an evolutionary biologist — you know, formally — but basically, what I feel like I try to do in my career is try to stop evolution,” Pat Tranel, a crop scientist says. “And it’s a pretty powerful force. It’s pretty hard to stop.” ~ H. Claire Brown We’ve […]
“He was as happy as a 12-year-old, trying to see what Mother Nature does there and then work it into a design … Science has kind of divorced itself from spirituality and emotion, but Darrel cultivates that experiential side of what landscapes evoke in us.” ~ Ulrich Lorimer about landscape architect Darrel Morrison Nature […]
Carbon dioxide, that fizzy stuff in our ‘carbonated’ beverages, is our climate’s enemy. Not the beverages, but the amount of CO2 that we have been emitting since the start of the industrial age. While many people try to ignore the science of human-induced climate change, others are trying to figure out what to do about […]
“The plantings that are around those landscapes or those buildings are chosen for the birds that follow migratory paths, to support the bugs those birds eat,” architect Justin Crane says … This could be described as an example of “biophilic design”, in which buildings and even interiors strike a better balance between people and nature … […]
“Urban areas … have long been deemed to be devoid of biodiversity, especially by Americans, who glorify wilderness and believe that nature can flourish only where cities do not exist… This is called ‘the biological deserts fallacy’” ~ Janet Marinelli There are coyotes in Los Angeles and photos of rats stealing old pizza in Manhattan, […]
I think I’m getting older. Not the ‘growing up and getting wiser’ aging that we hear about, but the actual getting old. Somehow my blond hair turned white without me noticing. With my 72nd birthday this week, I’m creakier in the mornings, and if I sit very long, that creakiness doesn’t really go away during […]
“In recent years, the mysterious disappearance of bees has puzzled experts from across the world. In the United States alone, the honeybee population has dropped by 50 percent from midcentury levels, and 700 species of bees are now at risk of extinction. Scientists can’t really pin down the cause of the ‘bee apocalypse,’ but point to […]
