It’s nearly over. The weather is changing and we’re getting our first frosts this week. The leaves are changing and the squirrels are busy all day. It’s time to look over the vegetable garden and see what needs to be picked and what may survive a few more weeks. Our annual vacation always seems to […]
“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet” Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare We called them ‘doodle bugs,’ but a girl I knew called them ‘rolly-pollys.’ When in college, I learned they were actually ‘wood lice’ or the singular, ‘woodlouse.’ Wikipedia lists about fifty other names for these guys, not including […]
“By composting, you reduce your carbon and financial footprint; your waste doesn’t have to be transported, nor do you have to buy nutrients in. By embracing rot, you will start to see failure in a new light …” ~ Alys Fowler When I first started my vegetable garden, nearly forty years ago, I made […]
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, How does your garden grow? ~ English Nursery Rhyme Well, the hot weather here has been both good and bad for our vegetable garden. The heat, and maybe my ineffective watering, has hindered the snow peas, Big Boy tomatoes and the spinach, but it does seem to have helped the […]
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 […]
