“One of the sad facts of the modern world is that humans are a nightmare for non-human animals. This is manifested in many ways, but one of the most devastating is how voraciously we gobble up wildlife habitat to suit our own needs.” ~ Melissa Breyer It was dark and my headlights had just picked […]
Category Archives: consumers
“Some students who don’t excel academically, they’re more engaged, because it gives them a different way to learn,” ~ Tiffany Thompson In Junior high, the school counselor asked us to think about what kind of future work we expected for ourselves. We had taken some proficiency tests to help inform our thinking and my test […]
“In forty years of medical practice … I have found only two types of non-pharmaceutical ‘therapy’ to be vitally important for patients with chronic neurological diseases: music and gardens.” ~ Dr. Oliver Sacks in Jones We deal with stress and the hardships of everyday living in different ways. Some take a long walk in […]
My garden is something of a chaotic mess this year. Luckily, at this time of year, I am deluged with gardening advice — most of which I should have heard and applied in late spring. Of course, the key to a ‘perfect’ garden is always intent. What kind of garden do you want? Flowers? Vegetables? […]
Once, while studying groundwater contamination at an air base in Florida, I was taken to several old, abandoned landfills to determine which of them should be drilled for testing. One presented a real problem: In the twenty years since it had been closed, the landfill had been planted with pine trees — part of the […]
“These are the consequences of the old ways with which I feel easiest: walking as enabling sight and thought rather than encouraging retreat and escape; paths as offering not only means of traversing space, but also ways of feeling, being and knowing.” ~ Robert Macfarlane Our elementary school was about six blocks from my house. […]
“A weed is a plant in the wrong place.” ~ George Washington Carver When I bought our house just over 40 years ago, the neighbors told me that the backyard had at one time been a show garden. People came from all around to see it, with the variety of plants and flowers carefully tended […]
“I shivered in those solitudes when I heard the voice of the salt in the desert.” ― Pablo Neruda It was Earth Day and the environmental department that I worked for had planned a party celebrating the environmental movement. Unfortunately, no one had told the building landlord about it, and at 9 am a crew […]
“A big part of the problem is most people don’t know much about trees, and think, well, trees are good and no trees are bad,” he says. “But trees are just like people, they have a multitude of differences. Some trees are human-friendly, and some are just the opposite.” ~ Tom Ogren quoted by Sabrina […]
“In every town and city today, cutting across parks and waste ground, you’ll see unofficial paths created by walkers who have abandoned the pavements and roads to take short cuts and make asides. Town planners call these improvised routes ‘desire lines’, or ‘desire paths’.” ~ Robert Macfarlane In the mountain parks I know, one rule […]
