Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES—Without specialized pruning while they are bare and dormant in winter, many deciduous fruit trees would be overburdened by their own fruit next summer. The production of excess fruit can waste resources. The weight can disfigure and break limbs. The trees certainly do not want to get so overworked; but they have been unnaturally bred to produce bigger,...

UNITED STATES—The New Year is right around the corner and you're probably going to want to look your best in 2017. So, I'm going to share with you three tips that may be useful in your weight loss journey. Tip #1: Workout First Thing In The Morning There are a lot of mixed feelings in the fitness community about doing...

UNITED STATES—There I was a few weeks ago in my hometown, up north, trying to get waited on in a doughnut shop. A man is in there in athletic clothes of the casual kind worn by those who are seldom athletic. He is passionate, he is overwrought; he is passionately overwrought, barely kept in check by a forced calmness...

UNITED STATES—Anyone who has had undergone surgery knows the advantages of unconsciousness. Any frat boy who woke up after a night of overly indulgent inebriation, with his face adorned with objectionable graffiti, knows the disadvantages. A lot can happen while one is unaware that it is happening. This is exactly why so many bare root plants become available while...

UNITED STATES—The property owner, Jim Wylie, was a gambler in a big way, but not in the literal sense. Jerry Segal, his colleague and fellow “slumlord” (they referred to themselves facetiously) thought Wylie the smartest real estate brain he’d ever known. Wylie could conceive mind-bogglingly complex deals, dazzling in their simple genius, and see angles where nobody else could....

UNITED STATES—Even without any of the five senses that we are outfitted with, plants are remarkably perceptive of the weather and the changing seasons. They know precisely what time of year it is because they know how long the sun is up. Their calendar is just as accurate as ours is. They also know that the weather has been...

UNITED STATES—Not much bothers old fashioned junipers. They tolerate heat and frost, and anything else the weather throws at them. They do not appeal to many troublesome insects. Once established, they do not mind if they do not get much water. So, aside from over-watering and bad pruning, they are pretty indestructible. Yet, once in a while, otherwise healthy...

UNITED STATES—It finally aired...or streamed, I guess is the appropriate term. The highly anticipated car show designed to usher us into a new era of gratuitous four-wheeled debauchery revealed itself to the world on November 18th (or November 17th if you were in a time zone anywhere west of London’s) and the reigning king of car shows, Top Gear...

UNITED STATES—My parents and sister showed up on my doorstep in Los Angeles to tell me Mick, my cousin had died.  I didn’t even know he was sick. No funeral, they told me; the preacher at the gravesite made mention of how young he was— the Savior’s age, 33. A lot of things have gone my way, but Mick’s going...

UNITED STATES—There are some things about plants that we might be better off not knowing about. For instance, their idea of sex is even weirder than that of humans! Generally, flowers of 'monoecious' plants have male parts and female parts that do what they must to produce seed, which is often contained in some sort of fruit structure. Some...