Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES—Lawn is both the most common and the most horticulturally incorrect of landscape features. Not many landscapes lack lawn. After all, it is the most useful part. Yet, with few exceptions, it requires more water and maintenance than anything else, and in most situations, than everything else combined! Other groundcover plants are not nearly so greedy. Some need only...

UNITED STATES—Last week we highlighted Sin City as a great place to vacation. This week we take a look at a city, that is known for baseball, bright lights and being close to the water. Any guesses to what U.S. staple I’m referring to? Well its Chicago, yep the windy city is the perfect place for a quick getaway,...

UNITED STATES—Two substances had starring roles in the life of Spencer Tracy. They were coffee and booze. And there was a third substance, secret and largely unsuspected by the public that always hid in the shadows. Booze, first: Spencer Tracy’s dance with booze is as illustrative as it was destructive and notorious. In James Curtis’ 1001 page biography, published in...

UNITED STATES—Gardening is not so much fun when the weather gets as warm as it has been recently. It is more comfortable to stay inside with air conditioning, or at least where it is shadier. The plants out in the garden are on their own. Except only for those that are potted, they do not have the option of...

UNITED STATES—Summer is amongst us, and for many those vacations are in full-force.  There are many typical destinations that many flock to during the heat of the summer months, none more popular than Las Vegas. Yep, sin city is a place that is unlike any other. For starters, that entire myth that the destination is not a place for kids,...

  UNITED STATES—It was probably the extra chill this last winter that made some deciduous fruit trees bloom more profusely early in spring than they typically do. Unusually busy bees in some regions improved pollination and subsequent fruit set, although some was dislodged by late rain. The sudden warmth this last spring not only improved the flavor of fruit, but...

UNITED STATES—The storage locker complex was deserted much of the time; in fact eerily so. Most people came and went silently, and they didn’t lose a lot of smiles. It reminded me of sex motels in Mexico, where it’s possible to have a tryst and food and drinks delivered to your room; never deal with the presence of motel...

UNITED STATES—If you’re going to try a new fruit or vegetable it’s at least important to know how to correctly eat the fruit. I’ve always been a fan of figs, particularly Fig Newtons, but I’ve always wondered just exactly what does a real fig taste like. Lucky me while at the farmer’s market this weekend, I stumbled across some...

UNITED STATES—Does anyone really know what a 'perennial' plant is? It is obvious that it is not an 'annual' plant that lives only a single year. A 'biennial' plant produces vegetative (non-blooming) growth in the first year, and then blooms, develops seed, and dies in the second year. A plant only needs to live more than two years to...

UNITED STATES—A revised list of essential qualities needed to follow-through on the elimination of a storage locker would include: --doggedness --strategy --ruthlessness Doggedness needs to be underscored. In our more than half week doing battle against the “small” storage locker, my mother called me a “slave driver.” This was a first, and I don’t deny its accuracy. Before arriving in Watsonville, I...