Life Style & Travel

UNITED STATES─Well week 1 of Lent has been a success for me America. As I’ve already discussed, I have given up soda for the next 40 days. It is not a difficult thing for me to do as I’ve done it countless times before in the past. However, that first week is always the toughest and I don’t know...

UNITED STATES—The weather agrees with the calendar this year. It is time to start replacing remaining cool season vegetable plants with fresh warm season vegetable plants. In fact, according to how the weather has been through February, the process could have begun quite some time ago. Frost, which is the limiting factor for warm season vegetables, is very unlikely...

UNITED STATES—Jeremy was content to watch the passing parade. He eyed a crow that lighted on a fence and stared at the crow. He watched its golden eyes dart around. Now an attractive middle-aged woman and an older man got out of their seat. She had pale yellow hair that gave her an aura of youth, and he was...

UNITED STATES—Foliage needs sunlight for photosynthesis. Foliage needs air for respiration. Roots need moisture to sustain foliage. Houseplants can technically get all of what they need from the confinement of their pots within the interiors of homes and other buildings. They only require sufficient moisture to be delivered to them, and sufficient sunlight from windows. The air is the...

UNITED STATES—Frost was something of a non-issue for some of us this winter. For those of us in milder climates, it rarely is. Those who limit selection of what grows in their gardens to species that are resilient to frost need not be concerned with it. Those of us who enjoy gardening a bit too much are more likely...

UNITED STATES—It seemed like a cool thing to do: to go to a reenactment of scenes from a schlock horror movie meister in a gallery on the West Side. Brick walls and minimalistic setting. The event was a belated wake was organized to celebrate the passing of bargain-basement Ed Wood, Samuel X. Argos, who died last month, a day...

UNITED STATES—The next day, after Tina and Lee have witnessed the dog love knot, he feels inexplicably good and so does Tina, Joe's sister. In their separate frames in the city, and they feel impervious to the petty struggles and stresses inflamed by the daily grind. This euphoria was a gift that came by proxy through the dogs. When others...

UNITED STATES—Seasonal pruning is just as the terminology implies, seasonal. It might seem as if it all happens in winter. Most of it begins after cooling autumn weather initiates dormancy. Most of it is completed before warming spring weather stimulates vascular activity and resumption of growth. That is why most seasonal pruning is referred to simply as winter pruning....

UNITED STATES—Very few arborists in America condone the extreme pruning techniques known as pollarding and coppicing. Both techniques essentially ruin trees, and deprive them of their natural form. Affected trees likely require such procedures to be repeated every few years or annually. Otherwise, they are likely to succumb to resulting structural deficiency. Restoration of such trees is rarely practical. Pollarding...

UNITED STATES—Like something of bad science fiction, they are back. The earliest of spring bulbs and bulb-like perennials that were so discourteously buried in shallow graves last autumn are making their presence known. Even before the weather gets noticeably warmer, their foliage emerges above the surface of the soil. Daffodil, narcissus, crocus and snowdrop are already blooming. Hyacinth, tulip...