Dear Graduate, The root meaning of the word graduation is to step forward. When you graduate, you’ve taken a step ahead, or up. It’s a big, meaningful step, and you’ve worked hard, so you rightfully celebrate and receive lots of congratulations, and hopefully take a vacation to recuperate. It’s funny …

  If the pandemic has brought one lesson home more than anything, it’s that teensy-tiny things can change the world. We’ve all had the experience of having a glochid stuck in your finger – those tiny bristles on some cacti – and how this can cause more discomfort and ruin …

I read once about a psychologist who went to study people in Siberia, to find out how Siberians think. One question went like this: “In the Far North, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zembla (the name of a town) is in the Far North, and there …

I’m in southern New Hampshire, visiting my brother at his new house – he’s just retired from the Army – and helping him put in a new vegetable garden. It’s a beautiful time to be in New Hampshire: temps are in the mid 70s to low 80s, and it rains …

Flowering plants don’t just look pretty – they can also do some serious garden work. Beautiful, aromatic blossoms attract beneficial insects – such as pollinators – to the garden. And in vegetable gardens, you can enlist flowering plants to help with pest control, either attracting predators that keep populations of …