“Just think, in a few months, this street will be covered with a canopy of green leaves,” my husband commented as we drove home. I was looking at a precarious nest perched on a high, brown, leafless branch. “That’s a daring squirrel to build a nest over a busy street,” I added. On ...

One of my students posed the question, “Why does tradition suggest that we should plant our seed potatoes on Good Friday?” Yes, my student stumped me and motivated me to research the origins of this advice. The answer lies in the global history of food crops. Native to the mountains of ...

Last summer I had an amazing opportunity to attend the National Urban Extension Leadership conference in Nashville, Tennessee. During the conference, I listened to a group talk about how they hydroponically grew lettuce in a gallon jug. Immediately, I thought this was something I needed to ...

“I think we need to toss the oil that is stored in the cupboard,” I said to my intern. She agreed to do the “sniff test” on the variety of oils. She reported several of the bottles had a crayon-like aroma, a hallmark of rancidity or spoilage. She also checked the best-if-used-by ...

Each year the National Garden Bureau chooses plants of the year. I always look forward to which plants they pick and learning more about each plant. This year among the chosen is Asclepias or milkweed. The genus name is derived from Asclephius, the Greek god of healing. The common name of ...

“Twenty-seven,” the doctor said to the nearby nurse. “She tolerated the procedure fairly well,” he added. I was lying on the examination table with my eyes tightly closed. My life was flashing before me. From the time I got my “positive” cancer screening result, I was living ...