Science
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Can it possibly be true that the universe as we know it is becoming larger and larger? The more we learn, the more it seems to expand. The scientists who know about such things now brag that the Milky Way numbers between 200 and 300 billion stars, nearly all of which are probably circled by…
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When we built the summer house/cabin/hovel in 1977, we needed to dig a well, and someone, probably the plumber, hired a dowser. I didn’t approve – I would have hired a credentialed hydraulic engineer. For me, dowsers belongs in the same crazy box as astrologers, phrenologists, flat-earthers, Shakespeare-author conspiracists, along with the lunatics who report…
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As a youth, I spent many a happy hour in the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. One of the plantings that I remember vividly was what I conceived of as a "wall" of bottlebrush buckeyes. It's been many a year, but what stands in my memory is roughly 40 or 50 linear feet of 20-foot-tall decorative shrubs…
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In the course of my lifetime, the telephone has gone from relatively rare to ubiquitous, from wall to pocket, and from rotary dial to cell. From no intelligence whatsoever to smart and then to very smart. Revolutionary changes. When I was growing up in Flatbush, our family was prosperous enough to have a telephone (not…
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I would not want to be reincarnated as a turtle. Not at all. Should it happen that I were to be reincarnated, I would prefer to return as one of those great sea birds — the Wandering Albatross or the Great Frigatebird or the Northern Fulmar — that cruise for hundreds of miles over the…
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Turkeys, I was recently surprised to learn, come in two distinct species. The familiar one is the "wild turkey", Meleagris gallopavo, the big bird that in broods of twenty or so, wanders around my house and garden, eating seeds, insects, acorns and apples and occasionally leaving behind a fancy feather or two. They're new to…
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A few weeks ago, I found myself absentmindedly working in the perennial garden. I had wandered nearby and noted some weeds that needed emergency extirpation. I had therefore arrived without my usual trine of implements — the dandelion puller, the hand shovel, and the Felco #2. Too lazy to fetch them, I began to tend…
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I read a story in an "art of gardening" book many years ago that I will repeat here. A famous Japanese gardener, a "national treasure," was asked, "What's the secret of making a garden as beautiful as yours?" He didn't answer in words but lifted his arms and made a shearing or lopping motion. Many…
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When we arrived here 54 years ago, the land was heavily forested but with a limited pallet of northern conifers and deciduous trees. In the first category were pines both red and white, three kinds of spruce, balsam fir, larch and hemlock. Among the hardwoods were sugar maples and red maples, ash, beech, red oak,…