If you’re like most people, you missed the release in late January of the USDA’s new plant hardiness zone map. You probably didn’t even know an update was in the works. This new version replaces the 1990 release, and that one replaced the 1965 and 1960 releases. The plant hardiness zone map is probably most […]

Long before the ancestors of modern flowering plants diverged from their ancestors, ancient plants developed means that allowed them to tell time by the Sun, to sense the lengths of day and night. This told them when to grow and when to flower and when to rest. At that time, the climate was much warmer, […]

The value of a college or university education is a frequent topic in today’s news. “Is higher education worth the cost?” “Is higher education worth any cost?” Much jargon is used in these discussions. Words like “formation” and “socialization”. (Is “deformation” a result of a lack of “formal” education? Are uneducated people “anti-social”?) Often I […]

I have a good Argentinean friend who was a wife of a top executive of a major, multinational industrial company. She also has great taste. Once, many years ago, she and her husband spent several days as a guest of a wealthy client of her husband’s company at his home in Martinique, a former French […]

The great thing about reaching middle age in our current society is that one does so, more or less, healthy. Until very recently in the history of civilizations, middle age did not exist for most people. Of course, health includes mental health – the most important of all. In my case I am lucky to […]

Last summer I became sandwiched between two political issues that appear sympathetic, but on close scrutiny show a profound and dissonant contradiction deep in the fertile soil of community gardening. Recently, First Lady Michelle Obama boldly proclaimed that the urban poor were at serious risk of deprivation of fresh produce. The so called “food deserts” […]

Much of the country is now experiencing winter weather. Recently, snow closed the better part of Interstate 40 in New Mexico, and Hayward, WI, was 2° F a night or two ago. But here on California’s central coast, many plants are still growing and flowering (a little slowly perhaps, given the short days). But some […]

The winter blues have never been a problem in my life, as they have for many friends who speak often about their generalized or indistinct feelings of depression at this time of year. They swear it’s not family-related and I believe them. I went to a college-preparatory boarding school for four years, located in northern […]

Why are most people right-handed and so few left-handed? The short answer is that nobody knows. But left-handers are present in all cultures, and there are always significantly fewer of them than right-handers. In western cultures, 10 to 13% of the population is left-handed; in some archaic people (the Eipo in West Papua, New Guinea, […]

I’ll never forget learning about sunflowers. During a few days in 1987 spent with the genius raconteur, plant breeder and seed impresario, Cees Sahin, I traveled through space and time (especially the latter) on the Starship Helianthus. Cees told me the little-known fact that the epicenter of sunflower cultivation was not the US Midwest—no, no!—but […]