Paul Hetzler is a Horticulture and Natural Resources Educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension, in Canton, NY. He is the author of "Shady Characters," and the website “Where the Wild Words Are."
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Back when I was a baby arborist, I worked for an old-timer who told me that “The best time to prune trees is when the tools are sharp.”
Eating ice cream on a regular basis helps combat Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia, according to recent studies. At least that’s how I interpret the results.
All about new research on fruit flies - with surprising results - on flies dropping like flies when they see dropped flies . . . (Editor says: There may be help in my summer kitchen!)
The eastern white pine (Pinus strobus) isn’t really a crop-bearing tree, but it has borne priceless “fruit” for American democracy.
. . . Perhaps the most controversial product on Cell Signals’ patent is synthetic Milk of Human Kindness.
While telomeres all shrink over time, things like air pollution, chronic stress, obesity, and using alcohol and tobacco are known to hasten the process . . . surprisingly, coffee is good for telomere health as well.
If not for a fungus, Santa’s flying sleigh would be grounded. If that were the case, the only toys he could distribute would be to the elves who made them in the first place . . .
The idea that one could plant a garden of tree-pod birds and vine-lambs, maybe even a cabbage-patch kid, seemed rational to men who fancied themselves the smartest people in the world.
. . . Although elms are still present in our forests, Dutch elm disease, which has the appropriate acronym “DED,” now kills them before they can reach maturity.
It’s old news that fungi transfer information chemically under the ground. This new discovery suggests that as fungi decompose wood, they might also be composing sonnets, love-poems, or grocery lists . . .
Research on the health benefits of being in a forest environment is so compelling that urban daycares in Finland “built” forests for kids to use.
First your car catches fire, and then your house. Worse yet, your date kills you and devours your flesh without so much as an apology. Yeah, spiders are creepy , , ,
Why do we hate lions? For reasons beyond any logic that I can see, most Westerners have been brainwashed by the lawn-care industry to believe that dandelions are posies non grata in our landscapes.
The word is Vaccine: Yikes! Let’s get right down to it: a vaccine against poison ivy will soon be available, but only if you really, really, really want it. Promise.
Every so often, an obscure technical innovation really lights me up. In the fall of 2021, a team of German scientists published a report on their work injecting tadpole noggins with algae.
Academic testing is like water testing in that a passing grade in one realm doesn’t apply to others. Just as an algebra exam won’t affect your history grade (or it shouldn’t) . . .
I never would have imagined that glitter could be a pollutant of concern. At my age, I need glasses to find a postage stamp – it’s a long shot that I could help pick up glitter.
The marmorkreb, a.k.a. marbled crayfish, is a destructive new species that first appeared in aquariums in Germany. . . They are here now, and your help scouting for them is both invaluable and essential.
