It’s “red carpet season”—at least in the media. Every week, celebrities gather to watch and/or receive the Golden Globe, Screen Actors Guild, People’s Choice or any of the thousand other awards that lead up to the Academy Awards. Many of us gawk from the comfort of our couches as red carpets roll out and celebrities … Read more
Right now, you can hardly navigate through the garden centers, big box stores and grocery floral sections due to the avalanche of orchids. Most are moth orchids or Phalaenopsis, which are relatively easy to grow indoors and, thanks to tissue culture, incredibly cheap to produce. If they make your heart sing during the dark months, … Read more
A few years I bought a fall-blooming camellia that was supposedly cold hardy. I planted, tended and fussed over it because I wanted the beautiful rose-like flowers to light up my garden in the late fall. It obliged me by surviving exactly one year. Failure doesn’t usually faze me, but for some reason I did … Read more
Some things in this life never change. Take writing and book publishing for example. Author and artist Titian Peale—1799-1885—worked on his book, The Butterflies of North America, beginning with a prospectus in 1833. When he died, fifty two years later, the book was still unfinished and Peale had no commitment from a publisher. In 1916, … Read more
You can tell a lot about a culture by the word its citizens use to describe the insect we call “butterfly”. German butterflies have such a weighty-sounding name–“schmetterling”—that it’s a wonder they manage to take to the air. The French and Italians allow their butterflies to float along as “papillon” or “farfalla”. Spaniards delight in … Read more
