my daily abode...
THIS has been a year of success and failure for the worldwide urban agriculture movement that is desperately trying to atone for past abuses against the environment and to respond to growing concerns about the safety and sustainability of modern food production. Urban agriculture is not always well received. Sandra Thomas of the Vancouver Courier [...]
A LONG-HELD secret of plants – what they get up to at night – has been revealed. Scientists had assumed they did very little because, in the darkness, they could not use the sun’s energy to carry out photosynthesis. But recently it has been found that plants transport and lose a surprising amount of water [...]
An unnerving plant, unusual for its partiality towards meat, has been declared a new species previously unknown to science. The ‘Queen of Hearts’, which also munches on mice and frogs, seems to be straight out of botanical science fiction. The plant, which was first found in Borneo in the late 1980s, is one of the [...]
The tradition of the indoor winter tree emerged in Northern Europe, where towns from Latvia to Germany show evidence of the practice starting in the 15th century. But the hallowed place of midwinter evergreens reaches even further, with Romans, Norsemen and Egyptians all bringing green boughs indoors as a way of fending off the winter-solstice [...]
Jackson is the male southern elephant seal tracked by the Wildlife Conservation Society that traveled an astonishing 18,000 miles Credit: Wildlife Conservation Society The Wildlife Conservation Society tracked a southern elephant seal for an astonishing 18,000 miles – the equivalent of New York to Sydney and back again. WCS tracked the male seal from December, [...]
One of the toughest tasks in gardening is dealing with the dark side: coaxing plants to grow where the sun won’t shine. But the challenge is worth it. Shade gardens can introduce many subtle colors and varying leaf textures to otherwise barren parts of the landscape. First, though, define darkness. Just how shady is it [...]
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