Seeing Brown: November Leaves
In November, the red and yellow leaves are gone, but there’s still a wealth of color. In nature, there are way more than fifty shades of brown.
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Red Oaks: On Fire
Red oak. Really lives up to its name in fall. Late in the season, the red oaks are on fire. The oaks are important trees for wildlife, of course. Everyone knows squirrels eat acorns, but acorns are high-protein food for an astonishing number of animal species: blue jays, wild turkeys, black bears, wood ducks, opossums, woodpeckers, red and gray foxes, rabbits, white-tailed deer, and many more. But a close look at oak leaves shows their other, more subtle, contribution–to the insects. All those thousands and thousands–millions!–of little bumps, nibbles, gnawings, holes....
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Prickly Pear: Handle With Care
Prickly pear cactus. A quiet, well-behaved plant, as house-plants go. These guys have been living meekly in their pots for more than twenty years—just getting taller and taller. They’re in an upstairs room, and I keep forgetting to water them, and every six months or so I go upstairs with a watering pot, fully expecting to find shriveled corpses. But prickly pear is a plant that’s hard to kill. This spring, I decided to take pity on the poor things and let them enjoy a pleasant summer soaking up the sun on the front porch. As I maneuvered one of the lanky plants down the stairs and out...
Read MoreOn the Banks of Plum Creek
I almost didn’t go to Plum Creek. I knew it was gone. I knew the creek as described in Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic book must have been swamped by the tide of progress. There’d be a trickle of polluted water, a Wal-mart on one side, a used car dealership on the other, and a small rusty historical marker saying Laura Ingalls Wilder once lived near here. But we drove through the rain-drenched Minnesota farmland for miles, immense green fields and lonely farms. Then turned down a dirt track by a tidy, white-porched, deserted house. Put $5 in a small metal box on a post...
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