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BoomerBrowsing/RegretCrawling
I call it BoomerBrowsing, something old codgers do at two in the morning when they can’t sleep. I wonder what happened to John Smith who always wanted to fight when I was in the third grade? Back then I tried to stay away from him; but, strangely enough, now I wonder if he is in…
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Plant Blindness
From my favorite newspaper The Wall Street Journal The country has a growing case of ‘plant blindness’—a term used by botanists to describe the inability to identify basic plants. Even biologists struggle.” Douglas Belkin Aug. 14, 2018 11:17 a.m. ET Organizations such as the National Park Service and Bureau of Land Management can’t find enough…
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Prickly Pear( Opuntia) With Portulaca
Several years ago I bought a pad of Prickly Pear (Opuntia sp.) at the fresh produce “Mexican Section” of an area grocery store and rooted it in a 1/2 pot. It has been happy as a meadowlark even though it grows on our west wall where it roasts in the afternoon sun. I’ve taken…
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A movie For Some Cold Winter Evening
“Glorious salvia which keep going until the first frost takes them.” We had wonderful rains this past week. I hardly stirred outside the whole day. A trip out to the mailbox in my Wellies was just about my only contact with my garden and the great outdoors. Late in the day my wife and I…
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Harper Lee’s ‘other’ novel, by Leabeth Abt
July 14th saw the release of Harper Lee’s ‘other’ novel, and Go Set a Watchman has caused a flurry of activity in the literary world, especially among English Teachers, that iconic group who love to intersperse their daily conversations with quotes anywhere from Shakespeare to Stephen King (depending on their personal proclivities). I must…
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Visit the Local Nursery When Traveling
I was off in San Antonio this last week to visit the grandchildren. While there I made a visit to a nearby nursery. Getting out of town to see new things is always refreshing., even if it is just a trip to central Texas. My younger brother always used to say that while…
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Brad Underwood on SFA “…It is a special place”
Hasn’t the Lumberjacks Basketball team had a good year? The whole of East Texas is proud of them. I admit it I’m a fan – SFA has a strong basketball tradition. In the old days when I went to collage, basketball was a big deal here. I know what you are thinking. “Why are you…
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Confluence of My Two Passions
“Jeff says you may want to have a dictionary handy for today. To his amazement, Jeff discovered that his iphone’s dictionary app was keeping a history of the words he looked up during the course of his reading in 2013, so he has tried to incorporate as many of those new words as possible in this week’s column. Have fun!”The Daily Sentinel…
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The flowering dogwood has no peer when it comes to beauty and elegance
The bloom of dogwood trees and the Christian Easter season is a serendipitous occurrence. The tree is renowned for its Christian symbolism. Let me recount just a few: The Cross is represented by the four “petals” (bracts) of many dogwood flowers which form a cross. The nails of Jesus’ suffering are figured in the “petals” which often…