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Courtship and Cookies: A Dubious Guide
There are cookies, and then then there are cookies. These were cookies. Handsome, dark, subtly sweet, not overpowering, but able to make you want another, and then maybe another after that. Bad for...
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Flapjacks and Sumacs
Sumac Jelly We had pancakes for breakfast this morning, watching out our dining room window as a small hawk—kestrel, I think—tried to catch its own breakfast in our backyard. And on our pancakes was...
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No Free Lunch: Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca)
Have you got milkweeds around? If not, why not? Have you ever noticed how many insects they attract? Finally, have you ever noticed some of these insects dangling lifelessly from the milkweed’s...
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The Return of the Stinker
Hard to believe but stuff’s coming up! Not just the ubiquitous daffodils that pop up just in time to tease us about a yet-distant spring, but other stuff. Like Wild Leeks. Yeah, smelly old Allium...
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Pawpaws, Mastodons and Zebras
Pawpaw leaves turn yellow in fall Snowed in today and dreaming of warmer times. A good time, it seems to me, to play more catch-up on the backlog of articles on the native plants we have in our yard....
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Backyard Food of the Gods
Still catching up on backyard native plants articles, and the latest is this unseasonal look at the American Persimmon (Diospyros virginiana), whose Latin name is often said to mean “Food of the Gods”....
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Butterflies and Beer: Get Ready for Spicebush Season
Spicebush is leafing out! Normally it would be blooming by now, like this: Spring blooms of Spicebush (Lindera benzoin) But it seems that the hard winter and long spring have slowed it down like...
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Spring Rerun: Kimchi from your backyard to you
Spring is sprung and we have cup plant and lamb’s quarters in our backyard, with goldenglow within an easy hike (soon to join our other natives around the house). In honor of this wealth of native...
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Backyard Gooseberries are Saucy Little Things
The gooseberries in our backyard try to get our attention with their tart little green offerings every year in the mid- to waning days of spring, but mostly they end up being overlooked as contributors...
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