"Is it real? Can I touch it?" my kindergarten students eagerly asked, their eyes wide with curiosity. I had just returned from Maui, clutching a fragrant lei that I had  …

Gardening is about patience. You learn to live by the seasons, marking time by sunrises and sunsets until the next hard rain. But sometimes, you strike gold. You find that  …

You might not think of garden-tending as one of the first waking thoughts for a prisoner. But Adam isn't your average prisoner. From 6:30 a.m., when the doors crack open  …

I heard them before I saw her—my mother’s determined size-five footsteps slapping across the kitchen linoleum. I already knew she’d be wearing her red-and-white kerchief, tied with military precision. She  …

“How will you grow a garden and take care of two little children?” my mother asked, just days before I gave birth to my second child. It was a fair  …

My birdbath is like the hot new spa in town. Every day, it's packed with birds splashing, chirping, and fluffing their feathers in what can only be described as "avian  …

They say people and their dogs tend to resemble each other, sharing not just looks but quirky traits and habits, too. A stroll through the dog park often makes you  …

Nearly every plant in the garden reveals evidence of bees. Honeybees, long-horned bees, and cranky wasps walk across the faces of sunflowers. Semicircle-shaped holes in leaves indicate that a leafcutter  …

One fine morning, I was on a mission, banana peel in hand, ready to toss it into the compost box. Simple enough, right? But as fate would have it, a  …

Early every Spring, Dad would drive my Uncle Clarence to the Red Mile racetrack to collect a trunkload of manure. Clarence didn’t live out in the country. He was smack  …