Outside Story - Archive
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Blistering Beauty
May 13, 2007
The photos are disgusting: arms covered in purple welts and oozing blisters. The stories are also horrifying: there is the New Hampshire woman who needed intravenous antibiotics and cortisone shots but still had purple scars and sensitivity to sunlight for months.
Giant hogweed, the culprit, is a nasty plant. If its watery sap gets on your bare …
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The Inside Story
May 06, 2007
The hill we live on supports two dairy farms, some beef cattle, and a few horses. A bucolic peacefulness descends as the animals graze upon the green slopes.
Though the scene seems tranquil, it isn’t - the process of digesting plant material isn’t easy. A plant cell is protected inside a tough cellulose box, and the only way …
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The Once and Future King?
April 29, 2007
Overhead, two dozen open burrs still hung from the chestnut’s limbs. The burrs, like the tree’s curled and deeply toothed leaves, had spent the winter on the tree. The nuts they once held had tumbled to the ground the previous fall. By now, the sweet chestnut flesh was probably walking around the woods of Cornish, New Hampshire, in the guise …
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Sweet and Sour Gardening
April 22, 2007
Now is the time of year for cleaning out the woodstove and spreading the ashes on the garden, a chore that both prepares the stove for summer vacation and sweetens the soil for the coming growing season. Those without access to wood ash usually make the trek to the hardware store for a bag of lime, which also sweetens the …
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Eagle versus Owl
April 15, 2007
In a showdown between a bald eagle and a great horned owl, who would win?
A bald eagle has a wingspan that can be nearly seven feet. It can weigh up to 14 pounds. It has piercing yellow eyes and a large, hooked bill. It is a symbol of pride and power. In comparison, a great horned owl …
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Way to Go!
April 08, 2007
With the welcome arrival of spring, each day brings new birds, many of them from far away. Their appearance - sometimes all the members of a species arrive within a few days - is the result of many complex factors.
Underlying everything is inheritance. A bird must prepare well in advance for a long journey: something has to …
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Love (Song) is in the Air
April 01, 2007
For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone; the
flowers appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is
come, and the voice of the turtle-dove is heard in our land.
--Solomon 2:12
King Solomon, legend has it, possessed a magical ring that allowed him …
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In the Shadow of Ice
March 25, 2007
In 1848, the bones of a woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius) were uncovered in Mount Holly, Vermont, during excavation for the first railroad tracks across the Green Mountains. While these bones offer dramatic evidence of the ice ages that once scoured New England, they are by no means the only evidence. The testimony of ice is everywhere.
Twenty thousand …
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Does Cutting Trees Cool the Climate?
March 18, 2007
With deep snow lingering, now is a good time to perform the following experiment. Look out across a hillside that is a mix of forest and field. Now squint a bit. Which is brighter, the forest or the field?
The snow-covered field, of course, is much brighter than the forest, even on a cloudy day. The darker forest, …
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Cold Comfort for Plants
March 11, 2007
When snow finally arrived this winter, and high winds followed, I knew the trees would be on the move. Not just dancing in the breeze, but spreading into new territory. Many of our native species drop small, lightweight seeds that are blown great distances over the surface of the snow.
Seeds of birches - white, yellow, and gray …
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