The Outside Story

We’ve all fallen for it at some point, those of us who spend time in the woods: the way it looks now is the way it always has looked. And the way it always will look. And why not? When…

Who loves a ladybug? Until recently, everyone did. These tiny beetles gobble aphids and other soft-bodied insects that plague crops and ornamental plants. It is said that their name refers to…

Forest scientists who study global warming in the northeast say that a warmer climate could lead to later and lackluster leaf peeping. Three different things could cause this to happen, acting…

Go out in your yard some evening this fall, cock your head towards the sky, and listen. Thrushes, warblers, sparrows, and blackbirds will be swiftly moving across the night sky toward their…

“If you want to be recalled for something that you do, you will be well advised to do it under an Elm – a great Elm, for such a tree outlives the generations of men; the burning issues…

It’s a magnificent bird – one of the largest woodpeckers in North America. Its plumage is striking, with stripes of black and white feathers and a bright red crest. It can be shy.…

We humans have a knack for believing that everything was better, more vivid, more extreme, or at least more memorable when we were younger. The snow was deeper. The foliage was more beautiful.…

Take a look at any Connecticut River tributary in August, and you’ll be hard-pressed to remember back to April when melting snow and spring rains filled it to its banks. At Spring…

I’ll admit it: I was one of those kids who hid behind the couch when the tornado lashed the Kansas prairie in the early scenes of The Wizard of Oz. My parents could only coax me back out…

Avid summer readers are immersed in thrillers, pot-boilers, and fantasies whose plots swirl around sleuthing and solving mysterious codes. But look beyond the printed page, and you will…

Some people call any wet, mucky place a bog, or maybe a swamp. They hardly ever think to call it a fen. It may well be a fen, of course, unless it’s a marsh. Or possibly a seep. How to sort…

“Lime, lime, and nothing more makes fathers rich and sons poor.” This adage hearkens back to times when soil fertility was poorly understood; farmers who worked acidic soils discerned that…

Anyone who has spent time hiking or walking in the woods has probably come across a trail that has been deeply eroded to the point of becoming a streambed full of large, unstable rocks. It’s…

This is the caterpillar summer of our discontent. They seem to be everywhere, eating the leaves off ornamental apple and cherry trees, defoliating black cherry trees in fencelines, and even…

There is a crop that most of us spend many hours on in the summer. We don’t eat it, sell it, or put it in vases, but most of us couldn’t image living without it. It is grass!…

Crows are a lot like us. Not only do they like to live in the same places we do but also they live as we do. “There is probably no organism on Earth that has a more similar social system…

Do ancient fish swim through your dreams? I cupped a frog in my hand and looked closely at a colorless little fleck in the middle of its head between two protruding eyes – the brow spot.…

Anyone who has ever mismanaged a pile of firewood has probably seen spalted wood: wood in a relatively early stage of decomposition that is irregularly bleached and vividly marked with thin,…

Despite the late spring this year, the wine-colored spikes of peony flowers have now pushed their way back into the aboveground world. These spikes will soon be covered with swelling green…

Victoria Weber of Bethel, Vermont, would like to add a season to our calendar. It would start after mud season and end before summer; in other words, from April to mid-June. She calls it…