While the mighty axe rightly receives credit for felling most of the timber of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was the peavey that took the work out of moving these logs, on both land and…

By the Numbers: 20 Years of Change When the Trees Took Over The Best of “What in the Woods is That?” Exotic Larch, The Nulhegan We Knew, The Story of Stumpage Prices, Predators with…

Ever since humans invented agriculture and started moving from continent to continent, they have taken plants with them. In most cases imported, non-native plants do not spread much beyond the bounds…

Beech nuts, gravel, emergent vegetation. Where was this strange amalgamation found?

Ask a teacher if touch is important in cognitive development and she’ll tell you yes, absolutely. There’s a whole discipline called kinesthetic learning devoted to teaching in a hands-on…

Days, sometimes weeks, before a luna moth hatches from its cocoon, it starts to move within its winter shell. Quiet bursts of rustling accompany the cocoon’s sporadic movements. Eventually, the…

I don't trust flowers. There are grounds for my suspicion; flowering plants are proven masters of deception. For instance, the sundew uses sparkling droplets of sticky "faux dew" to ensnare and…

Wood knows no boundaries. Not just wood as forest, which straddles arbitrary political boundaries throughout the globe, but wood as logs and lumber. Since humans first learned to turn trees into…

Most New Englanders would agree that one way to reduce our environmental impact is to reduce our use of fossil fuels. And most would also agree that switching to wood is a step in the right direction,…

For more than a dozen years Ken Schmidt has been studying how animals eavesdrop on one another. The Texas Tech University professor said that one of his study subjects, the veery, changes its singing…

As I have sailed past the half-century mark, I’ve begun to take note – usually with displeasure – of those activities that remind me that I’m getting older. Reading in dim…

Ellen Snyder stumbled across this in New Hampshire and thought we might appreciate it. We ate it up.

Trout season opened recently in most of the Northeast, and in the spirit of the season, I thought I’d share a fishing story in this week’s blog that I wrote in 2009. Good luck to all you…

Let’s face it: trees are better off in the woods. Although forest trees – like their more urban counterparts – face many threats to growth and survival, at least in the woods they…

Last year, May first was about as nice a spring day as you could ask for. Dawn broke cool, maybe a touch of frost in the cold spots, but the sky was high – just blue jay blue – and it was…

For all the time we spend watching birds during the breeding season, rarely do we get to see birds actually breeding. That’s because avian copulation usually lasts only seconds. Birds mate by…

There’s no arguing spring with the dandelions. When they bloom, I know that winter’s finally outta here. By May, my fields and yard are dusted with that mellow dandelion yellow. I…

Teddy Roosevelt was president when F.E. Hale purchased a factory in Herkimer, New York, and started making wooden bookcases. Hale retired in 1918, but the company that bears his name continues today.…

I walked into my bathroom late one night and was horrified to see something that looked like a tick with scorpion pinchers as large as the rest of its body. It was crawling up the wall. I managed not…

It’s not a waffle, but there is a connection.