Home & Garden Tips

Western Massachusetts Home Improvement & Decorating, Gardening Tips & Ideas and More

• Nesting falcons give quick nod to romance
Birds of the air

• Black-headed gull sighted at Joppa Flats
Birds of the air

• Try your skills with hydroponic plants
Pushing my cart down the produce aisle in the grocery store, I come upon tomatoes, and on each of their pale skins is a small paper label asserting "hydroponically grown."

• The meaning of gardening
With the lull in garden activity that inevitably comes in February, what better time to ponder etymology? (Etymology, not entomology, the study of insects; aphids, mealybugs and whiteflies will be crawling around soon enough.) What exactly do we mean when we talk about a "garden" or "gardening?"

• Dumbcane a plant that's aptly named
Mention poisonous houseplants and most people immediately think of poinsettias. Actually, poinsettia's bad reputation is unfounded. The plant really is not poisonous. Only a masochist would be able to ingest enough of this foul-tasting plant to cause the occasional cases of vomiting that have been reported. This is not to pooh-pooh the toxicity of all houseplants. Many are poisonous.