“Did you know that most adults across the world have a psychoactive stimulant daily?” my son asked me. He was working on the opening line of a speech for a class. My then-teenage son's question certainly caught my attention. The stimulant was in a cup surrounded by my hands. I was ...

Our two dogs zipped around the yard, noses to the ground, celebrating the warmer temperatures and nearly snow-free backyard. A pair of cardinals sang loudly from the trees as if they were celebrating, too. My dachshunds’ bellies are fairly close to the ground — a little too close to the ...

When I moved to North Dakota, I talked to people about both hardwood trees and softwood trees. They looked very confused. What’s a hardwood? Terminology is important. For good communication, a word should mean the same thing to each person. If it doesn’t, then we’re not actually ...

I’ve been banned from pruning alone. Now this may seem odd, a horticulture agent not being allowed to prune alone. But there are good reasons, and at the time, I was not a horticulture agent. The first time I pruned a tree, I climbed up with my saw and bypass pruners, and I balanced between ...

“What’s the difference between these packets?” my husband asked me after he picked up his cup of coffee. “These are different non-nutritive sweeteners,” I replied as I read the ingredient statement. “Some are sweeter than others.” “Could you pick out a packet for me?” he ...

“I need to check something in the kitchen,” a colleague said. She was working from home. “I hear the smoke alarm,” she added quickly before turning off her Zoom camera and microphone. She sounded remarkably calm. I would have bolted from the room. And I probably would have forgotten ...