Lifestyle

The Beauty in Nature: 2 Yellowjacket Wasps

Details: Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber

By late summer, most of us have been pestered by yellowjackets at picnics, and some of us noticed the gray, football-sized paper nests of bald-faced hornets attached to twigs in trees.

The Beauty in Nature: Blooming Southern Trees

Details: Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber

One sultry, moonlit July evening a few years ago, I enjoyed seeing, and smelling, the large, white blossoms on a 30-foot-tall southern magnolia tree on a southeastern Pennsylvania lawn.

The Beauty in Nature: Tree-Nesting Shorebirds

Details: Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber

Solitary sandpipers and Bonaparte’s gulls are unusual shorebirds in their respective families.

The Beauty in Nature: Converging Birds and Horseshoe Crabs

Details: Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber

In May of some years, I’ve traveled to Delaware Bay beaches in New Jersey and Delaware to experience the convergence of many thousands of spawning horseshoe crabs, nesting laughing gulls, and migrating shorebirds, including red knots, ruddy turnstones, dunlin, and semi-palmated sandpipers.

Melinda’s Garden: Spring into the Growing Season

Details: Written by Melinda Myers Melinda Myers

Spring-flowering bulbs and perennials are filling our landscapes with color.

The Beauty in Nature: Peeping Peepers

Details: Written by Clyde McMillan-Gamber Clyde McMillan-Gamber

I visit the shallows of certain ponds and wetlands in, and bordering, woods in southeastern Pennsylvania a couple evenings every April.

Melinda’s Garden: Managing Gnats on Houseplants

Details: Written by Melinda Myers Melinda Myers

They flit across your face, hover near your houseplants, or gather by the window. Fortunately, these fungus gnat insects are more annoying to us than harmful to our plants.