At-home COVID-19 tests for holiday gatherings?

November 12, 2021

Can at-home COVID-19 tests make holiday gatherings safer? ---------------------- Yes, combined with vaccination, home test kits for COVID-19 can add a layer of safety and reassurance by providing on-the-spot results during this second year of pandemic holidays. “We will be using rapid tests to doublecheck everybody before we gather together,” says Dr. Emily Volk, president of the College of American Pathologists, who is planning a holiday meal with six vaccinated family members. “We’ll be doing it as they come in the door.” Home kits are not as accurate as the PCR tests ...

Is it a weed or is it a flower? Impatiens can be either, depending on your point of view

November 4, 2021

At a recent dinner party, my host launched into a monologue about a plant he had discovered in his garden and was delighted with. It had, he said, green leaves (what a clue!) and large, yellow flowers. What he found most remarkable was that it appeared all by itself in his somewhat wild, ...

Zillow Offers to stop buying, selling homes, citing unpredictability

November 4, 2021

LOS ANGELES — Zillow Group said Tuesday that it will stop buying and selling homes, citing the “unpredictability” of forecasting housing prices. The Seattle-based real estate information company said winding down its Zillow Offers homebuying and selling unit will take several quarters and will result in about a 25% reduction in the company’s workforce, which is now at about 5,300. The announcement comes about two weeks after Zillow said it would pause buying homes through the end of 2021, citing a backlog in renovations and other operations due to labor and supply ...

Continuing to inspire garden design: Japanese style still integrates indoors, outdoors

October 28, 2021

Japanese-style gardens first caught the public imagination in the U.S. at an 1893 world exposition in Chicago, became a sought-after feature in Gilded Age estates, and were later adapted to open-plan modernist homes. Today they have evolved, and continue to inspire garden design at a time ...

Book review: ‘Orwell’s Roses’ a fresh take on science fiction author as an avid gardener

October 28, 2021

Review: “Orwell’s Roses,” by Rebecca Solnit (Viking) ------------------------ Weeks after Donald Trump was elected president, George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984” shot to the top of bestseller lists. Suddenly, it seemed, readers wanted to reacquaint themselves with a world in ...

It’s good to stay off the ladder

October 21, 2021

Two millennia ago, the Roman writer Columella described the vintoria falx, a six-part, specialized pruning tool for grapes. What a stir that tool must have caused among Roman grape growers when it was first introduced! A more recent innovation in pruning, in the last century or so, was the ...