John Makley, Columnist

The past week found me back in school learning about both bees and digital marketing at Ohio State’s annual Short Course for nursery and landscape professionals where classes are given on a variety of industry topics. What I learned was both mind-blowing and frightening. No, there is not a wave of African bees poised just […]

I was leafing through some newspapers at the library, and found this article in the Pismo Beach Times. It is very timely and I wanted to share it with everyone. FBIPM Launches Holiday Campaign Water is pretty much the lifeblood of all plants. Yet at a recent press conference held by the Federal Bureau of […]

After a very generous Thanksgiving Day meal, late afternoon found me in a horizontal position. As the lids of my eyes began to pull ever so close to each other, my mind began to cogitate on a multitude of facts, questions and suppositions, which I have chosen to share with you, dear reader. Cogitation #1 […]

Perhaps it’s not necessary to state the obvious, but it’s gotten cold way too soon. I did get a warm-up Thursday night though when I attended a talk given by urban gardener and herbalist Joan Tasker at NECIC’s offices in downtown Mansfield. For the past eighteen years she has been growing a variety of herbs […]

There was snow on the ground early this morning when I took the dogs out. Just a light dusting but enough to say goodbye to the garden. “Wait ‘till next year” is the woeful shout we gardeners say this time of year, an ever hopeful phrase; but today my hope is dampened by knowing that […]

The surprise was not so much the difficulty – planting large trees can often be difficult – it was the level of difficulty. I had arrived with a tree to find the tree that my tree was replacing already gone. All it took, they told me, was a yank from the mini-excavator, and it was […]

Mitzi hates this time of year. She is an Australian cattle dog mix, who, without cattle to chase all day, fixates a bit on dinner time, which is about five, but her contemplation of it begins at three. When the time falls back, she really has a hard time. Despite repeated PowerPoint presentations, Daylight Savings […]

The season has begun, the cold and flu season that is. I can attest to that, having spent three days last week sneezing, freezing, and filling a trash can with enough Kleenex to cover Ohio, Pennsylvania, and most of Michigan. At some point after my attempt at breaking the world record for consecutive sneezes, I […]