This winter, fate has blown me to Southern California, where I'm renting a house surrounded by citrus trees. There are roses, too, and wild parrots, and palm trees that look as goofy and inauthentic up close as they do on postcards.

It's the fruit, though, that has me enthralled....

Want to shrink your eco-footprint the easy way? Here's an idea so simple, it's mostly about what you don't have to do.

Don't leave out bags of leaves by the curb. Stop crowding the landfill with your egg shells, artichoke leaves and corn husks. Erase the shame of all...

I hear the Obama girls are having a wonderful summer as they accompany their dad on business trips. They've been to Paris, Moscow, London, Rome, and several places in Ghana. It's fun, it's enriching, and it keeps them out of trouble. Michelle calls it Camp Obama.

As the former director...

For a highly evolved species, we humans can be pretty dumb. At least I can. Case in point: last Sunday my husband and I drove to a park by a scenic river, 60 miles from the city where we live.

As I should have expected, the scenery had changed...

Why isn't anybody putting up statues or stained-glass windows to honor modern heroes of the natural world?

Given the acrimonious state of the current turf wars, I guess I shouldn't be surprised. It's hard to expect celebratory monuments while terms like granola crunching crackpots and frankenfood still dominate the conversation....

When I was nine years old and wedding planning was an engrossing game unburdened by seating charts, budgets, or anything but the most hypothetical shadow of a groom, I decided that a sheaf of white daisies was the ideal bridal bouquet.

I was an avid reader of newspaper wedding...

There is a very funny video making the rounds, a celebration of a superhuman but all-too-plausible Mother of Year. After you watch the clip, you discover it is actually a fund-raiser for a women's organization that offers to insert your own mother's name at appropriate places if you make a...

Swine flu is not a food-borne illness, but many people are acting as though it might be. Worried cooks are getting serious about extra-crispy bacon. Ultra-hygienic countries like China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, the Philippines, and the United Arab Emirates have banned the import of pork from most of North America....

This is the year everybody plants a vegetable patch. The Secretary of Agriculture has an edible garden. The White House has an edible garden. Hummers are out, rototillers are in, and sales of seeds and garden supplies are soaring. But the same hard times that inspire us to work the...