NEW YORK Just imagine it, a luxurious room on an island, with chef-prepared meals and a view of the Statue of Liberty and the Manhattan skyline. Hotel? Not exactly. It’s actually a campground of high-end tents on New York City’s Governors Island, the latest outpost for glamping, or glamorous camping. Rates that can run more […]

For city dwellers, adaptability comes in handy in the kitchen. Urban kitchens are typically tiny, presenting storage challenges. And for food storage, there’s also the frequent problem of unwelcome house guests, like mice or bugs. Luckily, there’s a lot of great gear to keep perishables and pantry goods organized and protected, much of it pretty […]

Let’s say you wanted to land a luxurious rib-eye steak at the center of your picnic, but worried about being able to afford it. Here’s a simple way to make it happen: Instead of serving every guest a huge slab of steak, slice up a smaller portion, fan it out on the plate to make […]

In gardening, whether you’re talking about pest control or fertilization, “organic” generally means natural. The word “organic” refers to “organic matter,” the linchpin of organic gardening and, traditionally at least, all good gardening. “Organic matter” is material derived from what is or was once living. Plants are most hungry for three nutrients — nitrogen, phosphorus […]

CONTRADA PETRARO, Sicily Spring is ending and summer approaches. The grass is now long, finished growing. For us, it’s time to scythe. This is a beautiful, and slightly sad, time of year for my wife and me, when the fields of grass and flowers on our 3 acres of farmland in the mountains of northern […]

I’ll be honest, I thought it was an Onion article. There could be no way anyone would suggest that a mother carry pH strips in her bag to test the water at a public swimming pool. But this wasn’t the Onion. It was Parents.com, and when people started sharing the article, I got angry. The […]

If you want to end a summer celebration or gathering with a big old bang, you would be hard pressed to pick a better dessert than an ice cream pie. Somehow, ice cream stuffed into a pie crust just seems so much more festive and decadent and sultry than bowls of ice cream. And it’s […]

Homeowners know that irrigation is a necessary but never-ending task for gardens and the overall landscape. But watering priorities change drastically during a drought. Conservation prevails over plant care, and can trigger expensive and in some cases emotional losses. “If water conservation is important or needed, this takes precedence — especially if there are legal […]

Last week I wrote about a mother bird, a robin, who made a nest outside our kitchen window many years ago. She continued to use our back porch as her home for several years in a row, and I developed something like a bond with the bird, even if I did usually feel like she […]

TOPSHAM At 93, botanist Mary “Pixie” Williams is the oldest volunteer with Lake Stewards of Maine. But she’s also one of the busiest; she’s midway through creating a first-of-its-kind herbarium of the 232 aquatic plants native to Maine lakes, as well as the 11 invasives threatening them. Within the Lake Stewards, the Topsham retiree is known […]