- (Focus Area) Yard & Garden
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Photographers call the first hour after dawn and the last hour before dusk "The Golden Hour."
That's when the sunlight is softer and warmer.
It's also called "The Magic Hour."
Compare that to high noon, when the sun casts such strong highlights and shadows on the subject that even images of Miss Universe and Miss America look harsh.
Now if you photograph a golden honey bee during The Golden Hour, the world looks even warmer and softer.
But use the term, Golden Hour, figuratively. As Wikipedia explains: "The term hour is used figuratively; the effect has no clearly defined duration and varies according to season and latitude. The character of the lighting is...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
In its larval stage, it's a pest of cole crops.
As an adult, it's like a little Cinderella.
That would be the cabbage white butterfly, Pieris rapae.
In the fairy tale, a ragged Cinderella lives with her selfish stepmother and two mean stepsisters. Cinderella wants to attend the palace ball, but has nothing appropriate to wear. So her fairy godmother waves a magic wand and transforms her into a beautifully gowned princess, complete with glass slippers. She rides in a magnificent carriage pulled by a team of beautiful horses, dances with the prince, and at the stroke of midnight (when the magic ends), she loses a glass slipper. You know the rest. It all ends with Cinderella and...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
They quickly learned what all the buzz was about.
The bees.
When longtime beekeeper and retired teacher Ettamarie Peterson displayed a bee observation hive at the Vacaville Museum Guild's Children's Party, the youngsters, ages 3 to 9, got a taste of what it's like inside a bee colony--along with a taste of honey.
The youngsters singled out the queen bee, worker bees (females) and drones (males). They asked such questions as "Where's the queen?" and "Can they get out and hurt me?" and "How many bees are in there?"
Ettamarie, known as the "Queen Bee of Sonoma County," described the queen and pointed out "Look, she's laying eggs--she can lay 1000 eggs a day."
And she...
I first heard the term on the local evening news in fall of 2018: Meteorologist Kris Kuyper was talking about hydrophobic soils. This potentially catastrophic natural phenomenon seems counterintuitive: soils which are damaged by the intense heat of fire become water repellent. Their post-fire inability to absorb and filter rainfall can cause problems with erosion and runoff. Adding insult to injury, fire also burns plant roots that can help stabilize the soil, and destroys plant stems and leaves that slow rainfall's contact with the ground surface, allowing more time for percolation into the soil.
The chemistry of soil hydrophobia is fairly basic. Plant materials that burn hot release a waxy substance that...
- Author: Kathy Keatley Garvey
Today (Aug. 8) is International Cat Day, the feline kind. It was created in 2002 by the International Fund for Animal Welfare as a day to "raise awareness for cats an learn about ways to help and protect them."
But today we're celebrating International Monarch Caterpillar Day as well, because it's the right thing to do. Now, more than ever, we need ways to help and protect monarchs.
If you have a kitty, every day is International Cat Day. Monarchs? Well, there are:
- National Start-Seeing-Monarchs Day: The first Saturday in May
- Monarch Butterfly Day: May 18
- Monarch Blitz: July 26–Aug. 4, an event to raise...