Relief from the dog days of summer is as close as the nearest spring-fed stream. With just a facemask, a snorkel, and an old pair of sneakers, you can observe aquatic life on its own terms — underwater. Snorkeling is a great way to introduce children to the cool side of nature. First, just ...

Is lawn fertilization contributing to Chautauqua Lake’s algae blooms? Chautauqua Lake has experienced seasonal algae blooms for decades. It has always been a relatively fertile lake, with abundant plants and algae contributing to very productive panfish, muskellunge and smallmouth and ...

As a child, summer vacation meant no classrooms and often, no walls. The world was like a blank book, open to a page where you could write that day’s adventure as you lived it. I remember bike rides down to the creek, bike convoys down to the tennis courts, or magical lands created around ...

Kids love dinosaurs. I did more than 55 years ago, and so did many of my friends. We collected and played with hard plastic toy models with long, hard-to-pronounce and spell names imprinted on them. Names like tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, and plesiosaurus. The size, ferocity, and fear of real ...

I took a few minutes to poke around my yard before writing this today. My usual poking involves weeding, planting seeds and checking out how flowers and fruit are developing. Today, I was poking around for ideas to write about. Even though it is not very large, my yard is a delightful ...

Working in a garden can force a change in perspective. Kneeling down to get hands in the dirt, plants tower over the gardener. They no longer look down on plants but look through. On one particular day while gardening, I found myself face to face with sturdy stems and broad curved leaves ...