Opinion

By Chris Enroth Horticulture Educator, University of Illinois Extension To my fellow Illinois gardeners – I know these cold winter days can feel long and dreary. One way to combat the winter blues is by propagating your houseplants. After all, your houseplants are stuck inside with you, so why not have some fun with them? Plant…

National Tin Can Day was last month. I missed it, along with most of the world, I would imagine. But the occasion got me thinking about the tin can (as we erroneously call it), and the many ways they’ve become part of our cultural coming-of-age memories.

This winter has lingered longer than I wanted. I’m glad March is just around the corner. While that month is unpredictable, most likely there will be more warmer days than miserable ones. And I’m here for it. What is also just around the corner is turkey season. No matter what the weather brings, that first…

During World War II, my brother and I lived for a period of time with our grandparents, who resided near an industrial complex that was heavily involved in the war effort. This complex included a steel mill, a paper mill, a lead plant and a glass plant and lots of trains to service those industries…

I can remember my first solo deer hunting trip. I sat in a maple tree that was only about 50 yards from an oak tree that was flooded with acorns. The path to that oak made its way right under my tree stand. I remember sitting there in an old Baker climbing stand that thankfully…

By BILL HOAGLAND I wrote a column in this paper that was published November 15, 2023 and entitled “A Fascinating Snatch and Grab.” It concerned the remarkable effort by NASA to land a spacecraft on an asteroid, retrieve a sample from the surface of that asteroid and bring that sample back to Earth for analysis.…

February is a tough month. Its days of lengthening sunlight hold little of interest to see. The ground is alternately hard as granite and sloppy with murky mud. Trees are still on strike, picketing the last days of winter with colorless, brittle limbs. Browns and grays coat the world in fatigue. And above all this…

My young daughter and I were not sports fans. But every winter we counted the days until the Super Bowl. It wasn’t for football. We hated that. All that milling around. So many timeouts. The annoying roar of frantic fans. Even the Half-time shows were boring. We considered the game an annoyingly l-o-o-n-n-g commercial before…

I love the warmer days of winter. It gives me a chance to walk my hunting areas. Because the leaves are off the trees and because there is no concern about spooking deer, I can gather all kinds of information from the last season. It is a great time to assess the good and bad…

On January 23, a large dump truck dumped a full load of manure at the entrance to offices of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA) in New York City.   Several protestors accompanied the dump truck to its destination.   Apparently, this was the latest in an astonishing string of…