Recreation

Mid to late May is generally considered the safest time to plant vegetables and more delicate flowers outdoors in the Tristate region. In anticipation of the beginning of summer gardens, several organizations are holding their annual plant sales.

“Barberrians at the Gate!”  declared Fred Balling as a group of 30 fellow Cornwallians, some gloved and armed with bypass loppers, met in front of a residential property to learn about the methods to identify and remove Berberis Thunbergii, or invasive barberry.

When you stand on the sidelines of a prep school sporting event, it’s fun and beautiful and traditional in a way that’s not that different from reading an F. Scott Fitzgerald short story or watching an old film or television show.

Many sages have noted that school, and youth, are wasted on the young. As adults, out in the world, it seems to many of us that it would be an unparalleled joy to be able to take a class in something, sometime, somewhere with smart teachers, interesting classmates and a compelling topic.

Kent Memorial Library in Kent, Conn., once again hosts Justin Potter for a demonstration of “gentle top grafting” of fruit trees: adding scionwood of one variety onto a well-established tree of another variety, but without the major surgery involved with standard top grafting.

If you bake, and especially if you bake bread, you are nervously watching what’s happening with the world’s supply of wheat right now.

Ukraine and Russia together supply about a quarter of the world’s wheat, according to the US Department of Agriculture.

One of the most wonderful mysteries about Life in the Country is the annual mating ritual of the salamanders and frogs.

Some books are better when you dip into them, and don’t try to read them end to end. Cookbooks are an obvious example. Marcel Proust’s epic multi-volume masterpiece is another, in my opinion.

For journalists, the “Associated Press Stylebook” works that way.