Letting deciduous trees grow near the south side of your house can greatly reduce your heating and cooling costs. In the summer, the shade of the leaves will keep the sun from heating up your house. In the winter, the leaves fall off, and the sun helps warm your house. Of course, if you don’t have time to grow trees, a shortcut is to install awnings.
Category: Plants
The Number One Rule in Gardening
What’s the number one rule in successful gardening? Grow things that are indigenous to your area. No matter how hard you try, you cannot grow corn in the shadow of mountain valleys. You cannot grow watermelon in a short growing season. But you can grow strawberries in sandy soil, and you can grow oranges in Florida.
Stolen Space Orchid
Russian scientists grew an orchid in space then returned it to earth. Before they could study it fully, someone stole it from the laboratory.
The Apple Eve Ate
In the Bible, the fruit that Eve ate in the Garden of Eden was not specifically an apple. In the Koran, the sacred book of Islam, it is called a banana. Some scientists believe the fruit may have been a lemon, because edible apples did not yet exist in the time and place of Eden.
Extinction
All the species living on earth today total one percent of the creatures and plants that have lived in the past and are now extinct.
