Category Weekly Columns

This week we’ll meet a tiny, shiny pollinator. Meet the shining flower beetle (Family Phalacridae).

This week’s Rogue is a bit of a follow-up – or follow-on – to previous Rogues and the April 22 All Things “Birds on a Budget.”

Well, Da Beast and I have now logged more than 3,600 miles together over the past 14 plus months and with the weather improving almost daily, it may be time for a tune-up and plans for another long-distance adventure. I have yet to determine a destination, but opportunities abound. After all, I have yet to visit the city of Rogue River, but I believe it's doable. 

We’ve made a lot of photo collages for All Things; this week we’re going to make an idea collage pieced together from past columns to help you have the best Mother’s Day Ever.

This is the time of year when the Peonies are blooming that I think of my sisters. Two of them dearly loved these majestic flowers. My sister in California had a beautiful bed of pale pink herbaceous peonies mingled with Bearded Iris of the same color. Blooming together they made a fabulous show. My other sister also loved the peonies especially when she and her husband retired and moved to Trail, Oregon. The home they purchased had a raised bed of Tree Peonies across much of the front of the home. In addition, in a bed under the silver birch trees were clumps of herbaceous peonies in pink and white colors.

This week we’re going to revisit a crawly we met briefly 10 years ago. Reacquaint yourself with the ranchman’s tiger moth (Arctia virginalis).

A few days ago a mutual posted a pic of two Ty Beenie Babies on social media. She declared victory! at finding them because – she wrote – her mom had thrown hers out when she was a kid declaring she was “too old” to have Beenie Babies.

I really hate dealing with modern technology. It is supposed to make life easier and yet it seems to complicate things exponentially. I have cell phone service through U.S. Cellular simply because it was the only provider that gave me service north of Shady Cove.