The Nature of Things

Is it an alien invader? Our new overlord from the planet Zebo? It does look like something from our worst nightmares and has been the basis for some of the monsters created by moviemakers to scare the bejeezus out of us, but actually it is a common backyard resident - the praying mantis. A voracious predator of other insects, it is absolutely a monster from their worst nightmares - assuming insects have nightmares. It eats prodigious amounts of bad insects and so is the gardener's friend. Unfortunately, it does not discriminate and so it eats plenty of what we consider good insects as well. But on the whole, the balance seems to be on the positive side. Gardeners who don't find sufficient mantises in their spaces often purchase mantis egg cases to increase the population. Lucky me - I have plenty of the scary-looking green monsters in my garden.   He looks hungry, doesn't he? Better watch out, bugs!

A Great Reckoning by Louise Penny My rating: 4 of 5 stars Reading one of Louise Penny's Armand Gamache mysteries is like receiving a warm embrace from a much-loved old friend. It is comfort reading of the highest order. A Great Reckoning is the twelfth entry in the series. I've read them all - in order, of course. There are none of them that I haven't enjoyed, though some naturally are better than others, but this, in my opinion, is one of the best. Armand Gamache spent years as the head of homicide in the Sûreté du Québec, and during that time, he discovered that his agency was riddled with corruption. The venality of a powerful cadre within the Sûreté had created an atmosphere of cruelty and criminality that had cost it the trust and respect of the public. Gamache made it his crusade to clean up the agency and once again make it worthy of public trust. He accomplished his goal, but it almost cost him his life. He retired from the Sûreté and he and his wife went to live ...

Have you ever had your DNA tested? That's become a rather popular project with many people, as the availability of such tests has become more widespread. Such organizations as 23 and Me , Ancestry.com , and the Genographic Project by National Geographic   offer simple tests that can be obtained by mail and the saliva tests completed and mailed back to be analyzed. Typically, one receives the results within eight to ten weeks. Recently, some of my family members had had tests done. One of my daughters had her test done through 23 and Me. One of my brothers-in-law and one of my husband's cousins each had tests analyzed by the Ancestry.com project. All of which piqued my curiosity so I decided to get my DNA tested, too. Mostly for variety's sake, I decided to get mine done through National Geographic's Genographic Project. I got the test kit, did the cheek swabs and mailed them, and then waited impatiently for the full ten weeks to get my results.  When the results finally...

My late mother was an avid devourer of romance novels in her later years. Perhaps she had had too little actual romance in her life - a life that was spent in hard work and taking care of others.  She found escape from all that in her Harlequin romances. She and Aunt Eudora would have understood each other quite well. Aunt Eudora's Harlequin Romance Related Poem Content Details BY  MARILYN L. TAYLOR She turns the bedlamp on. The book falls open  in her mottled hands, and while she reads her mouth begins to quiver, forming words  like  Breathless. Promises. Elope . As she turns the leaves, Eudora's cheek takes on a bit of bloom. Her frowzy hair  thickens and turns gold, her dim eyes clear, the wattles vanish from her slender neck. Her waist, emerging from its ring of flesh,  bends to the side. Breasts that used to hang  like pockets rise and ripen; her long legs  tremble. Her eyes close, she holds her breath—  the steamy pages flutter by,...

A roundup of the week's news of birds and the environment : American Robins love American beautyberries and there are plenty of them for the birds to enjoy this year. *~*~*~* Striped skunks are solitary, nocturnal creatures and even though they thrive alongside human activities, they go mostly unnoticed most of the time. But around this time of year, the babies that were born in the spring are starting to disperse to find territories of their own and we may become more frequently aware of a certain aroma in the air. *~*~*~* A young Bald Eagle has been recently sighted several times around Staten Island in New York leading to speculation and hopes that it may be the first such chick actually hatched and raised in New York City in over 100 years.  *~*~*~* The giant panda is one of the iconic animals of international conservation efforts and there was some very good news on that front this week. It seems that the effort to protect the habitats of the endangered animal has result...

Northanger Abbey by Val McDermid My rating: 2 of 5 stars This is another of the books in the Austen Project, modern authors retelling the Austen classics. This one even has the same name as the original. Val McDermid is a successful author of crime thrillers, none of which I have read. She accepted the challenge of updating Northanger Abbey and chose to make the heroine, Catherine Morland, into a Twilight -loving, vampire-obsessed teenager. Since I'm not a big fan of Twilight or vampires in general - although I quite like Dracula - that artistic choice made it very hard for me to like Cat, as she is called in the book. She seemed utterly shallow and without substance, and since the book is all about her, that left the plot feeling quite flimsy and frivolous for me. So, we have Cat Morland, sheltered, homeschooled daughter of a vicar and his wife from the little village of Piddle Valley in Dorset. It is a happy, loving family with four children, a brother older than Cat and two s...

Mike Luckovich's cartoon says all that needs to be said about Matt Lauer's interviewing skills.