Dear reader, yeah, I mean you. You who are reading this while holding the paper in your hands or scanning through on your computer, tablet or phone. Yeah, you. I am so deeply grateful to you for reading my articles. This marks the 52nd column that I have written for The Smoky Mountain News, with one running every couple of weeks for the last two years or so. That’s one for each week in the year. One for every card in a deck.  

Come out to Waynesville for the Mountain View Garden Club plant sale from 9 a.m. to noon July 6 at the Haywood County Farmers’s Market by the HART theater. 

Please don’t get me wrong, I love the orchids of springtime. Love them. They tend to be as big and showy and beautiful as springtime itself.  Ladyslipper orchids, both yellow and pink (Cypripedium acaule and C. parviflorum) and showy orchis (Galearis spectabilis) are certainly beautiful and fun to see blooming in the woods in the spring.  

“There’s some legends and stories about this particular area, this place we’re at right now,” said Tommy Cabe, who is the forest resource specialist for the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and a member of the Tribe, looking out over the vibrantly green forest floor surrounding a tiny stream that flows across Chimney Tops Trail. 

Charles Darwin was many things, but in the classic sense of the word, he was not an artist. Lacking in the ways of visual art, and with miserably bad handwriting, the scientist eventually enlisted the help of his sons in creating utilitarian illustrations of the plants and animals with which he worked.  

Our culture tends to celebrate youth and youthfulness above all other life phases. Growth and vitality are venerated over age and wisdom. This wasn’t always the case.

Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy (SAHC) is celebrating 50 years of conserving clean water, plant and wildlife habitat, farmland and scenic beauty in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee.

After a botanical survey identified the location of several invasive species in Jackson County’s Pinnacle Park, work has begun to manage the ecologically threatening pests. 

NC State Extension Master Gardener volunteers staff a booth on the second and fourth Saturdays of each month (May through August) at Haywood’s Historic Farmers Market in Waynesville.

Balsam Mountain Trust announced its seventh-annual Bird Festival celebrating World Migratory Bird Day.