"A good day is when no one shows up and you don't have to go anywhere." - says Burt Shavitz, the Burt behind Burt's Bees. You know his picture, the guy with the long beard on the top of the beeswax lip balm tins. Well, he's real. And quite a character. Back when he was just Burt (now 79), he was a celebrated news photographer. Then life took an unexpected turn when he quit his job and moved to the backwoods of Maine. During this time, he discovered his passion for beekeeping and met an ingenious hitchhiker named Roxanne Quimby...

Elephants and agriculture don't mix. Thanks to an international ban on ivory trade, elephant numbers are on the rise. But the migratory routes of these elephants often cross new housing developments and farmland. Elephants are herbivores and are much more interested in eating those crops than they are a man. They often crop-raid during the dark hours, leaving the farmer with no choice but to throw stones, shoot bullets and try to scare the elephants away from his valuable produce. The elephants feel threatened and sometimes charged, leading to both human and elephant deaths. Electrical fences as a means to...

William Morris (1834 - 1896) was an English textile designer, writer, artist and was involved in the English Arts & Crafts Movement. I love this quote and how fitting at the start of flea market season. Make this your spring cleaning mantra when walking through your home. An uncluttered house lifts your spirit, gives you joy and room to breathe. Yes, it can be overwhelming to tackle years of material accumulation. But I find taking it one room at a time lets you focus on one area and at the same time motivates you to stay on track when you...

If you haven't visited the Birnau church set on the hill above Lake Konstanz, you must put it on your list of things to see. The Birnau, a baroque church built between 1746 and 1749, sits above a vineyard overlooking Lake Constance. I live just on the other side of the lake from this landmark. My parents-in-law even married here. Over the years, I have visited the Birnau several times, often with visitors from the USA. Each and every one of them is always taken back by the absolute beauty, the pastel colors and the detail upon entering the church....

As I write this, Bayer is holding its annual shareholder meeting in Cologne. I'm quite sure that the neonicotinoid pesticides produced by Bayer and their contribution to killing bees is not on the agenda. Quite the opposite, Bayer has started a full-blown PR campaign to convince the public of its supposed concern for the health of bees. Michele Simon and the environmental group Friends of the Earth just released a report entitled "Follow the Honey: 7 ways pesticide companies are spinning the bee crisis to protect profits”, detailing the tactics used by Bayer and other pesticide producers to mislead the public. Following are just...