The waning moon rises after 10pm at week’s end, then crests the horizon 20-plus minutes later each night, so that by Tuesday, the last-quarter moon rises after midnight. Friday’s gibbous moon rises with glowing Jupiter only six degrees to the south, and the two remain tight through the wee hours before dawn, appearing high in the south with sunrise Saturday at 6:06.  The sun sets this week around 8:15, and each day it leaves us more than a minute earlier. As the sky...

This is the true story about all of us who unwittingly, faithfully and dutifully went to our garden centers and bought tomato plants in mid-April. In this region, we’re cautioned not to plant before May 1. That was then. This is now, 2010, after the coldest, snowiest winter on record. Warm weather swept through our area in early May and upended that theory; holes were dug, plants submerged, things happened. Best-looking tomato plants I’ve ever seen. Thanks in part to the Bay...

A milestone has been reached. Junior is finally feeding himself. Now he can stuff himself with fish to his heart’s content and grow even faster. Here’s how it came about. After Oliver delivered the fish one morning, Olivia hunched over it and tore into it without feeding it to Junior. Then Olivia took off and flew circles and figure eights around the nest, swooping in close every once in a while. She was getting young Junior to feed himself of the pieces she had torn off, then to...

It was a very bright idea indeed that struck Annapolitan Joel Machak and then partner Jim Ferguson a quarter of a century ago. Struck is a key word here. For in that moment of brilliance, the two ad men created the Crash Test Dummies Vince & Larry. For the next 14 years, from 1985 to 1998, Vince & Larry struck and were struck by all sorts of dismembering objects in a variety of collisions so inventive it seemed to be drawn from Looney Tunes. All to keep you safer while driving.  In...