Aeries are cropping up on America’s skylines, filled with the promise of juicy tomatoes, tiny Alpine strawberries and the heady perfume of basil and lavender. High above the noise and grime of urban streets, gardeners are raising fruits and vegetables. Some are simply finding the joys of backyard gardens several stories up, others are doing it for the environment and some because they know local food sells well. City dwellers have long cultivated pots of tomatoes on top of their buildings. But farming in the sky is a fairly recent development in the green roof movement, in which owners have been encouraged to replace blacktop with plants, often just carpets of succulents, to cut down on storm runoff, insulate buildings and moderate urban heat.

Bush’s Backward Sprint To The Finish

In its final days, the administration is rushing to implement a sweeping array of "midnight regulations" — de facto laws issued by the executive branch — designed to lock in Bush's legacy. Under the last- minute rules, which can be extremely difficult to overturn, loaded firearms would be allowed in national parks, uranium mining would be permitted near the Grand Canyon and many injured consumers would no longer be able to sue negligent manufacturers in state courts. Other rules would gut the Endangered Species Act, open millions of acres of wild lands to mining, restrict access to birth control and put local cops to work spying for the federal government.

From its bamboo floors to its rooftop deck, Clayton Homes' new industrial-chic "i-house" is about as far removed from a mobile home as an iPod from a record player.

"These humble little bees have an innate ability to work out the location of a food source from its position in relation to the sun. They do this even on cloudy days by reading the pattern of the polarization of the light, and pass this information to other bees. In the dark of the hive, they transpose the location of a food source in the horizontal plane through the famous “waggle” dance into communication in the vertical plane of the hive."

The List of Oklahoma birds lists every wild bird species ever seen in the U.S. state of Oklahoma, as recorded by the Oklahoma Bird Records Committee.

“Dung beetles are the most beneficial insects we have in our industry,” says Walt Davis, a Bennington, OK, rancher who's identified 11 species of dung beetles on his ranch. “They're a tremendous boost to soil productivity and they darn-well deserve our attention.”

Dung beetles feed on manure, use it to provide housing and food for their young, and improve nutrient cycling, soil structure, and forage growth in the meantime. This publication describes dung beetles and their benefits to pastures, and offers management information. It also offers information about building a dung beetle "farm."

A great article about the dung beetle, one of nature's most beneficial insects.

Organic cotton is a leap ahead for the garment industry -- not so the toxic dyes and finishing agents used in trendy eco-jeans.