When Michigan sees warm fall days, boxelder bugs won't be hard to find as they cluster in the sun on walls and other warm spots around your house. The black-and-red or orange insects are a frequent ...

Back when stink bugs (Halyomorpha halys) were first found in Pennsylvania and I heard the horror stories of home invasions, I steeled myself mentally for the inevitable in our own house. Thankfully, ...

Q I was cleaning out a flower bed around my maple tree and the leaves and weeds were just crawling with some kind of red bug, hundreds of them. What are they? Are they doing anything to my plants or ...

The brittle leaves of our scarce prairie hardwood trees dropped months ago, so what are all the brown clusters hanging from the limbs of box elders? They’re seedpods, known as samaras, and they’re ...

The box elder tree had plans for spring. Sometime in late summer, when I couldn't see the twigs for the leaves, the tree formed buds for next year's leaves. This year's leaves must have felt slighted, ...

One of the timeless commandments of the plains is that ye shall not cut down a living tree, and I obey this dictate both out of respect to open-country homesteaders and a love of shade.