Peppers of any kind—whether you like the world’s tiniest and hottest or the crunchy, sweet ones—are a great addition to your garden. In the Willamette Valley’s fairly short growing season, however, peppers take some advance planning and care to grow successfully.
Most fossils are hidden. They are buried under our homes and roads, embedded in the stony hills around us. Some fossils, however, are right out in the open, where we can walk past them every day. One of those is Metasequoia glyptostroboides, a tree known as the Dawn Redwood. One of these trees thrives at the University of Oregon campus, right outside the office of geology professor Greg Retallack. “This tree is a living fossil,” Retallack says.
Driving through the I-5 corridor in the Willamette Valley, there’s a sign near Albany declaring it “The Grass Seed Capital of the World.” While that part of our fertile Willamette Valley is known for grass, there are many small farmers are who actively trying to change that, and the owners of Camas Country Mill have a lot to do with it.