-
3 weeks ago | 
pennlive.com | George Weigel
GardeningPublished: Jun. 07, 2025, 6:33 a.m.These are the bright summer blooms of the rose Oso Easy Urban Legend.Spring Meadow NurseryHere’s PennLive garden writer George Weigel’s Plant Pick of the Week for this week:* Common name: Rose Oso Easy series* Botanical name: Rosa Oso Easy series* What it is: Oso Easy is a line of nine compact and disease-resistant shrub roses introduced by Michigan’s Spring Meadow Nursery.
-
3 weeks ago | 
pennlive.com | George Weigel
The all-time-wettest May did more than cancel Little League games and ruin weekend picnics. The soggy weather also took a toll on our yards and gardens, where problems have ranged from rotting roots and seeds to overgrown lawns. Rain fell on 25 of May’s 31 days in the Harrisburg area, adding up to a total of 10.02 inches for the month. That’s more than double our average May rainfall of 3.83 inches and enough to shatter the previous monthly record of 9.71 inches, set in 1989.
-
3 weeks ago | 
religionenlibertad.com | George Weigel
Hace 155 años, cuando el recién nacido Reino de Italia conquistó lo que quedaba de los Estados Pontificios y el Papa Pío IX se retiró tras la Muralla Leonina convertido en “el prisionero del Vaticano”, la opinión de las élites europeas declaró finiquitado el papado como agente histórico y, según creían, también la Iglesia católica.
-
3 weeks ago | 
catholicworldreport.com | Jonah McKeown |George Weigel
Stills from a video shared with EWTN News and taken by the pilgrims on May 30, 2025, while the procession was in the Diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma, show Catholic participants in the procession walking and singing while a young man on the sidelines, speaking through a bullhorn and walking alongside the crowd, deplores Eucharistic devotion as “idolatry.” / Credit: Photos courtesy of Jason ShanksNational Catholic Register, Jun 6, 2025 / 14:15 pm (CNA).
-
3 weeks ago | 
thetablet.org | George Weigel
Why are so many U.S. colleges and universities in crisis? Drew Gilpin Faust, an accomplished Civil War historian, gave the answer, perhaps unwittingly, at her 2007 inauguration as the 28th president of Harvard University.
-
3 weeks ago | 
pennlive.com | George Weigel
The next few weeks are some of the year’s best for pruning landscape plants – mainly woody-stemmed ones that already have bloomed for the year, as well as most needled evergreens. Spring-blooming trees and shrubs produce their flower buds on “old wood,” i.e. branches that grew new flower buds late last season. The buds overwinter, then open in spring. If you prune spring bloomers in fall, winter, or early spring before the plants flower, you’ll cut off the buds and get no blooms that year.
-
3 weeks ago | 
catholicweekly.com.au | George Weigel
One hundred fifty-five years ago, when the freshly minted Kingdom of Italy conquered the rump of the Papal States and Pope Pius IX withdrew behind the Leonine Wall as the “prisoner of the Vatican,” elite European opinion pronounced the papacy finished as a factor in history — and, it was often assumed, the Catholic Church as well. Well. Last month, the election of Pius IX’s twelfth successor riveted world attention as no other change of institutional or governmental leadership possibly could.
-
3 weeks ago | 
pennlive.com | George Weigel
Not all gardeners are blessed with full-sun sites that the veggie-gardening books all recommend as the place to grow edibles. Six hours of direct sunlight per day is the rule of thumb. But if you don’t have that, it’s still possible to grow a fair amount of your own crops. You might not be able to do big, tasty tomatoes or peppers, melons, and cucumbers, but most leafy and root crops do reasonably well in dappled light or part-day sun.
-
3 weeks ago | 
pennlive.com | George Weigel
Some yardeners welcome moss as a free groundcover from nature that solves the tough challenge of damp, shady spots. Others curse the stuff as an invader of the lawn and defiler of paver patios and brick sidewalks. So is moss a botanical friend or foe? Yes and yes. It depends on the situation and your point of view. Mosses make up their own category in the plant world, consisting of non-parasitic, dense, carpet-like growers that have thread-like stems and tiny leaves.
-
3 weeks ago | 
ncregister.com | George Weigel
COMMENTARY: Less than one month into his pontificate, Pope Leo XIV has demonstrated how to speak to the world in an age dominated by the soundbite. Pope Leo XIV greets the faithful during the General Audience on June 4, 2025.
