Mother Nature

It's a lot easier being green when someone makes it fun. From puppet shows to a book sale, everything at Narberth Park on Saturday revolved around Earth Day, with the Narberth Civic Association setting up booths from noon to 4 p.m. Dozens of children and their parents took part in activities centered on environmental themes. Borough officials were on hand to distribute recycling literature.

SARS has arrived. People wearing masks to protect themselves is laughable. A virus is a hundred times smaller than a bacteria, so the mask blocks the virus from inhalation about 0.001 percent of the time. Why is it here? Where did it come from? Answer: Overpopulation and the mysterious bowels of nature. Nature senses and reacts to its environment. If there are too many living creatures, it will send forth a system (a disease) to relieve and correct the problem. Since Adam and Even started the human race eons ago, the number of humans has exploded on this finite globe.

Dear God, We don't mean to tattle and get YOU so angry that you REALLY turn Philadelphia into Buffalo or International Falls, but could you maybe send Mother Nature to a parenting class or something? She's been real mean to us this winter and just won't seem to quit. To tell the truth, she's letting some of her bad kids - Snow, Sleet, Ice and Cold - run wild in our streets. Could you maybe ask her to send them on vacation - at least until next winter - and let Warm Sun and Flowers come out and play?

Gov. Ridge is playing politics, trying to jawbone the feds into more generous aid for the disaster of the Great Blizzard and its meltdown floods. The thing is, he's mostly right. Ridge already got into a pretty public snit - if a bit prematurely - with President Clinton and the Federal Emergency Management Agency about assistance. He now is careful to say that FEMA is working hard to help. FEMA administers the possible federal help when Mother Nature kicks citizens around in a big-time way. The rub is FEMA's traditional position of "no dough for snow.

At sopping wet Veterans Stadium last night, with only one hour left in Flag Day, the umpires hoisted a white one. We surrender. It's raining too hard. It's not going to stop soon enough. Go home. Get some sleep. Come back Friday for two, beginning at 5:35. Phillies manager Nick Leyva, for one, had received better news. His team held a 2-0 lead over the Chicago Cubs in the top of the fifth and the game was two outs away from becoming official when crew chief Terry Tata waved for the grounds crew at 9:04.

We asked Hannah Hogan, president and designer for Snipes Nursery in Morrisville, Pa., to share some ways to spice up the holidays using materials provided by Mother Nature. 1. Mini Christmas trees. Spruce up your home with small potted evergreen trees - the kind you can buy in almost any supermarket. Tie a generous bow around the pot and trim branches with miniature ornaments or a garland of stars. "Use a mirror on the table as a dish underneath the tree and its effect is doubled," said Hogan.

For federal employees itching to get back on the job after more than three weeks on furlough, two snow days in a row were anything but a welcome relief from the daily grind. "I had cabin fever for the last three weeks," said Larry Teller, an administrative aide in the Environmental Protection Agency's Philadelphia office. "Last week I was going bananas because I had run out of chores," said Teller, who lives in Haddonfield. "I mean, how many chores can you do? So I was looking forward tremendously to be back to work Monday.

The Bush administration's assault on environmental protection reaches an appalling new high - or low - with the U.S. Forest Service's proposal to essentially gut 20-year-old management planning rules for deciding the most appropriate uses of the nation's 192 million acres of national forest. The proposal, to become effective in 90 days, will "better harmonize the environmental, social and economic benefits" of the forests, the Forest Service said in a press release. That's bureaucratic gibberish for eroding safeguards under the National Environmental Policy Act that protect fish and wildlife.

Unlike Monday's snowy surprise, yesterday brought a taste of the tropics - 85 degrees and sunny, most everyone running around in shades, sandals, bikinis and swimming trunks. So went the April Fools' joke played by Sandy Roberts' kindergarten class at Buckingham Elementary School. Youngsters tricked the already-confused Mother Nature by having a beach day. With the heat turned up and the Beach Boys playing, the children were delighted with the irony. On Monday, Julia Ciccone, 6, built a snowman with her sister.

Mother Nature obviously had a problem with yesterday's Southern Chester County League baseball game between Oxford and host Devon Prep. And there was no way she was going to let these two clubs do anything but finish in a suspended 2-2 deadlock. First, she dropped the game-time temperature more than 20 degrees from the sweltering heat that had been baking the area the last few days. Most of the players, coaches, and fans in attendance were wearing short-sleeve shirts when the game began.

WATKINS GLEN, N.Y. - Marcos Ambrose should be on pins and needles. He says he's not. "No, not at all," Ambrose said Sunday after NASCAR postponed the Sprint Cup race at Watkins Glen International. "It keeps me relaxed. You can't fight the weather, so I just worry about stuff you can control. " Steady rain began just when the race was scheduled to start at 1 p.m. and did not abate in time for track crews to dry the 2.45-mile racing surface. They did give it a shot with jet driers that got the front straightaway nearly race-ready, but a second front moved in. The race is now scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. Monday, but rain also is in the forecast in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York.

Take a hat, lather on the sunscreen, and lose the flip-flops - this year, the Schuylkill Center for Environmental Education has decided to make you hike to its annual summer outdoor sculpture exhibition. It's an unchallenging ramble along the center's Widener Trail, as it turns out, through lovely, sun-dappled woods, open meadows, and an unexpected pine grove, with birds and other wildlife your only company. Even better, the show, "Facts and Fables: Stories of the Natural World," is the first one I've seen here (or at the center's Second Site, a former farm located a mile or so away)

The bestowal of the Nobel Peace Prize on President Obama met with considerable skepticism in the United States and abroad. Commentators complained that the prize was premature, awarded before Obama had effected any peace initiatives - or much else. These cavils are ill-placed. Who can deny that this president has changed the climate in international affairs? He has made it clear to nations both friendly and hostile that the United States will be more of a partner and less of a martinet seeking to impose its values across the globe.

New scientific research suggests that babies understand cause-and-effect relationships, can do simple math, and make keen evaluations about people and pomp. If that's true, what must Anthony Kazoun have thought last week as the 4-month-old debuted in the 100th annual Ocean City Baby Parade dressed as King Triton (of The Little Mermaid ), wearing a felt fin custom-made by his uncle, Charlie Vacarro, an Italian tailor? The Wayne, N.J., king's court included 30 fawning fans in matching T-shirts.

videophilia: The new human tendency to focus on sedentary activities involving electronic media. - www.videophilia.com It's windy. Rain is imminent. The path is muddy. But Patricia Zaradic is loving it all. What's important is that she is out in nature, a place her research tells her fewer and fewer Americans are heading. In the last two decades, park visits, permits for camping or fishing, and other data show a fundamental, pervasive shift away from outdoor activities, the Bryn Mawr ecologist concludes in a study published recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

One of my fondest memories of my father is watching him walk off a wall, Christmas lights in hand, as he attempted to string the tree on our front lawn. He fell, we laughed, and a holiday tradition was created. It happened almost yearly. It was part of the season of giving, and - believe me, a homeowner many years later - I have given till it hurts. Yes, I am the man of the house and the king of the decorations! There was the time I was dangling akimbo from the roof, hanging on to the gutter, while my oldest daughter, Keelan, then 13, was supposed to be holding the ladder so it wouldn't give way. I remember, right before falling, asking her if she had it. As I plummeted, I saw her holding the ladder - but talking to someone across the street.

"Adder's fork and blind-worm sting," goes the witches' curse from Macbeth, "lizard's leg and howlet's wing. " There's nothing so gruesome on the workshop walls at the Brandywine River Museum. But in bowls and jars ranged along shelves in a house across from the museum, volunteers are making a gentler brew, unlike what the witches toss into their cauldron. "Beechnut hulls," said Bette Daller, "used for ears and eyes. " "Petals from pine cones," Daller said, "used for feet and arms and wings.

Natural elements in home decor are firmly implanted in popular culture. The trend may have reached its fullest expression with the September issue of Real Simple magazine and an article on decorating with rocks. High-end designers started things on a rustic roll outdoors years ago, and mass retailers have jumped aboard. Philadelphia-based Anthropologie has decorated some of its stores with stacks and stacks of firewood. Crate & Barrel wraps bark around candles. Pottery Barn launched two series of framed fern prints for fall.

The National Weather Service forecast calls for today and tomorrow to be "dangerously hot and humid" in Philadelphia, with highs around 101. Should the temperature actually reach the century mark both days, that would be highly unusual, verging on historic. In the 133 years that records have been kept, the city has recorded consecutive 100-degree days only 14 times. The most recent came nearly five years ago, on Aug. 8 and 9, 2001, which also was the last time Philadelphia reached the 100-degree mark for even a day. With such temperatures in the forecast, an excessive-heat advisory went into effect yesterday afternoon and is expected to stay in effect until 8 p.m. Thursday.

Bite into a jewel - a glamorous, ripe red strawberry - and you're in for an explosion of fabulous sweet flavor. At least that's what many consumers are experiencing with this year's crop of excellent berries. Providing Mother Nature cooperates, it's anticipated that there will be plenty of excellent-quality, ruby-red treasures available throughout the year as California growers, who produce 88 percent of the nation's strawberry crop, are now marketing berries year-round. "The projected strawberry crop for '06 is 2.2 billion pounds, up 8 percent over last year's record-breaking crop of just over 2 billion pounds," said Steve Lyle of the California Department of Agriculture.