Source: Wikimedia Commons
The American chestnut was one of the dominant trees of the eastern forest, and within a few decades essentially every mature one was dead.
The wood was exceptional…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1974 the tree rows standing on the north and west sides of American plains farmsteads were mature, deliberate and doing five jobs at once.
They were not…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1974 an American household that kept bees had four white boxes on concrete blocks along a fencerow, facing southeast, with a windbreak behind them.
The equipment was…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
It was a small wooden house on a post, or hanging from a branch, with clear plastic sides and a tray at the bottom, and it was filled…
For most of the twentieth century, small birds opened milk bottles.
They would land on a bottle left on a doorstep, peck or tear through the foil cap, and drink…
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The American national parks of the mid-nineteen-sixties were enormously popular, newly accessible by interstate highway, and run on a philosophy that is now almost unrecognisable. The job of…