It’s the beginning of the holiday season and that means one thing: Toys! Here are some of our favorite new digital gadgets to help you do right by Mother E.

Here in Boulder, Colorado – where we get over 300 days of sunshine per year – there's not much sense in having a lush, water-needy lawn. As you may have heard, water tends to be somewhat scarce out West, making xeriscaping – gardening with a mind for low water demands – the better choice.

To the avid vegetable gardener, a lawn is just wasted space. Why grow grass when you could be growing salad greens and herbs?

But there's a way to have your lawn, and eat it, too - or steep it, more precisely. English gardeners know that chamomile makes a great groundcover, but in the U.S., chamomile is thought of mostly as an herb for tea.

And that's our loss, because a lawn of chamomile is a fragrant, ferny green mat that you can walk on. You can sow it from seed, or plant seedlings; just be sure to plant the perennial kind, Roman chamomile, and not the annual German chamomile (both are fine for making tea, but only the Roman chamomile is suited for lawns).

Two women investigate the effects of pesticides on our lives.

Pesticides have infiltrated our lives in ways we rarely think about. Ever since World War II-era manufacturers realized the wonders of synthetics, we’ve relied on chemicals to make our apples spotless, our lawns green, and our homes critter-free. But what are the risks of living with these toxins?

Today, two women share the results of their investigations into that very question. In a collection of striking photos, Laurie Tümer exposes the ways that pesticides get around. And in an essay that’s both personal and analytical, Audrey Schulman describes how pesticide manufacturers get to police their own products—and how her young sons may be paying the price.