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Articles by Patrick Coleman
How horticulturalists at Churchill Downs keep the Kentucky Derby pristine
The Kentucky Derby Winner’s Circle at Churchill Downs is composed of red geraniums and a dusty miller border planted in a horseshoe-shaped flower bed. Triple Crown-winning horses like Justify and American Pharoah have stood among them in triumph before making history. These flowers are the backdrop of sporting legend. But they have their own race to run every year.
Fremont Tree in Felton
Tucked away in the redwood grove at Henry Cowell Redwood State Park, outside of Felton, CA in the Santa Cruz mountains, you could easily miss the Fremont Tree in the ancient forest. That’s because it’s located in a hidden bend off the main redwood grove loop trail and marked only by an unobtrusive sign. The Fremont Tree looks much like its neighboring redwoods save for a small opening in its trunk and darkness beyond.
Staying flexible as springtime La Nina weather patterns shift
Editor’s note: This story first appeared in our sister publication, Greenhouse Management, in January 2026. Every grower and gardener knows the fruits of their labor live or die by the weather. Sometimes, plants thrive as the climate plays fair with a greenhouse’s needs. In the worst case, plants die from poor planning, underpreparing or a simple unexpected act of nature. Either way, growers must understand the weather outlook in order to be successful.
Dubuque receiver has 'miracle' recovery
More news about: Dubuque Blake Heffron has taken the first few steps on the long road to recovery from brain swelling. Dubuque athletics file photo by Mason Sterken By Patrick Coleman D3sports.com Blake Heffron, a sophomore wide receiver at the University of Dubuque, suffered a concussion on Saturday, Sept. 27, during the Spartans' game at Central, left the game, and could be not stabilized at the field.
Who's in? Our projected women's bracket
Zoe Tomlinson and Colorado College, flying wherever they play in Division III. Photo by Ryan Coleman, d3photography.com By Patrick Coleman D3sports.com The NPI, or NCAA Power Index, does away with four hours of work for people like us on Selection Sunday. The games are completed, the numbers are run, you hit refresh a bunch of times, and voila! You have 64 teams. We are guaranteed to get all of those right.
2025 TPIE Cool Products Awards announced
The Garden Center Group recognized 15 plants and products in its annual Cool Products Awards recognition at TPIE 2025. The winners showed a unique mix of innovation and invention based on necessity. They included spectacularly showy plants and problem-solving products from big names and small businesses alike.
Trump threatens 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada in move that could hurt horticulture
On Monday, Nov. 25, President-elect Donald Trump posted to his Truth Social social media platform that he intends to impose tariffs of 25% on all products entering the United States from Mexico and Canada. The move, he explained, would be one of "many first Executive Orders" that would occur on Jan. 20, Trump's first day of his second term in office. "...
Storm watch
Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read.
So you want to grow without soil?
Substrate supply and cost continue to be volatile, causing uncertainty among growers that use traditional, soil-based horticulture methods. The lack of availability and financial pressure could be enough to make growers seek an off-ramp into soilless hydroponic growing methods. But for those who’ve never grown without the constant familiarity of peat-based substrate, the question is how to dive into hydroponics systems in a way that makes sense.
Taking it all in
One year ago, I started writing for and about the horticulture industry. That’s one full trip around the sun, one full growing season — really nothing compared to the experience of the people I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with over the last 12 months. I am still a newbie. Happily, I am at my best when I am learning new things, and this industry has presented a wealth of learning opportunities.
Seeking substrate
The term "growing media" doesn't mean the same thing to every grower. Depending on the operation and the material being produced, it’s necessary for the components that make up a grower’s substrate to change and shift. But what happens when the common backbone of nearly all growing media starts to become difficult to source?
A 40-team bracket could look like this
If we had had a 40-team playoff this past season, not only does 9-1 Berry get it, it likely would host a first-round game. Berry athletics photo By Patrick Coleman D3sports.com Expansion of the Division III football playoffs is sounding more and more like an eventuality, rather than a dream.
Remembering the Salem years
Photo by Larry Radloff, d3photography.com These other stadiums may be bigger, more modern and flashier, but there’s nothing like an NCAA Division III football championship game in Salem, Virginia.
Sinclair Lewis’ novel ‘Main Street’ is published Oct. 23, 1920 Original
By all accounts, Sinclair Lewis was an outsider in his home town. Perhaps because of that, he took comfort in reading as much as he could. Lewis was born on Feb. 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. He was the youngest of three boys. Their father, Edwin J. Lewis, was the small town’s doctor; their mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died when Sinclair was six years old. A year later, Lewis’ father married Isabel Warner, who became an important influence in his life.
What Happened When I Tried Parenting Like The 1980s
By Patrick A. Coleman It was Tuesday afternoon. My children were downstairs. I had no idea what they were doing and I was trying and failing not to care. My kindergartener had recently been making “traps” out of tape and I was certain I’d left a roll unattended. He’d also become enamored of the scissors. I imagined him cutting up our valuables while his snack-crazed older brother went full Caligula. Still, I did not check in. Why?
The importance of the author-verifier relationship in project management
By Patrick Coleman Communication is a challenge because, while we think we know what we are saying, our words may say something else, and we are only guessing what the other person is hearing. If the conversation is not genuine, or ends too soon, we are in danger of walking away not understanding what the other person was saying. Read the full article in ES&E Magazine’s December 2021 issue: Subscribe to our Newsletter! The latest environmental engineering news direct to your inbox.
WiFi For All and to All a Good Network
When pandemic living overwhelmed a large’s family’s connection abilities, Future Automation & Design took a leap of faith with Access Networks. What happens when you have a large extended family frequently living together under the same roof? Maybe a few disagreements, but what sent this family over the edge was the lack of sufficient Wi-Fi connections and network capabilities that became all too necessary once lockdown restrictions took effect.
What it’s Like to Write a Book With an AI
Featured image: geralt/Pixabay K. Allado-McDowell had been working with artificial intelligence for years – they established the Artists and Machine Intelligence programme at Google AI – when the pandemic prompted a new, more personal kind of engagement. During this period of isolation, they started a conversation with GPT-3, the latest iteration of the Generative Pre-trained Transformer language model released by OpenAI earlier this year.
“Riding a Racehorse Through a Field of Concepts”: What It’s Like to Write a Book With an A.I.
What it’s like to write a book with an A.I. Photo illustration by Slate. Photo by Possessed Photography/Unsplash. K Allado-McDowell had been working with artificial intelligence for years—they established the Artists and Machine Intelligence program at Google AI—when the pandemic prompted a new, more personal kind of engagement.
Commentary: Author Patrick Coleman: During the Great Pause, 'I choose to keep going'
When I was a kid, I’d press my face into my pillow and hold my breath. Back then it felt like there wasn’t a reason. But now, I see that I would do it when I was anxious. Holding my breath was control, a way I could slow down time. Needless to say, I have been very anxious the last month. Suddenly my kids aren’t finishing their school year with friends. Suddenly I’m working out of a tool shed (not for the first time in my life).
The Psychedelic Science of Pain
Scientifically known as Psilocybe cubensis, this mushroom species’ active ingredients are psilocybin and psilobin. iStock.com/horkins Psychedelics and Health Research Initiative explores new territory in treating pain In the last few years, new research has demonstrated the powerful potential for classical psychedelics, especially psilocybin (the active compound in “magic mushrooms”), to treat a range of mental health disorders, including depression, anxiety and addiction.
A Conversation with Christine Larusso
APRIL 7, 2020 CHRISTINE LARUSSO’S POEMS alternate between revelation and privacy, immediacy and distance, memory and forgetting. In her first book, There Will Be No More Daughters (winner of the Madeleine P. Plonsker Emerging Writers Residency Prize and published by Northwestern University Press in October 2019), family secrets and the lies told in the name of assimilation and patriarchy coexist within a dreamscape of melodies — from grief to intoxication to rage.
10 Genre-Bending Thrillers by Madeline Stevens — Criminal Element
Author Madeline Stevens lists 10 genre-bending thriller movies that subvert expectations and succeed in turning up the suspense. See who made the list and then comment for a chance to win Madeline's debut novel Devotion. Most of my favorite stories, whether written or on the big screen, have one thing in common: it’s difficult to put them in a box. Shamelessly borrowing tropes from multiple genres and subverting expected plot structures serves to expand our understanding of how narrative works.
Living/Writing in a World of Crime, an essay by Archer Mayor
By Crime HQ August 13, 2019 Join Archer Mayor, New York Times bestselling author of the Joe Gunther police procedural series, as he shares how writing has provided a healthy outlet to explore his experiences as an emergency responder. And sign-in/comment on the post below for a chance to win one of three advance reader copies of Bomber’s Moon, Book #30 in the Joe Gunther series which comes out in September.
When Is A Legal Thriller Not a Legal Thriller?
Is there such a thing as a psychological legal thriller? When I was a little girl, there was one thing we were not allowed to do in our house: talk during The Perry Mason Show. Seriously. When Perry Mason was on TV, my sister and I were required, if we wanted to watch it and of course we did, not to say a word. During the commercials we could ask my lawyer stepfather questions, like: What does immaterial mean? And do you think they know that Hamilton Burger sounds like hamburger?
Literary San Diego: A Reading List That May or May Not Include Ron Burgundy
What place does San Diego have in the cultural imagination? Because this is where I grew up, it’s hard for me to see it clearly. San Diego can seem like a joke—always trying to be something more than what it is, never measuring up, the overlooked younger sibling of LA and San Francisco. Our politicians are prone to corruption. We’re the home town to a losing baseball team, and a lost football team. It’s where you move to go on a permanent vacation (if you can afford the high rents and home prices).
Noir and the Mystery of Evangelicalism
The movies are onto the search, but they screw it up. The search always ends in despair. They like to show a fellow coming to himself in a strange place—but what does he do? He takes up with the local librarian, sets about proving to the local children what a nice fellow he is, and settles down with a vengeance. In two weeks’ time he is so sunk in everydayness that he might just as well be dead. —Walker Percy, The Moviegoer A few years ago, I went to a memorial service for a friend I’d grown up with.
PATRICK COLEMAN reads from his debut novel THE CHURCHGOER with TOD GOLDBERG
The Churchgoer (Harper Perennial) A haunting debut literary noir about a former pastor’s search to find a missing woman in the toxic, contradictory underbelly of southern California. “He was finished with church, with God, with all of it. But to find the girl, he has to go back.” In Mark Haines’s former life, he was an evangelical youth pastor, a role model, and a family man—until he abandoned his wife, his daughter, and his beliefs.
A Literary Road Trip through Southern California
Tom Waits grew up in southern California, and “Going West” is probably the most famous of his California songs (“Little brown sausages / lying in the sand. / I ain’t no extra, baby / I’m a leading man”).
Canada's expanding renewable energy
The biogas “universe” transcends municipal departments and has expanded beyond just the generation of heat and electricity. In the past, the answer to the question “how to best use biogas?” was either to produce hot water or to produce electricity. Today, the answer is much more complex because the demand for, and production of, biogas has increased.
Son of Sauk Centre: The literary career of Sinclair Lewis
Courtesy of the Minnesota Historical SocietySinclair LewisSauk Centre’s Sinclair Lewis, short story writer, novelist, and playwright, was the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.Sinclair Lewis was born on February 7, 1885, in Sauk Centre, Minnesota. He was the youngest of three boys. Their father, Edwin J. Lewis, was the small town’s doctor; their mother, Emma Kermott Lewis, died when Sinclair was six years old.
oss-sec: CVE request: VLC
From: Patrick Coleman Date: Fri, 27 May 2016 14:25:09 +0100 -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 Hi, In modules/codec/adpcm.c, VLC can be made to perform an out-of-bounds write with user-controlled input. The function DecodeAdpcmImaQT at adpcm.c:595 allocates a buffer which is filled with bytes from the input stream. However, it does not check that the number of channels in the input stream is less than or equal to the size of the buffer, resulting in an out-of-bounds write.
Let 'er Buck! - Feature - Portland Mercury
8 pm SARAH MIRK—Main Street is bursting with thousands of people wearing cowboy hats and tight jeans. A drizzle blurs the neon. Pendleton, Oregon, has been waiting 100 years for this day and now, of course, it's raining. Cowboys and cowgirls first started roping and riding in the Pendleton Round-Up in 1910.
BikeBoat: Amphibious motorcycles across Russia
The world is a big place. But it feels small - and surely, with satellites and maps, everything has been explored? If you picked a spot on the Earth's surface, at random, could you get there? Has anyone even set foot there before? Some parts of the world are incredibly inaccessible, and have barely been discovered: parts of Alaska, South America, Australia, Russia. Off-road motorbikes can explore a lot further than vehicles, but even they get stuck when they hit rivers or oceans.
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