Reba Luiken

Plant hardiness zones are used to determine if a plant can thrive in a given climate — and your own backyard. The USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map is a tool used to approximate growing zones and has been updated as our climate shifts, most recently in 2023. The map can be a helpful place to start, but there are many things to think about when determining what can grow in your garden. 1.

In the winter of 2021, my friends at Modern Catholic Pilgrim invited me to participate in a journey from the Basilica of St. Mary to a vacant lot in north Minneapolis about a mile away. The walk was inspired by the stained-glass windows that hang in Teresa of Calcutta Hall in the lower level of the Basilica. They originally belonged to a mission church named St. Martin that once stood on the vacant lot we visited on the corner of Bryant and Fifth Avenue North.

In 1997, a battle ensued over a small stucco house dwarfed by the state buildings surrounding it near the State Capitol in St. Paul. By then, the house seemed old and had been converted into an office of the state’s criminal justice system. When the Dahl family built it in 1858, however, it was the last of nearly 1,500 working class homes constructed in the neighborhood. At its construction, it cost $300 and had a full basement but no kitchen. This was added in 1886.