For tree service, we called my brother, who had used a good company, Growing Earth Tree Care, years ago.

FORBES: Money Lessons From Hurricane Sandy

Over the past month, the periodical cicadas of Brood XIII, native to the area, have crawled up roots, through the earth's surface and onto tree trunks everywhere, to moult and spread wings.

ECONOMIST: Cicadas in Illinois

If I fell asleep, the sound would become a lazy breeze rustling a tree, or a broom brushing the earth.

NEWYORKER: Naima

To find out how warm the earth was before that, climatologists have had to resort to indirect methods, such as measuring tree-rings, or counting the different isotopes of oxygen in layers of polar ice.

ECONOMIST: The hole story of global warming

These eye-in-the-sky cell towers hover between 70, 000 and 100, 000-feet and provide coverage for a 200-mile radius on Earth- but the darn things only stay aloft for 24 to 48 hours before freefalling to the ground (or tree, or lake, or Grand Canyon).

ENGADGET: Cash-in on your geocaching skillz