By JESSICA DAMIANO

With temperatures dropping and dusk arriving early, the firepit section of my garden has been on my mind.

It’s a simple setup. Eight colorful Adirondack chairs are arranged in a circle around a stacked stone hearth, surrounded, during the growing season, by easy-growing, low-maintenance button bush, hydrangeas, hosta, clumping Liriope and coleus.

And simple is what makes it special. The important part is the feeling it provides — unfussy comfort, serenity and relaxation.

The garden, after all, is a sanctuary – a place to hide, relax our shoulders and catch our breath while the rest of the world speeds by. Studies indicate that time spent in the garden lowers stress, but the types of plants don’t matter; our nervous systems don’t require a botanical showplace to unwind.

It doesn’t take much to give yourself the gift of peace — just a chair, a few unfussy plants that won’t become burdensome and some attention to detail. And if you can enjoy it year-round, all the better.

Sights, sounds and scents

Now’s a good time to start thinking about next year’s garden.

Ornamental grass appears in a mixed garden bed on Long Island, N.Y., on June 8, 2025. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Large, native grasses lend a sense of calm when they sway in the wind. Flowers like lilacs, old garden roses, jasmine and sweet peas bring fragrant bliss. And the sound of a windchime or a steady trickle of water can provide meditative tranquility. There’s no need to get fancy; a small tabletop bubbler will do.

You don’t need a large yard either. Tuck a chair under a shade tree, install a window box or hanging basket, or line your balcony with potted annuals. Then just sit out there for five minutes, breathing.

Wild entertainment

A fragrant Palabin lilac appears on Long Island, N.Y. on May 24, 2024. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

Nature can handle some of the work for you. A birdfeeder or birdbath and some pollinator-friendly plants will provide plenty of entertainment, allowing you to zone out as birds splash and bees and butterflies flutter from flower to flower.

Create a habit

Now think up a small ritual that will bring you to your spot every day. Maybe it’ll be where you drink your afternoon tea, read your mail or write entries in your notebook. For me, it’s a walk around the garden every summer morning in my pajamas, coffee in one hand, pruners in the other, just checking on things before the day gets away from me.

A bistro table and chairs appear under a tree in a backyard in Long Island, N.Y., on Aug. 7, 2025. backyard. (Jessica Damiano via AP)

These days, I sit on my porch for a few minutes when the weather allows, breathing in some crisp air before starting my day. Soon, I’ll sit out there with a pile of seed catalogs and my trusty highlighter, making a springtime wish list while watching over my dormant garden. And you can be sure I’ll wrap myself in a blanket and sit around the firepit on some mild winter evenings.

If it sounds simple, that’s because it is. And it doesn’t take much to gift it to yourself.

Jessica Damiano writes weekly gardening columns for the AP and publishes the award-winning Weekly Dirt Newsletter. You can sign up here for weekly gardening tips and advice.

For more AP gardening stories, go to https://apnews.com/hub/gardening.

By LOUISE DIXON

LONDON (AP) — After years of minimalist, pared-back drinks, maximalism is back.

Related Articles

British baker’s criticism of Mexican ‘ugly’ bread triggers social media outrage

Indulge in lychee-frosted sugar cookies with citrus notes and buttercream

Five weeknight recipes to fit your mood(s)

Headed to MSP airport? Get your holiday cheer on with these festive cocktails

Cookbook author dishes on Jewish-Mexican cuisine that is ‘kosherísimo’

Drinkers are looking for more than just a simple serve, and bartenders are dreaming up bold color palettes, layered flavors, oversize garnishes, theatrical glassware and playful twists on classic drinks.

The trend harks back to the “really out there” drinks service of the ‘90s, says Hannah Sharman-Cox, who with Siobhan Payne cofounded The Pinnacle Guide, which rates cocktail bars around the world with a three-“pin” system.

“It’s a little bit like that era’s grown-up cousin has taken the reins,” says Sharman-Cox. “More decadent luxury rather than garish waste.”

“Even the simple martini is starting to get more elaborate garnishes — big pickles, colorful cornichons — and we’re here for it,” she adds.

Mason Park, the bar manager at Alice, in Seoul, South Korea, agrees that today’s maximalism takes a more thoughtful approach. In the past, it was about flashiness and “prop” garnishes. The focus now, he says, is on the flavor impact, as well as sight, touch and smell.

Sustainable in more ways than one

There’s also thought given to environmental sustainability, says Payne. “Garnishes are increasingly designed to be edible or reusable, so we’re seeing more elaborate partnerships between the bar and the kitchen to create something delicious that truly compliments the cocktail.”

For Park, creative, attention-grabbing drinks also fuel and sustain the art of mixology.

“We work with so many elaborate elements and get so many ‘wow’ reactions from customers when we serve them, we believe that this maximalism — making these fun cocktails — actually plays a role in sustaining the profession of bartending itself,” he says.

Especially at a time when people are more cautious with their money, the industry needs to level up to give them a reason to visit bars — “not just for the simple experience of enjoying the night, but also to get something completely different,” says Emanuele Pedrazzani, head bartender at London’s subterranean bar Nightjar.

Drinks that wow

At the Alice bar, which takes its inspiration from Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland,” the signature cocktail is “Foggy Fongo,” a riff on the book’s famous depiction of a caterpillar smoking a pipe on top of a mushroom. Served in a smoky, mushroom-shaped glass, the cocktail is built on bourbon, frankincense and palo santo (a Peruvian wood), with macadamia and hazelnut, as well as artichoke, sherry and the prized pine mushroom.

“We extract the aroma from pine mushrooms using glycerine, and then we infuse that mushroom fragrance into the cocktail as smoke,” Park explains. They then 3D-print the mushroom-shaped cap and place a truffle cookie inside.

“You can think of it as a cocktail that offers an experience where you eat and drink together,” Park says.

The ‘Beyond the Sea’ cocktail pictured at the Nightjar cocktail bar, Nov. 22, 2025 in London. (AP Photo/Louise Dixon)

Across the globe, Nightjar has the elaborately presented “Beyond the Sea” cocktail, served in a giant shell. It’s loosely inspired by the Salty Dog (gin or vodka and grapefruit juice with a salty rim), with a combination of gin, fino sherry with kombu seaweed, shiso leaves, limoncello, absinthe and grapefruit, finished off with a briny foam to evoke sea spray, and an olive.

It’s an immersive experience and it’s hard to know where to start.

“From one of the narrow ends!” quips Pedrazzani. He loves to make customers laugh, he says — “to create some sort of connection” — and he jokes that in this case, sometimes they don’t listen and the drink ends up all over them.

Social media plays its part

This image provided courtesy of Bon Vivants shows the ‘Mama Maggie’ cocktail pictured at the Bon Vivants resort, Nassau, Bahamas. (Bon Vivants via AP)

At the Bon Vivants craft cocktail bar in Nassau, the Bahamas, experience is everything.

If you order the Mama Maggie, a fruity mix of coconut rum, passion fruit liqueur, hibiscus, mango lime and orange juice will be delivered to you in a photogenic porcelain pig topped with colorful fresh flowers.

“When it comes to these types of drinks, (customers) want something they can post,” says Niko Imbert, senior vice president of hospitality.

They also want to see you put care and effort into the product, he adds.

“It’s just like a culinary experience in my opinion. If I see someone taking their time to create special for me, I’m very thankful for it.”

Bringing the trend home

The ‘Rey Bucanero, The King Buccaneer, cocktail’ pictured at the The Bedford Stone Street bar, Dec. 2, 2025 in New York. (AP Photo/Guido Neira)

To up your maximalist cocktail game at home, Imbert says, consider using vintage and unusual glassware, bar tools, garnishing, glitter or even a cocktail smoker.

“Just don’t go overboard, right?” says José Maria Dondé, beverage manager and head mixologist at The Bedford Stone Street in New York.

He creates a theatrical take on the Paloma, the Rey Bucanero (King Buccaneer). Alongside the traditional tequila and grapefruit, it contains rum, elderflower, cacao liqueur and yuzu, and is garnished with shiso leaf “waves” and an orchid flower.

At home, Donde suggests, start with something “that’s going to make you feel good and looks nice,” and add to it later as needed.

Though tanning may be far from the minds of chilly Illinois residents at the moment, a new study out of Northwestern Medicine is highlighting the risks of tanning beds, and showing how they can lead to skin cancer.

Not only is the use of tanning beds associated with nearly triple the risk of developing melanoma, but heavy users of tanning beds also had more damage to the DNA of their skin cells, according to the study published Friday in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances.

Dr. Pedram Gerami, a professor of skin cancer research at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, decided to look into the issue of tanning beds and melanoma after noticing that an unusually large number of his patients were women younger than 50 who had melanoma multiple times.

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, though it is highly curable if caught early.

“You’d see the common thread linking all these women was a history of tanning bed exposure,” said Gerami, who is also director of the Pigmented Lesion and Melanoma Clinic at Northwestern Medicine.

Gerami teamed up with researchers from the University of California at San Francisco to examine the medical records of nearly 3,000 patients who used tanning beds at least 10 times in their lives and nearly 3,000 patients who never used tanning beds. They found a 2.85-fold increase in melanoma risk for patients who used tanning beds compared with those who did not, after adjusting for age, sex and sunburn and family history, according to the study.

The researchers then sought to find out how much DNA damage may be caused by tanning beds by examining skin samples from 27 patients. Eleven of those patients reported that they had used tanning beds at least 50 times in their lives, nine patients were at high risk for skin cancer but not from frequent tanning bed usage, and six of the skin samples were taken from cadavers, to augment the control group.

The researchers used relatively new technology to perform single-cell DNA sequencing on melanocytes, which are the skin cells that produce pigment.

They found that skin cells from patients who used tanning beds had nearly twice as many mutations as skin cells from patients who didn’t use tanning beds, and they were more likely to have melanoma-linked mutations.

“In the skin that looks normal in a tanning bed patient, you can find that their skin cells will have the DNA mutations that we know predispose (a person) to melanoma,” Gerami said.

“(For) a lot of these patients, the majority of their tanning bed exposure occurred in their youth, maybe even when they were minors,” he said. “Now, as adults, often early adults or mid-adult life, is when they’re finally dealing with the consequences of those exposures.”

That’s what happened to Heidi Tarr, a patient of Gerami’s who agreed to be part of the study.

In high school and college, Tarr said she used tanning beds multiple times a week. At the time, she thought it was safer than potentially burning in the sun.

“My friends and I, in high school and through college we used tanning beds regularly,” Tarr said. “It was part of feeling beautiful, I guess, having a tan.”

In 2011, she noticed that a mole on her back had changed in color and size. She underwent a biopsy and learned that she had melanoma. Luckily, she caught it early, underwent surgery and has been cancer-free ever since. But she must continue to get her skin checked every six months for the rest of her life, she said.

Related Articles

Trump administration moves to cut off transgender care for children

Newport Recycling & Energy Center to medical facilities: Enough with the infectious waste

New student loan rule could dissuade people from advanced nursing degrees

Nebraska plans to be the first state to implement Trump’s new Medicaid work requirements

Teen drug use remains low, but survey finds small rise in heroin and cocaine use

“You think you’re getting a tan but what you don’t see is you’re damaging your skin cells, and that damage can lead to melanoma,” Tarr said.

Tarr didn’t hesitate to participate in Gerami’s research. “I wanted to help the medical community and his research, but I really wanted to help other patients,” she said. “I just wanted to do anything I could to give back.”

Pedrami would like to see more states limit use of tanning beds among minors and stronger warnings of the risks of tanning beds. Illinois, like a number of states, prohibits people younger than 18 from using tanning beds.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration already requires tanning beds to have labels informing people of the risks of using them and urging against their use for people younger than 18.

Industry group the American Suntanning Association has criticized past research on tanning beds and skin cancer, saying on its website that many of the studies have relied on self-reported survey data and fail to “isolate independent variables, such as assessing whether subjects sunburned repeatedly or exposed themselves responsibly.”

“We acknowledge that there are risks associated with overexposure to the sun and sunbeds, including skin cancer,” the association says on its website. “But it’s important that we keep these risks in perspective while determining public health policy decisions. Discussion of the nuance and critical confounding factors in the research isn’t happening yet.”

Meanwhile, the American Academy of Dermatology association opposes indoor tanning and would like to see a ban on the production and sale of indoor tanning equipment for nonmedical purposes.