HOW YOUR GARDEN GROWS Take this tree advice Shopping for a tree? A little detective work get you a happy, healthy tree that’s much more likely to thrive in your garden. Here are some tips.

If paperback fiction authors are cooks, Las Vegas is the seasoning they want within easy reach. Setting too bland? Nothing a little Sin City can’t fix.

At-risk kids with ballet dreams find support — and life-changing opportunities — at Nevada Ballet Theatre’s Future Dance program I’ve twice seen Ariel Triunfo dance. The first time was three years ago, when Nevada Ballet Theatre’s 2010 summer intensive classes were wrapping up and the parents of so many ballerinas gathered in Nevada Ballet Theatre’s large Studio B to watch the session’s concluding performance.

The Titanic at Carmine’s An appropriate name for a dish that will sink to the bottom of your belly. The signature dessert at this Italian-American institution is basically a banana split on steroids: Hot brownies are smothered with scoops of ice cream, whipped cream, hot fudge, chopped fruit and cookies.

On January 1, I’ll have been out of a Nevada business euphemistically called “the gaming industry” for five years. I am not retired, mind you.

Pop quiz: What town has Nevada’s oldest and smallest school still in continuous operation? If you answered Goodsprings — located just 34 miles southwest of Las Vegas — retired Goodsprings schoolteacher Julie Newberry might just give you a gold star. Talk about resilience.

Perhaps on his days off, Rick Moonen swaps his chef’s jacket and toque for a tailcoat and top hat. Is there any other explanation for the pseudo-Victorian flavor of his latest project? Rx Boiler Room, which opened in early July, just might be the first gastropub in America that capitalizes on the popularity of steampunk, a subculture inspired by 19th-century science fiction.

Set aside the sushi menu. The valley’s new wave of Japanese cuisine boasts rich curries, exotic tapas and deep-fried everything Japanese food in Las Vegas has been about much more than sushi for some time now.

“It was the first and best performance I’ve ever seen.” That’s what a grade-schooler wrote after attending one of the Las Vegas Philharmonic’s Youth Concert Series shows, an annual, five-day tear of concerts at The Smith Center that treats valley fourth- and fifth-graders to what is often their first taste of orchestral music — for many, their first soul-stirring communion with performed music as vigorous, vitalizing art.

So Las Vegas isn’t exactly known as a bookish town. Don’t tell that to Ann DeVere.