Richard Cowles said owning a Christmas tree farm is magical.

Many people are growing houseplants again to create a lush, green oasis in their home or apartment. But it doesn't have to just be green houseplants. There are new varieties of easy-to-grow houseplants that feature colorful leaves and flowers and some even grow in low-light conditions. Here are some of the best.

Syed Alishan Nasir, a fourth-year medical student, recently completed a clinical rotation at Norwalk Community Health Center, which, like other community health centers, treats many low-income and underserved residents. The experience further cemented Nasir’s idea to one day become a primary care physician and work in a similar setting, but said he and others face significant barriers to going into primary care, which typically doesn’t pay as much as other specialties.

The Music Moves Hartford Street Choir is a musical group with a difference. The choir members are all part of the downtown homeless community. The project is a collaboration between Hartford’s Christ Church Cathedral and arts organization Cuatro Puntos .

Saturday marked seven years since the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting that left 20 students and six educators dead. And, as a town came together to remember and to pray in the morning, it also came together to celebrate an unlikely football victory by night’s end.

State officials and immigration attorneys in Connecticut are welcoming a ruling last week by the federal Board of Immigration Appeals that clarifies its position on the state’s pardon power. The BIA says it will now honor Connecticut’s pardons. That means Hartford resident Wayzaro Walton will be able to regain her legal status and avoid deportation from the U.S.

Saturday, Dec. 14, marks the seventh anniversary of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, that took the lives of 20 first graders and six educators. Carol Ann Davis, who is a professor of English at Fairfield University, a poet, an essayist and an author lives in Newtown. She moved to the village of Sandy Hook with her husband and two sons a few months before the shooting.

In 1828, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, Joel Poinsett, could never have imagined the impact he'd have on the holidays by simply bringing back a local plant to the United States.

The grief and sadness of Dec. 14, 2012, has been expressed through countless poems, songs and other works of art, including the choral work “Solace,” a simple, solemn remembrance of the victims of Newtown, written by one of America’s leading poets and set to music by a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer.

In the world of emergency medicine, an unrecognized esophageal intubation is a “never event,” meaning that it shouldn't happen under any circumstances. In Rhode Island, it's occurred 12 times in the last three years. In each case, the patient died.