Rethink Recycling Sculpture     High-schoolers were up to the challenge of Maryland Department for the Environment’s 11th annual Rethink Recycling sculpture contest. Students in 22 high schools from across Maryland imagined new uses for everyday waste, from rusted machines to aluminum foil to water bottles.     No Anne Arundel or Calvert County schools rose to this year’s challenge; Calverton School signed up but didn’t meet the deadline....

The turkey carved for your Thanksgiving dinner is likely a Broad Breasted White, a hybrid developed to live up to its name.     Heritage breeds like the Black Spanish and Urban Red Ed Cramer raises at Fisher Farm in La Plata may be tastier, but they are more costly to raise, grow slower and produce less meat than the Broad Breasted White. You’ll pay roughly twice the price of a small-farm, pasture-raised, Broad Breasted White to enjoy one of those birds.   ...

Counting any fewer roadside signs as you drive through Chesapeake Country?     After $25 per fines on signs on the right-of-way on state highways were promised last year, we expected postings to go down. Didn’t you?     In the weeks before the November 6 election, signs bloomed. Many were gone before Election Day, though business-as-usual signs — Christmas Lights was an omnipresent one — quickly returned.     The State Highway...

The best thing about giant sweet potatoes is digging them up with seven-year-old grandson Aiden in the kitchen garden behind our house in northern Calvert County. Aiden and I picked out one of the largest hills. Mt. Kilimanjaro, we called it. When dug out, that hill yielded 55 pounds of potatoes, with one 20 inches long and big around as the calf of your leg. Another weighed 11 pounds.     To cook one of these behemoths is a feat in itself. First, you cut it in half and maybe...