Features (All)

Article - Gardening; by Dr. Francis Gouin - 3/31/11

The Bay Gardener’s Guide to Spring

Expert Advice for Getting the Most from Your Lawn, Garden and Yard

PRUNING Fruit Trees Pruning is the most effective method we have to improve fruit quality. A yearly early spring trim minimizes flowers, forcing better quality fruit. Trees should be well established before you begin pruning and training. Begin a year after transplanting. A well-trained fruit tree looks like a Christmas tree, with two to three well-developed bottom branches 30 to 36 inches above the ground. The angle...

Article - News; by Sandra Olivetti Martin - 3/24/11

Rebuilding The Old Stein

After 100 years in New York, a storied mahogany bar finds a new home in Mayo

Prost! will make room for salute when you next click glasses at the bar at the new Old Stein. That’s because owner Mike Selinger has imported the bar of a famous Manhattan Italian eatery to keep the old in the Old Stein, which he hopes to reopen at its Mayo location in August after December 31’s fire. For over a century, the mahogany bar and bar back was the centerpiece of Carmine’s, a rustic Italian gathering spot in New York City’s South Street...

Article - Creature Feature; by J. Alex Knoll - 3/24/11

A Dog-Gone Shame

Ten percent of dogs in America are homeless

America loves dogs. In a country with more than 300 million people, there are 77-plus million owned dogs. Well over a third of all households in America have a pet dog, with many having two or more. Sometimes that love goes to extremes, as in Anne Arundel County where Animal Control officers found 51 dogs in a Pasadena home. The dogs, though numerous, were not abused. “They were flea bitten and had ear mites,” said...

Article - Features; by Diana Beechener - 3/24/11

Working Like a Dog

Midshipman Ari Schiff raises funds so wounded veterans can benefit from a warm heart and a cold nose

Twenty-one-year-old Ari Schiff knows the value of a dollar. In high school he earned 60,000 of them. Not for a new car or an expensive spring vacation. Schiff earned this small fortune so that America’s VetDogs could offer two assistance dogs to help disabled veterans acclimate to life at home. “I’ve grown up with dogs, and I’ve had this affinity for the military,” Schiff says. “So I thought it was a great way to bring...

Article - Features; by Aries Matheos - 3/24/11

H-E-L-P is a Four-Legged Word

Nancy Patterson’s canine companion Mahler is her arms, her legs and her independence

“I’ve had an engine fail on my plane,” says Nancy Patterson, of Davidsonville, a retired airline pilot. “I’ve had brain surgery. But this has been the most life-changing thing I’ve ever gone through.” Patterson is talking about her experience with Mahler, her service dog from Canine Companions. “Help is a four-legged word,” according to Canine Companions for Independence. As the largest non-profit...

Article - Creature Feature; by Jay Lounsbury - 3/17/11

This Week’s Creature Feature

Holy cow! Sunday schoolers raise $1,200 for two milk cows and one impersonator

Cows came to mind when Linda Kovacs and Carole Butler’s fifth grade Sunday School class at Friendship United Methodist Church decided to go beyond prayer to help people in need. They’d learned that Heifer, an international organization, depends on cows to end hunger and poverty. By giving families a hand-up — not just a hand-out — Heifer hopes to empower them to achieve self-reliance and hope. With gifts of livestock and training, families improve...

Article - News; by Dennis Doyle - 3/17/11

Is Commercial Netting Sustainable?

Sports and conservation groups challenge harvest traditions

Illegal commercial gill netting (and consequently, some arrests) continues despite all the attention net-fishing has been drawing on the water and in the news. Now the Coastal Conservation Association (ccamd.com) has asked Maryland Department of Natural Resources Secretary John Griffin to re-evaluate both commercial gill net operations and pound net fisheries. Gill netting, currently and historically, is an easily and often abused activity, the nationwide marine resources...

Article - Green Living; by Diana Beechener - 3/17/11

Is Bigger Better?

Anne Arundel County hopes larger containers amount to a greater recycling haul

The bigger, the better. That seems to be the theory behind Anne Arundel County’s push to distribute 65-gallon recycling containers throughout the county. “Recycling is a budgetary priority of this administration,” says County Executive John R. Leopold. “I’m always looking for ways to enhance the convenience of our recycling plan.” Our recycling habits now fall 10 percent short of the county goal of 50 percent recycling...

Article - Green Living; by Matt Driscoll - 3/17/11

Joining Hands to Fill The Breach

An army of volunteers give a rare Chesapeake marsh a second life

A boardwalk leads through pinewoods to the water. From its beginning, you see a sliver of shining Bay. As you walk along the worn planks raised over marshland, the Dominion Cove Point Liquefied Natural Gas facility — the industrial campus, the seven vast blinding-white storage tanks — disappear. At the end, the marsh and the tall reeds give way to the low dunes of Cove Point Beach. From the beach, you can see across the Bay to Taylors Island. But the view is not...

Article - Things; by Diana Beechener - 3/10/11

What's With That? Lessons of a Tumbled Tree

Timber!

On a recent blustery day, a thunderous crack and immediate darkness in the kitchen alerted me to a wayward limb obstructing the power lines. Dangling from our power lines and blocking our road was the top half of a neighbor’s pine tree. We should call someone, the gathering of alarmed neighbors agreed. Who do you call when a tree takes a swan dive onto a public road? As we debated the finer points of tree...